Taswell Yachts for Sale

Taswell was Ta Shing's own sailing brand: a range drawn by the British designer Bill Dixon and built at the yard's Tainan works in Taiwan from 1986 to 2002. Sizes ran 43 and 44, 49 and 50, 56, 58, 60 and finally a 72, in both center cockpit and All Season raised saloon versions, and only 117 hulls were built in sixteen years. Ta Shing is the important part of that sentence. The same yard built Baba, Tashiba, Mason, Norseman and Panda, and it builds Nordhavn hulls, so a Taswell comes from one of the small number of Taiwanese yards whose joinery and laminate work are genuinely respected rather than merely adequate.

For a used buyer that is the appeal and the catch. The build quality is very good: hand laid glass with balsa coring above the waterline and a solid bottom, heavy teak joinery, and boats often customized when ordered with a raised saloon, a tall rig, shoal draft or a Kevlar hull, so two 43s of the same year can be quite different. The brand is gone, which means there is no factory support, no parts department and nobody to honor a warranty. Ta Shing still exists and can answer questions about a hull it built, but it will not stock a hatch for a 1992 boat. Everything mechanical on these yachts is standard imported gear, Yanmar, Volvo Penta, Lewmar, so the parts problem is smaller than it sounds. Where it bites is the custom joinery, the hatches and the deck hardware. Survey the balsa core around every deck fitting, the chainplates, the rudder bearing and the teak deck if the boat still has one, since a full teak deck replacement will outrun the value of the boat. These are heavy, comfortable, slow to load up, easily handled passagemakers, and they suit a couple who intends to leave rather than a weekend sailor. Most were sold new into the United States, but check the shore power system, the appliances and the import paperwork on any boat that has spent its life in Europe or the Caribbean.