Morgan Yachts for Sale

Charley Morgan was a St. Petersburg racing sailor and designer who drew a 28 foot sloop called the Tiger Cub, could not find anyone to build it, and so formed Morgan Yachts and built it himself. The yard grew fast on the Morgan 24, 30, 34, 41 and 45, and Morgan also designed, built and skippered Heritage, the last American wooden 12 Metre, for the 1970 America's Cup defender trials. He sold the company to Beatrice Foods in 1968, stayed on as chairman, and retired in June 1972. Catalina Yachts bought Morgan in 1984, mainly for the East Coast factory and for the Out Island tooling, kept the Morgan 38 and the Out Island going as the Classic 41 for a few more years, and then retired the brand.

So every Morgan is a brokerage boat, most of them between thirty five and fifty five years old, and there are a great many of them: more than 20,000 hulls of all models. That is the good news, because comparables are easy to find, prices are honest and nothing on these boats is exotic. The Out Island 41 is the one you will see most, a roomy shoal draft center cockpit cruiser that is comfortable at anchor and unhurried to windward, which tells you the owner it suits: someone cruising Florida, the Keys and the Bahamas who values space and draft over sailing performance. A lot of them came out of charter fleets, so ask what the boat did for its first ten years, and survey the deck core, chainplates, original wiring and, on a centerboard boat, the board, pennant and trunk.