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Sabre 452

Other JTYD/Sabre designs: Overview | 362 | 402 | 452 | 426 | 386 | Spirit

The first sketches for the Sabre 452 were drawn while stopped in traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, en route to the Annapolis Boat show. The new boat was targeted as a natural progression up the size range from the Sabre 402, and our approach to the hull, rig, and appendages of the new boat was similar to that taken in the S-362 and S-402. As with the S-402, nearly all the detailing of the S-452 deck was done in Marblehead, but Sabre had done some restaffing of their engineering personnel and they took over more of the interior detailing than they had done on the S-402. Ken’s more stolidly orthogonal layout may have taken some of the ‘buzz’ out of our original interior design, but it likely did make the boat more economical to build. This was an example of the inevitable, but usually positive, tension built into this sort of collaborative design process. The S-452 was marketed as a ‘blue water’ cruiser, and ample storage capacity and cruising amenities were a high priority. The performance of the S-452 has been demonstrated more often on cruising point-to-points than on the race course, but her potential is on a par with that of the S-362 and S-402, as evidenced by Cary Thomson’s S-452 Freedom, which finished an impressive 2nd in class (and 7th in Division) in the 2008 Bermuda Race. The S-452 earned yet another Cruising World Boat of the Year award, this time as the Best Full Size Cruiser of 1999.

More information:

• Sabre 452: Like a Mercedes on water [Sailing World]
• Sabre 452 Brochure
• Bob Perry Review
• Sabre Vision
• Sailingonline: Boat Test

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