Hughes - Columbia 38

Description

The Columbia 38 and Hughes 38 are essentially the same boat, with the Hughes 38 being the later Canadian-built and slightly updated version. The original Columbia 38 was designed by William Tripp Jr. and introduced in 1965 by Columbia Yachts in California. It was a moderately successful racer-cruiser (fin keel/spade rudder, masthead sloop) with about 200 hulls built before Columbia went bankrupt in 1978. When Hughes Boat Works in Ontario acquired the molds in the late 1970s, they made a few small but noticeable changes and relaunched the boat as the Hughes 38: Slightly raised coachroof for more interior headroom Revised interior layout (larger galley, better head compartment, more teak) Optional shoal-draft keel (4 ft 6 in vs. the original 5 ft 4 in or deep 6 ft 10 in) Some deck and rigging detail updates Hughes built the “new” Hughes 38 from 1978 until the company closed in 1984 (some sources say as many as 100+ additional hulls). After Hughes folded, the molds passed briefly to North Star Yachts, who produced a final handful as the Hughes-North Star 38 (sometimes called the North Star 38) until about 1987. In practice, sailors usually refer to any post-1978 boat from these molds as a Hughes 38, while pre-1978 boats are called Columbia 38s, even though the hull shape is virtually identical. The Hughes versions are generally considered the more refined and better finished of the two.