Design and Construction
The Cal 28 is a 28-foot monohull of solid fiberglass construction, with a fixed fin keel and an internally mounted spade-type rudder. Lapworth gave her a length overall of 28.00 feet, a waterline of 22.50 feet, and a beam of 9.00 feet, proportions that place her firmly in the small recreational keelboat class without stretching the definition. She displaces 6,000 pounds and carries 2,200 pounds of lead ballast, a figure that supports a ballast-to-displacement character suited to settled coastal sailing rather than offshore expedition work. Cal Yachts, then building under the Jensen Marine lineage that Bill Lapworth had partnered with since the late 1950s, produced the 28 as a contemporary of the marque's other early fiberglass racer-cruisers.
Rig and Sail Plan
The Cal 28 carries a masthead sloop rig with a foretriangle of 33.00 feet height on an 11.40-foot base, paired with a mainsail whose luff runs 28.00 feet and foot 11.70 feet. The resulting sail plan totals 351.90 square feet, split between a 163.80-square-foot main and a 188.10-square-foot jib or genoa. That area, on a 6,000-pound hull, yields a sail-area-to-displacement character that reads as lively for a boat of her size. Her PHRF racing average handicap of 183, with a recorded high of 186 and low of 180, places her among the moderate performers of her length in club racing contexts, and her theoretical hull speed of 6.36 knots marks the upper bound of her displacement-driven pace.
Accommodations and Tankage
Factory planning gave the Cal 28 a fresh water capacity of 28 U.S. gallons and a fuel capacity of 18 U.S. gallons, supporting short coastal cruises without frequent reprovisioning. A Universal Atomic 4 gasoline engine with a "V" drive was offered as a factory option, reflecting the period norm of gasoline auxiliary power in boats of this size and providing the propulsion choice for owners who speced the boat beyond sail alone. The 4.50-foot draft with the standard keel keeps her accessible to shallow harbor approaches while preserving the lateral grip of a fin-keel profile.
The Verdict
The Cal 28 stands as a clean example of Lapworth's early-1960s fiberglass design language: a modest-production, lead-ballasted fin-keel sloop of 347 units that balanced club-racing handicap relevance with practical coastal cruising tankage. Her Canadian licence-built run broadens the used fleet slightly, and her documented dimensions and rig make her an intelligible entry point for a sailor wanting a small, established monohull without the ambiguity of a long production span.
Pros
- Designed by C. William Lapworth and built by Cal Yachts in a defined 1963–1969 run of 347 hulls
- Solid fiberglass hull with lead ballast and a fixed fin keel
- Masthead sloop rig with nearly 352 square feet of sail on a 6,000-pound hull
- 28-gallon water and 18-gallon fuel capacity for coastal cruising
Cons
- Gasoline auxiliary only as a factory option, not standard
- Modest 4.50-foot draft limits offshore versatility
- PHRF average of 183 places her mid-pack among similar-length racers
