Islander Yachts for Sale

Islander came out of the Southern California fiberglass boom. Joseph McGlasson was building wooden Islander 24s at Costa Mesa in the mid 1950s and went to fiberglass in 1961 with a partner, Glas Laminates, which then split off and became Columbia. McGlasson's side was incorporated as the Wayfarer Yacht Corporation in 1963, bought out of bankruptcy that same year by Ralph Brown and Ben Kanter, and renamed Islander Yachts in 1965. Cosmodyne bought it in 1968, Radlon in 1971, production moved to Irvine in 1974, some tooling went to Costa Rica in 1984, building stopped in 1985 and the company closed in 1986. The range ran from a 23 up to a 48, with the Bahama series, the Freeport 36 and 41, the Peterson 40 and, most of all, the Islander 36.

Every Islander is a brokerage boat now, most of them between forty five and fifty five years old, and the company has been gone for forty years, so there is no factory, no parts counter and nobody to honor anything. In practice that matters less than it sounds, because these were conventional California production boats: Universal and Perkins diesels, ordinary spars and winches, nothing exotic, and a very active owners' community, particularly around the Islander 36, which is one of the better documented used boats in the country. The value is entirely in condition and in what has been replaced. Survey the deck core around fittings and the mast step, the chainplates and their bulkheads, the keel bolts and the smile at the joint, the rudder and its shaft, the original wiring, and any hull blistering, which boats of this vintage often show. The bigger center cockpit boats, the Freeport 41 and the 41 ketch, carry a lot of interior and a lot of systems for the money, so price the refit honestly rather than the asking figure. Bought right and already sorted, an Islander is a genuinely good cruising boat and the cheapest way into that size. Bought wrong, there is no economical way out.