Pete’s Cutlass 27 ‘Windchat’ during the 2016 Round the Island Race just off Hurst Castle

The Cutlass 27 was designed by Eric White of Marine Construction ‘Marcon’ and Alan Hill, one of the pioneers of GRP yacht design, who was responsible for a wide range of successful designs including the Trident 24, Sabre 27 and Moody Halberdier. The first boats, originally called just the ‘Cutlass’, were built in 1967/8, and within two years over 100 had been sold. As was common with boat builders in the 1960s/70s Marcon always offered the boats either as completed boats or as kits for home completion.

In 1974 the design was altered to increase headroom, with a slight increase in ballast and displacement, plus other minor alterations, and renamed the ‘Cutlass 27’, these boats remaining in production until around the mid-1980s, though the last of these boats were sold only as bare hulls or kits, as Marcon were concentrating on producing bigger boats. About 200 of these boats in total are believed to have been built.

The Cutlass hull design is clearly a folk boat development, with a short counter stern added, and shares the speed and sea keeping abilities of the breed. She has a ballast ratio of over 50%, and by modern expectations quite narrow beam.