Westsail 32 Buyer's Guide, History and Prices

From Colin Archer's rescue boats to a California sales phenomenon

The Westsail 32 traces back to the Norwegian pilot and rescue boats Colin Archer drew in the 19th century. In 1928 William Atkin adapted that type into Eric, a 32-foot gaff-rigged double-ender, later redrawn with a Bermuda rig as Thistle. In 1969 Californian Larry Kendall asked W.I.B. Crealock to turn the Atkin lines into a fiberglass production boat. Crealock reportedly told him he might sell ten or a dozen. The Kendall 32 sold modestly and the company went under within two years.

In February 1971 engineer Snyder Vick and his wife Lynne bought the Kendall molds, had Crealock redraw the deck and interior, and launched the Westsail 32. The first three boats sold for $15,000 to $20,000. What the Vicks really sold was a lifestyle: their quarterly magazine Windbag passed 5,000 subscribers, and owner boat shows turned proud owners into a volunteer sales force.

Cash flow, not demand, killed the company. Westsail collected payment on delivery, so every extra boat widened the gap between costs and income, and launching the Westsail 42 and 43 in 1974 made it worse. The firm filed for bankruptcy in early 1977, restarted under new management and closed for good around 1980 to 1981, after about 830 Westsail 32s.

Built like a tank, and what that means today

The hull is 12 alternating layers of woven roving and chopped strand mat in polyester resin, from about half an inch thick to nearly an inch. Ballast is 7,000 pounds inside the keel cavity and glassed over, so there are no keel bolts to worry about. Early boats used a mix of lead and iron; later boats used lead only. The deck is half-inch plywood sheathed in fiberglass.

Fifty years on, the hull is almost never the problem. The plywood deck core is. Every stanchion base, deck fill, chainplate slot and mast partner is a potential path for water, and a saturated core is common on survey. Re-coring a whole deck runs into five figures at a yard, which on a $25,000 boat is the whole budget.

Half the fleet came from a kit, and that changes how you shop

About 400 Westsail 32s left the factory as kits: a finished hull, ballast installed and the deck bonded on, with interior, engine, plumbing, wiring and rig left to the buyer. Ferenc Mate wrote From a Bare Hull to support the program, and the book is still a standard boatbuilding reference.

Some kit boats are better finished than factory boats, built over years by skilled owners. Others have garden-hose plumbing, automotive wiring and bulkheads tabbed in with too little glass. Ask for documentation of whether the boat is factory or owner-finished, and judge a kit boat entirely on the work you can see.

• Check bulkhead tabbing to the hull on both faces
• Trace the wiring and look for marine-grade tinned wire and proper fusing
• Confirm seacocks are true marine seacocks, not gate valves
• Ask the Westsail Owners Association whether the hull is known to them

How a 19,500 pound double-ender actually sails

The old line is that the Westsail 32 is built like a tank and sails like one too. It is half true. The displacement to length ratio is about 419, very heavy by any standard, and the sail area to displacement ratio sits around 15.6 with the full cutter plan. Hull speed is about 7 knots, and in moderate wind a typical cruising pace is 6 to 6.5 knots.

Below 10 knots of true wind it is slow, and to windward it does not point. Above 20 knots it comes into its own: the long keel tracks without effort, the motion is easy and the boat stands up to its canvas. A Westsail 32 named Saraband won the 1988 Pacific Cup on corrected time, in light wind no less, and placed third in 1990.

Owners who are happy with the boat usually do three things: buy modern cruising sails, carry a large drifter or code zero for light air, and fit a feathering or folding prop. Those changes alone can add a knot in the conditions where the boat is weakest.

Satori, the Perfect Storm and a reputation earned the hard way

In October 1991 the crew of the Westsail 32 Satori was taken off by the Coast Guard during the storm later made famous as the Perfect Storm. The boat was abandoned, later came ashore, and was found essentially undamaged. The film version changed the story considerably, but sailors drew their own conclusion: the boat outlasted the conditions that frightened its crew off.

That episode, plus decades of ocean crossings by ordinary couples, is why the Westsail 32 is still called the epitome of a seaworthy small cruiser. Its success spawned a wave of imitators, among them the Baba, Tashiba, Hans Christian and Pacific Seacraft lines, many built in Taiwan with sleeker underbodies to fix the performance complaint.

Eleven feet of beam inside a 32 foot hull

Beam is 11 feet and the double-ended hull keeps that width well aft, so the interior feels larger than the length suggests. Headroom is about 6 feet 2 inches. The typical arrangement has a V-berth forward, a head, a saloon with settees and a drop-leaf or dinette table, the galley aft and a quarter berth, but on kit boats almost anything is possible.

Factory interiors are traditional wood and can feel dark by modern taste. The upside is a cabin full of handholds and short distances between them, which is what you want in a seaway. Water capacity is about 80 gallons, and fuel is quoted anywhere from 42 gallons (sailboatdata) to 60 gallons (Cole Brothers) depending on year and source.

Wood on the ends: bowsprit, boomkin and chainplates

The rig is a Bermuda cutter with a 6-foot bowsprit and a boomkin, taking sparred length to about 40 feet. That matters for slip fees, since many US marinas bill on overall length, and for the survey, because these extremities carry the headstay and backstay loads.

Wooden bowsprits and boomkins rot from the inside, often invisibly. The original boomkin stay tangs were narrow enough that several boats lost their entire rigs when they failed. The external stainless strap chainplates suffer crevice corrosion on the face against the hull, and cracks can grow from the square carriage bolt holes. If no one has replaced the chainplates, tangs and bowsprit hardware, budget for it.

Tanks under the engine and other mechanical realities

Factory boats left with small Volvo diesels, typically the MD2B or the MD3B, or a Perkins 4-107. Parts for the old Volvos are scarce and expensive, and most surviving boats have been repowered with a Beta, Yanmar or Westerbeke of 30 to 40 hp. A professional repower runs $20,000 to $30,000 installed.

Fuel tanks are the notorious item. Some production used steel tanks set in a wet area under the engine, where they develop pinhole leaks, and on many boats the engine must come out to reach them. Ask when the tank was last replaced. If the answer is never, treat it as a near-term repower-scale job and negotiate accordingly.

Why prices stay low and what the good ones fetch

With roughly 830 boats built, there is almost always a Westsail 32 for sale somewhere on the West Coast, in Florida or in New England. Asking prices typically run $15,000 to $45,000, with exceptional, fully refit boats reaching $60,000 to $75,000. Kit or factory build matters more than year.

Running costs are modest: expect $5,000 to $12,000 a year for insurance, a slip, haul-out and maintenance. The trap is buying cheap and refitting expensive. A boat that has already had its deck, chainplates, tanks and engine done is worth paying up for.