Overview
The Pearson Vanguard 32 is a Philip Rhodes design built during Pearson’s first decade, when the yard was still working out what a serious offshore cruiser looked like in fiberglass. It sold well for its day, 404 hulls over five years, and it still turns up regularly enough on the used market that Baldwin’s notes call it “not burdened with excessive freeboard, beam or displacement for a 32-footer,” a boat that looks and sails like a proper yacht rather than a beamy production compromise.
History
Pearson Yachts built the Vanguard from 1963 to 1967, a tight five-year run that produced roughly 404 boats, most of them rigged as masthead sloops. It came early enough in Pearson’s history that the company was still leaning on well-known outside designers like Rhodes to establish its reputation, before later moving toward more in-house design work. Sailboatdata.com and sailboat.guide both catalog the design under the name “Vanguard 33,” apparently a rounding of the 32.58 ft LOA, but the boat has always been sold and is universally known as the Vanguard 32, the name used here.
Construction
The hull is solid hand-laid fiberglass. Sailboatdata.com and sailboat.guide both classify the underbody as a fin keel, and a Practical Sailor review found via search summarizes it as “a fin keel with skeg-hung rudder,” adding that “despite bearing the ‘full keel’ appellation, the Vanguard’s generous overhangs, cutaway forefoot and raked rudderpost mean there’s not as much lateral surface area as one might suppose.” That is a fair way to read the disagreement between what owners commonly call the boat and what the spec databases record: it has enough forefoot and a protected, keel-attached rudder to satisfy the letter of Baldwin’s full-keel criteria for his list, without the long straight keel of an older design. Ballast is 4,250 lb of lead, 41.3 percent of the 10,300 lb displacement, a solid ratio for a boat this size.
Under Sail
With 470 sq ft of sail on a 22.33 ft waterline, the Vanguard carries enough canvas to move well in a range of conditions without being overpowered. Baldwin notes it is “not burdened with excessive freeboard, beam or displacement,” and other reviews describe a theoretical hull speed just above 6 knots off that waterline, respectable for a cruising boat of the period. The narrow beam and long overhangs typical of early-1960s Rhodes designs mean a boat that heels early and then settles, rewarding a crew that reefs promptly rather than dragging the rail through the water.
Buyers Notes
Baldwin flags the boat’s one real weak point plainly: “Atomic 4 standard gas inboard is best replaced by diesel or, if you don’t require extended motoring range, with an electric drive as a friend of mine has done with his.” That is the single item most worth budgeting for on a used Vanguard, since the original gas engine is now well past its expected service life on any surviving boat. On the plus side, he adds “6’4" headroom if you need it,” generous for a boat with this narrow a beam. Given the production numbers, parts and rigging knowledge should be easier to come by than for rarer boats of the same era.
