Outbound Yachts for Sale

Phil Lambert founded Outbound in 1997 to build one thing: a cruising boat fast enough to be enjoyable and strong enough to be taken offshore by a couple. He commissioned Carl Schumacher, better known for the Alerion Express, for the 44, later stretched into the 46, and Tim Kernan for the 52, and he has had every hull built at the Hansheng Yacht Building Company in Xiamen, the same yard behind Passport. The first boat reached the United States in 1999. The current line is the 44, 46, 521 and the raised salon 5360. The hulls are solid fiberglass in vinylester, the decks vacuum bagged over Divinycell, and the lead is cast into the keel cavity rather than hung on bolts that can weep. A good number of the 44s and 46s afloat have made long passages, which is the only endorsement that counts in this part of the market.

The build country reads worse than it is. Outbound is an American company that imports its own boats, so a used Outbound in the United States was landed, dutied and commissioned here rather than brought over by a private owner, and it was built to American practice from the start: 120 volt 60 hertz, American engines and hardware, American instruments. That is a real difference from a European built cruiser of the same money, where you are inheriting somebody else's 230 volt 50 hertz installation and a CE plate. What you should still do is what you would do with any small volume builder: ask for the hull number and the original build sheet, confirm the standing rigging age, and remember that the company is small, which means good access to the people who built the boat and a longer wait than a mass builder for a part that is not off the shelf.