Sabre 28


The Sabre 28 is a series of American sailboats, designed by Roger Hewson and first built in 1971.

Production

The boat was built in three versions by Sabre Yachts in the United States between 1971 and 1986, with a total of 588 built.

Design

The Sabre 28 was the first design for the newly-formed company. Its design goal was to build the finest 28-foot sailing yacht available, using the state of the art materials and techniques available at the time and construct the boat on a modern assembly line basis, to realize good economy and production quality.
The Sabre 28 is a small recreational keelboat, built predominantly of fiberglass, with extensive teak wood trim. It has a masthead sloop rig, a raked stem, vertical transom, skeg-mounted rudder controlled by a ship's wheel and a swept fixed fin keel.
The accommodations include a double "V" berth in the forward cabin, single and double bunks in the main cabin, and a quarter berth. The forward cabin has a door for privacy. The head includes a hanging locker and a dorade vent. The main cabin has a folding table that stows against a bulkhead. The galley features a recessed stove.
The cockpit is over in length. The foredeck mounts an anchor locker. Other features include a foredeck hatch, four opening and four fixed ports, internal halyards for both the mainsail and the genoa, raised by a mast-mounted winch. The mainsheet traveler is mounted on the cabin roof and genoa tracks are provided. The genoa is controlled with dual two-speed winches, mounted on the cockpit coaming.
All models have hull speeds of.

Variants

;Sabre 28-1
;Sabre 28-2
;Sabre 28-3

American Sailboat Hall of Fame

The Sabre 28 was inducted into the now-defunct Sail America American Sailboat Hall of Fame in 2003. In honoring the design, the hall cited, "If Roger Hewson and his associates at Sabre Yachts hadn’t hit a sweet spot with the 28 – bringing the look and feel of a yacht into the pocket-cruiser size range – they wouldn’t have had a 15-year production run, nor gone on to build close to 2000 larger sail and power boats. Perhaps the truest testimony to their success in crafting a boat of lasting quality is the price a 28 fetches on the used boat market today. Depending on maintenance and updates, prices can range from $15,000 to $30,000. As Hornor writes, “The Sabre 28 is rather high priced for its size and accommodations. However, the boat has proven to be a good investment due to its ability to attract buyers willing to pay a little more”"