| Catboat Rendezvous, page 4 |
SANDERLING
Breck Marshall, founder and former owner of Marshall Marine, helped start a resurgence in catboat interest by designing and building the first production fiberglass catboat — the Sanderling — in 1962. After a slow start, business began to boom and has been booming ever since. There are now 655 Sanderlings sailing (more than any other single catboat design by far), and the Marshall Marine order books are backlogged for months.
Of the three boats we tested, the performance ratios indicated that the Sanderling should come out ahead on speed, since she had the lowest displacement/length ratio and a significantly longer waterline. And she did. When we sailed the three boats side by side, the Sanderling consistently crept ahead of the other two. Furthermore, even though her ballast/displacement ratio is equal to the Menger and lower than the Molly, the Sanderling’s beamy hull sections amidships and aft make her stiffer.
The painted wooden cockpit seats are open underneath, providing easy access to under-seat stowage, but stored gear is left more or less open to the weather. Asked whether he had thought about changing to a fiberglass cockpit with enclosed seats, Garfield said, “One consideration is that down in New Jersey, these boats are seriously raced as a one-design class. If I were to make a change like that, it could affect the activities down there. For another thing, to my mind the boat is still a daysailer, not a cruising boat. And the bench seats do afford the gear just being out of the way and easily available. If the gear gets wet, it will dry out soon. Dock lines and other wet gear in enclosed lockers do not necessarily get dry quickly.”
The arrangement of the cabin emphasizes the Sanderling’s daysailing nature. The berths are a very adequate 27 inches wide, but shelves along the hull sides had a tendency to catch my shoulders when I lay down and tried to turn over. There’s no good place to put a big ice chest for cruising, and the exposed chemical toilet would look better with a cover. Sitting headroom (28 to 30 inches off the cushion) is barely adequate due to the low cabin top, and the berths can’t be lowered without sacrificing the minuscule 6 inches of storage depth.
For daysailing, none of these failings matter. But if I wanted to cruise in a Sanderling, I’d think seriously about buying a bare hull and customizing the interior to get exactly what I want.
One thing I would be sure to include is a forward hatch. With just a single 4-inch opening port forward, the cabin could get very stuffy on a windless summer night. ‘Ventilation probably isn’t the best” Garfield agrees. “But we thought putting in a hatch would be just another place for leaking.”
The Sanderling’s base price with sail is $15760, but seldom do boats get sold at base, says Garfield. “The boat is going to leave the shop with handrails, head, sail cover, opening porthole or solar vent, or teak eyebrow trim around the cabin, or an antenna in the mast for a VHF, or maybe shelves down below. So without an outboard or trailer, the boat typically goes for about $17,500 to $18,000.”
Observes Garfield, “For a little boat, people are paying pretty close to top dollar. They should get as good a boat as there is out there.” To be sure, on a price-per-pound basis, the Sanderling is at the top among this grouping of catboats. But the Sanderling owner gets a solid, good looking, proven-performance boat for his money, as well as plenty of opportunities to go out cruising and racing with sister ships.
