Overview
The Southern Cross 28 is a Thomas Gillmer design built as a scaled-down sibling to the better-known Southern Cross 31, a double-ended cutter meant for serious offshore work in a smaller, more affordable package. James Baldwin’s notes describe Airex-cored hulls and a shortened keel compared to its bigger sister, a boat built to the same philosophy at a more modest size and price.
History
C. E. Ryder of Bristol, Rhode Island built the Southern Cross 28 starting in 1978, with production running primarily through the early 1980s. Good Old Boat’s builder history counts roughly 66 factory-finished Southern Cross 28s plus about 6 kit-built hulls sold under the name Gillmer 28 to distinguish them from the completed boats, a total of 70 to 72 hulls, many of them sold bare or as partial kits for owner completion. That kit option is central to Baldwin’s own warning about the boat: some were owner-completed to widely varying standards. C. E. Ryder closed in 1990, and no last-built year specific to this model has turned up, so the 1982 figure used here is a representative point within Good Old Boat’s stated production window rather than a documented final-hull date.
Construction
The hull is heavy fiberglass with a foam core, balsa-cored decks, and encapsulated lead ballast, 3,400 lb on an 8,500 lb displacement, a 40 percent ballast ratio matching both sailboatdata.com and Baldwin’s own figures exactly. The keel is where this design departs most clearly from its family: sailboatdata.com classifies it as a fin keel with the rudder mounted on a skeg, and Baldwin’s own note that it carries “a shortened keel compared to the Southern Cross 31” corroborates a genuinely reduced underbody shape, even though this puts the boat at odds with the full-or-modified-full-keel criteria stated for every boat on Baldwin’s list. Readers should take the keel classification here as a real, sourced departure from the list’s general rule rather than an error. The long bowsprit, pronounced sheer, and canoe-like double-ended stern give the boat its traditional, salty look regardless of what is happening underwater.
Under Sail
With 415 sq ft of sail reported on a 20.17 ft waterline, carried on a masthead cutter rig with twin forestays and, on some boats, a self-tending staysail, the Southern Cross 28 is built for shorthanded offshore sailing rather than speed. Good Old Boat’s description calls it “rugged” and “seaworthy” while conceding “modest speed,” a fair trade for a boat whose reputation rests on at least one documented circumvavigation rather than club racing results.
Buyers Notes
Baldwin’s list gives no recorded pluses of his own for this boat, but his one minus is specific and worth taking seriously: “some were owner completed kit boats of varying quality.” Because a meaningful fraction of the fleet started life as bare hulls finished by their original owners, a survey should pay particular attention to below-decks construction quality, tankage, wiring, and the skeg-hung rudder installation, none of which can be assumed consistent from one hull to the next the way they might on a boat built entirely at the factory. Confirming whether a specific boat was factory-finished or a Gillmer 28 kit completion is worth doing before assuming anything about its build quality from the Southern Cross name alone.
