The design had a family lineage. S&S had already produced a 25-foot fiberglass auxiliary for Ray Greene called the New Horizons; the Tartan 27 answered demand for greater range and interior volume. Construction was handled by Douglass & McLeod Plastics Corporation in Grand River, Ohio until a factory fire in 1971 forced a year's interruption and prompted reorganization into Tartan Marine, though the hull and build philosophy continued unbroken.
Design Decisions and Construction
The core tension S&S resolved here was between shoal-water access and offshore windward ability. Their answer: an encapsulated steel-plate centerboard paired with a modified long keel with cutaway forefoot. When retracted, the board opens shallow anchorages; when fully deployed, it restores the lateral plane needed to hold ground upwind in a seaway.
The hull was built to survive neglect. The solid hand-laid laminate alternates fiberglass mat with heavy woven roving, scaling from 5/16-inch at the topsides to 3/4-inch at the keel floor, with encapsulated stringers and structurally tabbed bulkheads. The deck is balsa-cored for stiffness and weight, with solid plywood substituted under hardware mounting points. The hull-to-deck joint uses an outward-turning flange, mechanically fastened and capped with a wood or vinyl rubrail; that outward flange deflects spray and keeps the deck noticeably drier than inward-turning joints, though it is exposed to dock impacts if the rubrail is inadequate.
After hull 650 in 1977, the sheerline was raised by four inches, eliminating the stepped doghouse coachroof and creating a single-level cabin trunk with more forward headroom. Tartan designated this variant the T27-2, fitting it with a molded fiberglass interior furniture pan trimmed in solid teak rather than the earlier wood furniture construction.
The Yawl Configuration
Fewer than roughly 50 hulls were delivered as yawls out of 712 total, yet the configuration generates more sustained enthusiasm than any sloop variant. The mizzen is stepped deep in the lazarette and is small by any measure. Its original purpose was partly CCA rating exploitation, but the real argument for the rig lives in how it handles bad weather.
The "jib and jigger" configuration — mainsail down, headsail and mizzen sheeted to balance each other — produces a manageable two-sail vessel with a low center of effort and minimal weather helm. For a 27-footer sailing shorthanded, this is not a party trick but a genuine passage-making tool. Under ordinary conditions, the mizzen functions as a trim tab: sheeted slightly flat, it neutralizes weather helm on a reach without touching the mainsheet.
The ballast arrangement evolved mid-run. Early hulls carried an external lead keel. From 1966 onward, ballast was increased by 350 pounds and fully encapsulated inside the fiberglass keel layup, eliminating the keel-bolt leakage issues that plagued many CCA-era boats as they aged.
Handling Under Sail and Power
The Tartan 27 heels readily to about 20 degrees — narrow beam and slack bilges — but once the shoulder engages, the boat stiffens sharply and resists further knockdown in a way that feels designed rather than accidental. The short overhangs reduce pitching moment, producing an easy motion through chop. The boat tracks well enough to sail hands-off in moderate conditions, a quality offshore sailors prize over any speed number.
Under power, the picture is less flattering. The long keel and narrow propeller aperture produce severe, unpredictable prop walk when backing into a slip — a characteristic that experienced Tartan 27 sailors manage with docklines and patience rather than throttle.
The 1967 Great Loop cruise by Robert Manry aboard his yawl Curlew remains the most prominent demonstration of what the design can accomplish in capable hands.
Known Issues and Triage
Mast step compression is the most common structural problem. Many boats were built with wood blocks supporting the keel-stepped mast; water migrates down the spar or through the deck partner, rots the wood, and the step collapses under rig tension. The repair — pull the mast, excavate the rot, pour a replacement block in G10, solid fiberglass, or dense epoxy — is straightforward in principle but requires dropping the rig. Any boat without documented mast step inspection or replacement should be sounded carefully.
Deck core delamination follows a predictable pathway: inadequately bedded chainplates, stanchion bases, or cabin handrails admit water into the balsa core, producing spongy decks. Caught early, the repair is a weekend project — drill out affected sections, evacuate the saturated balsa, substitute high-density foam or marine plywood, rebed all hardware with butyl tape. Ignored, it becomes structural.
Centerboard pivot wear is the issue most specific to this design. The steel plate inside the encapsulated centerboard can rust and expand, splitting the fiberglass and jamming the board. Separately, the pivot hole in the trunk wears oval, causing the board to hang out of alignment. Repair requires hauling, dropping the board, rebuilding the pivot with epoxy and fiberglass sleeves, and replacing the wire-rope pennant.
Rudder post wear is quieter. The rudder post runs through a fiberglass tube without intermediate bearings, and decades of use produce fiberglass-to-metal wear at the contact points — showing up as increasing helm slop rather than sudden failure.
Bilge and scupper plumbing deserves immediate attention on any boat with original systems intact. On certain production runs, the bilge pump exhaust and cockpit scuppers were plumbed into a shared manifold near or below the waterline — a backflooding hazard under certain sea conditions. The fix is to isolate them into independent through-hulls terminating well above the static waterline.
Refits and Popular Modifications
The most practically useful modification runs halyards and reefing lines aft to the cockpit via a turning plate and clutch bank on the cabintop. The original layout requires crew movement forward to manage sail changes — workable in calm air, problematic offshore. Bringing the lines aft eliminates most reasons to leave the cockpit while tacking or reefing.
The Atomic 4 gasoline engines and Farymann diesels fitted across the production run are aging well past their expected service lives on most surviving hulls. Several owners have repowered with 48-volt electric drive systems, citing the tight engine compartment geometry as a point in electric's favor: the compact motor footprint recovers storage space the legacy powerplant consumed, and eliminating fuel, filters, and raw-water cooling simplifies the maintenance picture considerably.
Market Position
The Tartan 27 occupies a specific and not easily replicated position in the used-boat market: a CCA-era pocket cruiser with an active owners' association, a well-documented failure-mode history, and a hull that rewards competent maintenance with genuine longevity. Its natural comparisons are the Alberg 30, the Cape Dory 27, the Pearson Triton 28, and the Sea Sprite 23 — all boats for buyers who prioritize offshore capability and build integrity over interior volume and beam. Among that cohort, the Tartan 27 tends to hold its condition best relative to price, partly because owners hold onto them long enough that boats entering brokerage have often been well maintained by people who knew the design thoroughly.
The yawl rig commands a modest premium over equivalent sloops, reflecting genuine capability rather than collector sentiment. Buyers who understand the jib-and-jigger configuration tend to regard that difference as the boat's defining asset.
It is also worth noting that the Tartan 27 is generally credited with successfully launching Sparkman & Stephens into the production fiberglass auxiliary market — demonstrating that a mass-produced hull could retain traditional yacht aesthetics and the sea-going behavior cruising sailors expected from custom wooden predecessors.
The Verdict
The Tartan 27 Yawl is not a boat that flatters its owner with speed or impresses at the dock with interior volume. What it offers is a coherent design argument that has held up across six decades: a hull that tracks honestly, a rig with genuine heavy-weather options, and a construction standard that responds proportionally to the maintenance invested. The failure modes are real, well-understood, concentrated in the centerboard system and deck core, and resolvable without specialized skills or unusual materials. Sound examples are genuinely capable offshore passage-makers at a price point that remains accessible relative to comparable CCA-era designs. The yawl rig in particular rewards sailors who have moved past the notion that more sail area equals more boat.
Pros
- Exceptional tracking and helm balance; capable of sailing unattended in moderate conditions
- Low-aspect yawl rig enables jib-and-jigger heavy-weather configuration unavailable to sloops
- Heavily built solid-fiberglass hull laminate with no structural flexing issues in sound examples
- Outward hull-to-deck joint produces a notably drier deck than inward-turning alternatives
- Well-documented failure modes concentrated in predictable, repairable systems
- Active owners' association with decades of accumulated institutional knowledge
Cons
- Slack bilges produce early initial heel; consistent reefing discipline required to sail efficiently
- Centerboard system demands vigilance: steel-plate rust, pivot wear, and pennant replacement are ongoing maintenance obligations
- Severe prop walk under power makes tight-slip maneuvering genuinely difficult
- Limited headroom by modern standards, particularly in pre-1977 hulls without the raised sheerline
- Outward hull-to-deck flange is structurally exposed to dock and piling impacts
- Bilge and scupper plumbing on surviving original installations may present backflooding risk and should be reconfigured before offshore use
