Lyle C. Hess drew her from 19th-century pilot cutters, the Pardeys made her legend — and S/V Artha carries that pedigree into her fifth decade.
Some boats are bought for weekends. The Bristol 28 Channel Cutter was drawn for the rest of your life. The video accompanying this 1978 example — S/V Artha, listed by Jim Edwards — is less a cabin-by-cabin tour than a proper briefing on why this design has an almost religious following among long-distance sailors.
Bred in a dangerous channel
The story starts in Britain, in the waterway separating South Wales from southwest England. The Bristol Channel has some of the highest tides on earth, ferocious water movement, and precious few safe havens on the north Devon and Somerset coasts. Pilotage there wasn’t a courtesy, it was survival — and the pilot cutters that raced out to incoming tall ships had to be both quick and unbreakable. First boat to the ship won the piloting job, and the pay. As the video puts it, that rivalry was an arms race in boat technology, a precursor to modern yacht racing.
In the late 1960s, American designer Lyle C. Hess translated that pedigree into fiberglass. His Renegade of Newport, based in California, caught the eye of a young Canadian named Larry Pardey, and the collaboration produced Seraffyn of Victoria — built by hand and sailed with Lin Pardey for more than a decade, circumnavigating along the way. Their next Hess design, Taleisin, went on to log over 200,000 nautical miles.
Twenty-eight feet, fourteen thousand pounds
The numbers explain the reputation. Hull length is 28.08 feet, but with bowsprit and boomkin she measures 37.75 feet overall — which is where the sail area comes from. Displacement is a staggering 14,000 lbs, of which 4,600 lbs is lead in the fixed long keel. Draft is 4.83 feet. Construction is predominantly fiberglass with wood trim, with a spooned plumb stem, angled transom, and a transom- and keel-hung rudder controlled by a tiller. Hull speed works out to 6.9 knots.
The video is refreshingly honest about the trade-off: a 10-foot beam “leaves a lot to be desired inside,” and sugar scoops and aft cabins simply aren’t in this boat’s vocabulary. If you want a scalpel, buy an Olson 30. This is a chainsaw. What you get instead is a boat that has rounded the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, over and over, and still does.
Living aboard
Accommodations sleep four: two straight settee berths and a pilot berth in the main cabin, plus an aft quarter berth to starboard. The L-shaped galley sits to port at the companionway ladder with stove and sink; the navigation station faces it to starboard. The head is forward in the bow, with an optional shower. Cabin headroom is 75 inches. Tankage runs to 64 US gallons of fresh water, 30 gallons of fuel, and a 15-gallon holding tank. Auxiliary power on these boats was typically the 13 hp Volvo MD7A or a 27 hp Yanmar — enough for docking and maneuvering, which is really all a boat like this asks of an engine.
What they’re worth
Good ones hold their value stubbornly. The video cites examples on the market from $92,000 for a 1988 boat in Washington up to $167,000 for a 2008 in the same state, with a 2010 Florida boat at $126,000 — high money for an old design, and the market agrees.
| 1988, Washington | $92,000 | |||
| 2010, Florida | $126,000 | |||
| 2008, Washington | $167,000 |
| Bristol 28 Channel Cutter | Figure |
|---|---|
| Sold, last 24 months | 1 |
| Median sold price | $70,000 |
| Active listings now | 2 |
| Asking range | $39,500–$129,000 |
| Median asking | $84,250 |
A Blue Water Boats review quoted in the video calls the design “a pinnacle of ruggedness and practicality while retaining respectable performance.” That’s the pitch for S/V Artha in a sentence: a small, heavy, beautiful boat that has already been wherever you’re thinking of going.