Scanmar Yachts for Sale

Scanmar is a small Swedish line rather than a large company. The boats were built by AB Bröderna Börjesson, the Börjesson brothers, at Bjästa on the northern Swedish coast, and the 35, which is the model you will actually meet, was designed by Rolf Magnusson and built from 1982 to 1988 in a run of around a hundred hulls. It is a period Scandinavian cruiser racer: fractional sloop rig, iron fin keel with about 4,167 pounds of ballast, ten and a half feet of beam on thirty five feet of length, fiberglass hull and deck, mahogany below, three cabins and a small Volvo Penta diesel. Light for its era, well mannered, and built for the Baltic rather than the Gulf Stream.

There is no company left, no dealer, no parts counter and no warranty from anybody, and that is the first thing to understand. These are forty year old boats from a yard that built fewer than two hundred of them, so the value of a good one is in its condition and nothing else, and the value of a bad one is close to zero because there is no cheap route to putting it right. Practically, that means the survey does all the work: the deck core and every deck fitting, the chainplates and their bulkheads, the keel bolts and the iron keel itself, the rudder bearing, and the original wiring, which on Swedish boats of this period is decent but tired. Anything Swedish specific, such as the interior joinery, the hatches or a Volvo Penta 2003, is findable but slow and expensive to get in the United States. On the other hand nothing about the boat is exotic, a good yard can work on it, and a Scanmar 35 in order is a genuinely nice sailing boat that suits a sailor who wants a well bred coastal cruiser and is willing to maintain an old one. Check where the boat has lived: Swedish boats were built to European specification and a hull that came over recently may still be on 230 volt 50 hertz shore power, with the import duty question unresolved.