1988 Bristol Channel Cutter 28'
8.53 m1988 Bristol Channel Cutter 28' 28
1988 Bristol Channel Cutter 28
28' (8.53 m) Angelsea
Angelsea is a beautifully crafted Lyle Hess Bristol Channel Cutter, proven offshore and throughout the Caribbean. A rare combination of timeless craftsmanship, serious ocean-going capability, and perfectly manageable size.
Flag of Registry: United States
Port of Registry: St. Thomas
| FEATURES: |
|---|
| Dyneema Standing Rigging 2026 |
| Bronze chain plates |
| Wind Vane |
| Starlink |
| Watermaker |
| Notable Upgrades: Starlink, Dyneema Standing Rigging 2026, Bronze Chainplates, Raymarine ST1000 Tiller Pilot, 7gph Water Maker, All new cushions 2026, New battery bank 2025 and much more!! |
| Tenders: Dinghy Info: Highfield 2.4LT Dinghy HIN: HF002402UG |
Description
Angelsea is a rare and beautifully finished Bristol Channel Cutter with the kind of pedigree and offshore history that is increasingly difficult to find. Her hull was originally completed by her first owner, who finished the interior himself before cruising her to the Sea of Cortez. A subsequent owner, inspired by Lin and Larry Pardey’s Taleisin, commissioned Anderson Boat Works in Newport Beach to create her exceptional solid teak and ash interior, with traditional joinery throughout. She features a rare custom layout, bronze chainplates, windvane self-steering, electric windlass, dyneema standing rigging, and a comprehensive suite of navigation equipment selected by her current owner, a professional sea captain of 15 years. The sextant, paper charts, Chelsea clock and barometer, books, and certain personal items are excluded from the sale.
The Bristol Channel Cutter is renowned for the qualities Lyle Hess designed into her: a stout long keel, outboard rudder, deep bulwarks, traditional cutter rig, and exceptional offshore stability and strength. Angelsea has been thoroughly proven, including a seventeen-day passage from South Florida into the Caribbean's Thorny Path in 25–40 knots and heavy seas, followed by years cruising from Puerto Rico to Trinidad and onward to Bonaire. Now in their late seventies, her owners credit the boat's manageable size, seaworthiness, and confidence-inspiring character with allowing them to continue cruising for so many years. Angelsea isn't about speed or excess — she's about strength, simplicity, craftsmanship, and the confidence to point her toward an ocean horizon and know she'll bring you home.
The seller has reduced the asking price from $85000 to $59500 due to the following reasons:
1. There is an oil leak in the engine oil change fitting on the oil pan (the engined must be removed to repair the leak).
2. The recent antifouling job was done poorly and must be corrected.
These items and any other minor items reflect the asking price of this vessel.
LOA28'
LOA8.53''
LOD28'
Beam10'
Draft Max Feet5'
Draft Min Feet5'
Head Room Feet5'
Head Room Inch11''
Bridge Clearance Feet44'
Fuel Tank (Gallons)20
Fuel Tank (Liters)75.71
Fresh Water (Gallons)70
Fresh Water (Liters)264.98
Holding Tank (Gallons)10
Holding Tank (Liters)37.85
TypeSail
ConditionUsed
Specifications
Angelsea
Sail-Used
1988
26'2"
1
4
1
5'11"
5 Knots
4.5 Knots
175
Diesel
Fiberglass
Displacement
20 Gallons (75.71 Liters)
70 Gallons (264.98 Liters)
10 Gallons (37.85 Liters)
14000
6
Engines
Engine 1
- Engine Make: Beta Marine
- ModelEngine Model: 25
- YearEngine Year: 2012
- Engine TypeEngine Type: Inboard
- Drive TypeDrive Type: Direct
- Power HPPower HP: 25.00
- Power KWPower KW: 18.64
- Fuel TypeFuel Type: Diesel
- HoursHours: 4874.00
Multimedia
Full Details
Additional Information
Accommodation
One cabin, one head, sleeps 4. This is the Lyn and Larry Pardey layout with the v-berth, forward galley and aft head.
Interior Comforts and Amenities
- Refrigerator freezer 4.5 cu ft (2025)
- Force 10 2-burner (2025)
- (2) 10lb propane tanks
- Watermaker 7gph 17A
- First aide kit
- Headroom 5’ 11”
- Bunks 6’8”
- New cushions through out (2026)
- (2) bronze opening ports in forward cabin hull
- (6) opening ports in main cabin
- (2) large hatches for excellent ventilation
- Forward double berth
- Fresh and salt water pumps in galley
- Pressure salt and fresh water in cockpit for showers
- Toaster, blender and full set of plates, cooking utensils
Electronics and Navigation
- B&G Vulcan 9 chart plotter (2022)
- Halo20 radar (2022)
- Em-Trac transceiver 5w AIS (2025)
- Standard Horizon GX2400GPS (2026)
- Uniden Hand held VHF
- LED Masthead, deck and stern lights (2026)
- Raymarine i40 bidata Depth/speed (2025)
- Ritchie glass dome bulkhead compass
- Freehand self steering vane
- Raymarine ST1000+ tiller pilot (2026)
- Starlink
- Stereo
- EPIRB
Electrical Systems
- 316A Lifipo4 battery (2025)
- 2000w pure sine wave inverter (2025)
- Portable 240v to 12v/10A battery charger
- 640w solar (2024-2026)
- Victron 50A solar charger (2025)
- 120A Balmar alternator (2023)
- Balmar external 618 controller (2023)
- Numerous 12v plugins
- All LED lighting
Deck and Hull Equipment
- 35lb Delta primary anchor
- 150’ 8mm HT chain w/150’ 5/8” rode (2026)
- Spare 5/16” HT gypsy for windlass
- Lofrans Kobra Electric windlass
- Fortress FX11 secondary anchor w/ 30’ 5/16” HT and 250’ 5/8” rode
- Fortress FX37 Storm anchor w/30’ of 3/8” HT chain. Numerous long lengths of 5/8” nylon for anchor and tying to mangroves
- (2) bow rollers
- 2lb stainless steel claw type dinghy anchor w/stainless chain and 100’ of 1/4” rode
- Bimini
- Full deck awning from mast aft w/side curtains
- (2) bow rollers built into stem head
- Large teak towing bits
- (2) green Sporta Chairs
- Dyneema life lines
- Solid all bronze stanchions
- All bronze chainplates
- Custom teak chokes for 7’ Fatty Knees
- Swim ladder
- (4) fenders and new black dock lines (2026)
- Deck washdown
Sails and Rigging
- Main mast repainted w/Awlgrip (2026)
- Yankee jib 80% (2023)
- Roller furling staysail with foam luff (2025)
- Full batten main (2024)
- Jib is set flying on Dyneema luff rope and continuous line furler (will always come down)
- Installed new Furlex furler for staysail (2026)
- Drifter (used once in 18 years)
- Selden adjustable whisker pole
- New black Dyneema standing rigging (2026)
- All new sheets and halyards
- Bronze chainplates
- (2) bronze self tailing winches on mast with one standard bronze winch for staysail halyard
- (2) Barient bronze self tailing #22 primary winches
- (2) #10 Barient standard winches on cabin top for staysail
- All winches serviced (May 2026)
- (2) spreader rig
Mechanical Equipment
- 25HP Beta Marine installed 2012 Inboard Diesel
- 3-blade Kiwi feathering prop
- New thru hull with new seawater strainer
- Replace fuel filter system (2022)
Safety Equipment
- EPIRB
- (2) safety harnesses
- (2) inflatable pfd’s
- (2) fire extinguishers
- Horn
- Offshore flare kit
- Man overboard gear
Engine Info
- 25HP Beta Marine (installed 2012)
- Inboard
- Diesel
- 3-blade Kiwi feathering prop
- New thru hull with new seawater strainer
- Replace fuel filter system (2022)
Dinghy Info
- Highfield 2.4LT
- HIN: HF002402UG
- Tohatsu 3.5 SS
- Serial: 034571BC
Tankage
- (1) 20 gallon aluminum fuel tank
- (2) 15 gallon plastic and (1) 40 gallon plastic 70 total with manifold that separated the (2) 15 from the (1) 40
- Water: 70 gal
- Holding: 10 gal
- Fuel: 20 gal
Owners Comments and Boat History
Every great boat carries the fingerprints of the people who loved her, and Angelsea wears three sets.
The first man took her raw — a hull with her skin on, her bulkheads standing, her tanks set deep in her belly — and finished her insides with his own two hands. Then he and his wife, free as the day they were born, pointed her bow toward the Sea of Cortez and vanished into that blue furnace of a summer. Sun on skin. Salt on the wind. No apologies.
The second man was a dreamer of a different order. He worshipped Lin and Larry Pardey, and he wanted their Taleisin reborn inside these very ribs. So he brought her to Anderson Boat Works in Newport Beach, and a shipwright with a gift bordering on the sacred spent months laying up teak and ash — solid wood, every stick of it, joinery so clean it hums. A masterpiece. And then she sat. All that beauty, tied to a dock, waiting.
I heard about her from five thousand miles of ocean away. I flew in from the Caribbean and bought her inside the week.
I shipped her to South Florida, signed on two crew, and turned her nose east into the Thorny Path. Seventeen days hard on the wind. Twenty-five to forty knots, day after punishing day. When she launched off the back of a fifteen-foot sea and landed with a crash that rattled every bone in my body, I felt no fear — only awe. This is what she was built for.
Years later I married a woman with fire in her, who looked at this little cutter and called her home. Together we’ve worked the eastern Caribbean from Puerto Rico to Trinidad, with a Covid-season run down to Bonaire and back.
We’re in our late seventies now, and the horizon is finally pulling us toward stillness. But it was Angelsea’s smallness — her honest, manageable, perfectly-made smallness — that let us keep sailing this far into our lives. Not many boats give you that. Not many boats ever could.
Our final push to keep sailing included the installation of an electric windlass and roller furling staysail. We strived to have all the best nav gear as I Worked as a professional sea captain for 15 years. Please note that sextant and paper charts are excluded from the sale, as are the Chelsea clock and barometer. Plus books and some other personal items.
Because someday the sea will ask you a hard question, and you want to already know the answer.
I’ve had mine seventeen days hard on the wind across the Thorny Path — twenty-five to forty knots, day after punishing day, beating into seas with the whole Atlantic behind them. When she launched off the back of a fifteen-foot wall of water and landed with a crash that rattled every bone in my body, I felt no fear. Only awe. This is what she was built for. That’s the feeling you’re buying. Not speed. Not square footage. Confidence, at three in the morning, in bad water.
Look at what else is out there and you’ll understand what makes her rare. The imports gleam with teak furniture and hide crude work behind it. The production boats drop in a molded liner that seals away every wire and hose you’ll ever need to reach, then hand you a cockpit big enough for a cocktail party and deep enough to drown a stern in a following sea. Built light, built to a price, and needing a second boat’s worth of modification before you’d dare take one offshore. Aboard a Lyle Hess cutter, everything is thought through and then done properly — bolts seated in recessed brass sockets, every fitting bedded, braced, and fastened as though the man who did it expected to sail her himself. Long keel. Outboard rudder. Bulwarks that are pure luxury and that nobody else bothers to build.
Her sisters have written the testimony. One rode out the storm that tore up the fleet at Cabo San Lucas — hove to under reefed staysail in sixty-five knots and thirty-foot seas — and lost nothing but a dodger and some weather cloths. Another ran six knots under bare poles with the windvane steering herself from Providencia to Roatán. One logged 187 miles in a day on the run down to New Zealand. In a full gale these boats will sail hard to weather under staysail and double-reefed main while bigger yachts are running off or lying to. They’ll point forty-five degrees off the wind and still make good — which means you get to visit the places other cruisers write off as too much trouble.
And then there’s the smallness, which is the part nobody tells you is a virtue. Sails and ground tackle a couple can handle without a winch grinder’s shoulders. Maintenance you can do yourself, without a yard bill that quietly ends the dream. Room enough to live aboard for years — real room, with a pilot berth safe enough to tuck a child into when both of you are needed on deck. My wife and I have sailed the eastern Caribbean from Puerto Rico to Trinidad, and we’re in our late seventies. It’s her honest, manageable, perfectly-made smallness that let us stay out here this long. Not many boats give you that. Not many boats ever could.
She isn’t for everyone. She’s slow to the anchorage and there’s no vast saloon to show off. But if what you want is a vessel you can point at any ocean, in any weather, with absolute confidence — there is nothing else built like her. Few were ever made, and every one is a masterpiece. Decades from now they’ll still be sailing, still turning heads in every creek and cove and marina in the world.
God bless Lyle Hess, Sam Morse, and everyone who still believes in integrity, tradition, strength, and curvaceous beauty.
Disclaimer
The company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change or withdrawal without notice.


