Rated 4.9 out of 5 by our customers
Rated 4.9 out of 5 by our customers
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5 Star Rated by Sailors
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You have been told they want something for the boat. You have nodded along to a conversation about kickers and cunninghams. You have no idea what any of it means, and Christmas is coming.
Working out what to buy a sailor when you do not sail yourself is genuinely difficult. The kit is specialised, the sizing is inconsistent between brands, and the sport has a vocabulary all of its own. Get it wrong and you have bought an expensive thing that sits in a cupboard.
Here is how to get it right, written for partners, parents and anyone else buying for a sailor from the outside.
You have 90 days to return anything you buy from us.
That matters more than any gift idea on this page. It means you can buy in November, they can open it at Christmas, and if the size is wrong or the colour is not them, it comes back for an exchange well into the new year. The pressure to be exactly right on the first attempt simply is not there.
So do your best, take an educated guess, and stop worrying about it.
If you know nothing else about their sailing, know this. Sailing kit wears out, and sailors are notoriously reluctant to replace it until it falls apart.
That makes the worn out stuff the best answer to what to buy a sailor, because you are replacing something they already own, already use and already know the size of.
The usual suspects:
Go and look at the state of theirs. If it is frayed, faded or taped up, you have found your present.
Some things do not care what they sail. If you cannot tell an Optimist from a catamaran, these are safe ground:
Our sailing gifts collection gathers all of this in one place, broken down by budget: under £15 for Secret Santa, then under £25, under £50 and under £100.
A word of warning from experience. The gifts that miss tend to come from the furthest away: office collections for a colleague's retirement, where nobody involved sails and something gets picked because it looks nautical. If that is you, the budget collections are the place to start, and a phone call is better still.
Sizing is the other half of the worry, and it is solvable.
Go and look at the kit they already own. Check the labels in their boots, their gloves, their spray top. Note the brand as well as the size. Do this while they are out.
Know that brands differ. A size in Gill or Rooster boots is not necessarily the same size in Zhik. If you tell us what they currently wear and what you are thinking of buying, we will go through the size charts and work out what they actually need. We do this every day at this time of year.
If you cannot get to their kit, the size charts on each product page work from measurements, and plenty of items are forgiving enough that close is good enough.
And if it still comes back wrong, you have those 90 days.
Working out what to buy a sailor is harder again for parents, because children grow faster than kit wears out.
The instinct is to go a size up. Often the right answer is to go further than that, and the trick is to think about when in the season the item will actually be worn.
Take a winter sailing top bought at Christmas. They will get March and April out of it before the weather warms and they switch to summer kit. That is two months. Come September, when it is needed again, it may well be too small.
So for that top, size up more than feels comfortable. They will swim in it in March, and it will fit beautifully by the autumn. For something they will wear right now, stay closer to their current size.
It is a balancing act, and as a sailing parent making the same trip up to the warehouse at the start of every season, I promise there is no perfect answer.
If you would rather buy one proper present than several small ones, the gift collection filters by value and the bigger items sit at the top end.
Popular choices are new sails, whether that is an ILCA or a Topper sail, digital compasses, and spliced ILCA rigging, which is made up to order.
One thing worth saying: the gift collection is a starting point, not the whole shop. Not everything we sell sits in it, because it would be unmanageable. If they have asked for something very specific, a set of cleats or a particular rope, we almost certainly have it, and it makes a perfectly good present. Ask us.
A gift voucher is the honest answer to what to buy a sailor when you genuinely cannot decide.
Sailors want specific things. A particular rope for a halyard, a custom splice, a part for their boat you could never guess at. A voucher lets them have exactly that.
We know a voucher is not the most exciting thing to unwrap, so two things to know. They come as a physical voucher printed on card, which looks like a proper present, or as a digital voucher by email that you can print and wrap yourself.
And here is the better version of the idea. Our showroom is open between Christmas and New Year. Give the voucher, then take them over in that quiet week after Christmas so they can try kit on, see it in person and walk out with what they actually wanted, ready for the 2027 season.
That turns a safe gift into a day out.
This is where people get caught, so read this bit even if you skip the rest.
Some of what we sell is made to order. Boat covers take 10 to 20 working days, because each one is cut and made in turn. Spliced ILCA rigging is made to order too, though it moves more quickly. Hiking benches are popular enough this year that we are expecting demand to build.
None of those will appear overnight in mid December.
For everything else, our carriers are reliable and you have until roughly the week before Christmas. Realistically we want Christmas orders going out by 18 December, which gives the parcel time to arrive and you time to wrap it.
If you are reading this in November, you are in a good position. Order the made to order items now.
Give us a call.
Our team sail. Not occasionally, but week in and week out, across a good spread of classes, and we wear most of the kit we sell. That means we can tell you what suits a Topper sailor, what an Optimist parent actually needs, or which trapeze harness works for a catamaran sailor, because we have used it.
Tell us what they sail, roughly what you want to spend, and anything you know about their current kit. We will point you at something sensible.
Have a browse of our sailing gifts collection. It is sorted by budget, so you can start from what you want to spend rather than from a product you do not understand. It is the quickest way to turn what to buy a sailor into a short list you can actually choose from.
And if you would like gift ideas, offers and last order dates through November and December, sign up to our newsletter and we will send you what other sailors are choosing this year, and why.
Look at the kit they already own and replace whatever is worn out. Gloves, boots, buoyancy aids and thermals all wear through and sailors tend to put off replacing them. If you are unsure, a gift voucher lets them choose exactly what they need.
Check the labels in the kit they already own, noting the brand as well as the size, since sizing differs between brands. If you tell us what they currently wear and what you want to buy, we can check the size charts for you.
Size up, and think about when the item will be worn. A winter top bought at Christmas only gets March and April before the summer, so size up to make sure it still fits the following September.
Made to order items need the most notice: boat covers take 10 to 20 working days. For everything else, orders should be placed in time to ship by 18 December.
We offer 90 day returns, so a gift bought in November can be exchanged for a different size or something else well into the new year.
