Shannon Yachts for Sale

Walter Schulz arrived in Bristol, Rhode Island from Connecticut in 1975 intending to build semi custom offshore yachts, took space in the old Herreshoff yards, and launched the first Shannon 38 that year. It was a full keel, heavy displacement ketch that looked backward and was detailed forward: bronze through hulls, tinned marine wiring, a headliner that comes out without being destroyed, and everything a shorthanded crew needs to reach at sea. Ninety nine of them were built to 1984, the Shannon 37 followed with nineteen more between 1985 and 1993, and the range later widened to the shoal draft Shoalsailer and to power boats built on Schulz's patented reverse deadrise hull. The name comes from the Irish river his grandmothers were born near.

Shannon has since moved out of boatbuilding. The company still trades from Bristol but works on marine technology, hydrofoils and diesel emissions systems, and runs a brokerage, so every Shannon is a used boat and there is no production line behind it. With only a few hundred boats ever built you wait for the right one rather than choosing between six, and comparables are thin enough that condition and inventory set the price more than the model year does. Practical Sailor put an early 1980s Shannon 38 at roughly $100,000 to $120,000. They suit a traditionalist who wants a strong, seakindly, shorthanded passagemaker and accepts what that means on a forty year old boat: no space for a generator or air conditioning, and a refit coming. The consolation is that the original build quality tends to make that refit cheaper than it would be on a lesser boat.