CAL Yachts for Sale

Jack Jensen founded Jensen Marine at Costa Mesa, California in 1957 and it became one of the first companies anywhere to mass produce sailboats in fiberglass. Almost everything carried the Cal name and almost everything was drawn by C. William Lapworth, whose signature was a fin keel with a separate spade rudder well aft, radical for a production boat at the time and now simply how sailboats are built. The Cal 40 of 1963 proved it by winning offshore against everything else afloat. Jensen sold to Bangor Punta in 1968, the brand later passed through Lear Siegler and Little Compton Yachts, and production ended in 1989.

Cals are light, quick and simple, and on the brokerage market they are among the cheapest ways into a boat that actually sails well. They are also fifty and sixty years old. Practical Sailor's survey of the 40 flags the points that carry across the range: the hull is solid hand laid glass but the tabbing holding the interior structure in can be light, and owners have added to it; the inward turning hull to deck flange is sound but can weep; gelcoat crazes at the stressed corners of the deck and cockpit, which is cosmetic; wiring was run low in the bilge and suffers if the boat has been sailed hard with water in her; and the ballast cavity needs looking at after any hard grounding. There is no factory, but the systems are generic and nothing on the boat is exotic.