Super Shallow Draft Sailboat: The Leeboard Sharpie 

One great thing about our sharpie was that boats would come to anchor next to you but they would run aground. Ah... solitude

Sharpies can be great boats. I own a 38 foot, 16 ton sharpie that has crossed the Atlantic and Pacific twice each, been through multiple hurricanes and can be beached. Personally I’d not own a “normal” monohull. The advantages a large sharpie has over a standard cruising boat huge. What the industry is still stuck in the past I don’t know!

I can add my anecdote about sharpies' go-anywhere abilities. When I was in Green Turtle Cay, Bahamas there was a 30'+ Sharpie happily anchored out in an adjacent sound. We tried to take the dinghy over to her, but nearly ran the outboard aground multiple times before we could get anywhere near her. A shallow draft indeed!

I exclusively sail this type of boat in the shallow bays and ICW on the Texas coast. This really opens up where you can sail. Offers the ability for more exploration at a low cost and the knowledge of knowing that if you run aground simply get out and walk he boat to deeper water. Plus the ability to beach your boat. It’s really nice. Great video I thoroughly enjoy your content.

Sharpies are awesome. I built one and still have it. It doesn’t take many tools to build one, and when you are done, you have a great sailboat that you can take pride in.

Sea Pearl 21 owner here. Love my leeboard boat!

Our family’s first sailboat was a sabot with a leeboard, one side only. (Circa 1967). It became our tender (for decades) to our Coronado 34.

Great video! Years ago I built a model of a "Flattie" which is similar concept; hard-chine, flat bottom, but with a swinging centerboard instead of leeboards. It's a great looking boat design and I'd love a full-size version. Sailing the backwaters and shallows in the right boat is a lot of fun.

I did this for my kayak, first I tried one on each side, then just made a little longer one on the port side. I have a little lug sail made from a tarp, and man I can go everywhere!

I had a 29’ wood-epoxy composite Bolger Leeboard sharpie for 14 years. I still consider it the best boat I ever owned, and I owned among others a Pacific Seacraft Flicka and currently own a Lyle Hess designed Falmouth Cutter.

My grandfather always had naval architecture plans for me to look at whenever I visited him. In Australia, Hartley was the best known provider of wooden boat plans, but there were others. Interesting boats Tim. ⚓

Might need to build one of these. Great video!

I own Tomboy, a Bolger Jesse Cooper design. A fantastic boat, at 24 foot I think she could cross the Atlantic.

Wow1 WTG. A boat load of info in one blog. You prepped that well.

Great introduction to the sharpie design!.Thanks !

I own the original Jewelbox by Jim Michalak. It is a leeboard sailboat. I’ve not sailed it yet, but excited to give it a try.

Gosh darn it, we just bought a new to us boat and now I want one of these.

Interesting and fun video. Some confusion about boards (center~, dagger~, lee~) vs keels. On traditionally built boats the keel is a structural member running stem to stern. On modern 'keelboats' this term has come to include the ballasted hydrofoil underwater, e.g. J/40. No movable hydrofoil is a 'keel'. There are ballasted centerboards, but they are still centerboards. Many boats have ballast keels and centerboards, e.g. Ted Hood's Robin derivatives like the Bristol 38.8. All keels are fixed.

The Dutch invented this kind of type. The Platbodem Schepen. You guys simply made a variation of this type.

Phil Bolger is smiling from the great beyond :-)

My father bought a Chesapeake LOG Canoe from MD's Eastern Shore in 1947. He got so.e publicly by mary's the Sun Newspapers! Certainly similar to Sharpe!

Nice to see a more interesting boat covered in your series. A similar Ted Brewer designed nimble Arctic 26 could be added to this list. Not so great for great lakes steep short chop weather but fantastic for canals intercoastal Florida and islands and shallows gunkholing. (I have one)

"KRAKEN", our first sailboat, was a 22' cat ketch sharpie designed by Tom Colvin and built in Port Aransas. We purchased her from the original owner/builder who lived on the South Shore of Long Island. We used" KRAKEN" it to gunkhole Great South Bay and even sailed her to Block Island once. She was the perfect bay boat; fast, shoal draft and reasonably comfortable during summer cruises. We resisted the urge to name her "CATCH 22".

I just bought plans for Matt Layden's "Paradox," an innovative small cruising sharpie that uses "chine runners" instead of centerboard or lee boards. But I wonder if equipping a Paradox with lee boards might improve windward performance.

These boats will be seen a lot here in Texas during the Texas 200 sailing challenge .. Come down and check it out

When are we getting a Wharram review?

Gartside published a lee board 25footer.... that thing looks sick.... 25ft Sailing Scow Design #269

Your Lee Boards were invented by the Egyptians, who lashed and manipulated oversized oars to their river boats. The real reason for a deep keel is to weight the bottom. Casting the whole keel in iron or lead is heavy and gross. An excellent keel material is recycled soda bottle aluminum, and casting a zinc bottom to it. British boats often have two keels for when the tide leaves you stranded, but it also makes ground handling a snap.

I sail a 21' sea pearl from marine concepts with lee boards. the cat ketch rig is a dream to tack and gybes are gentle. Extremely good design. i can sail into knee deep water and ride right over most sandbars without a worry. the lee boards swing up if you ever do cut it too close. curious why we don't see more ketches on the water?

There's been some argument over whether L. Francis Herreshoff's Meadow Larks are or are not a Sharpie. AIUI Munroe's Egret had a truly flat bottom and no keel. Meadow Larks have an arched bottom and have a significant keel. You can see it in some of the pictures. It's shallow, but broad enough to sit on and runs the full length of the boat.

Thanks for making this video. Unfortunately, there's some misinformation here. Leeboards are not actually that common on sharpies. If you look at the New Haven sharpies, Chapelle sharpies, and even more modern Reuel Parker sharpies (a crime not to mention him here), you'll see they usually carry centerboards. You show photo after photo of sharpies with centerboards. I'm guessing you noticed that while editing. While leeboards are very cool and do a great job of keeping the boat open inside, it's much more typical of even the old oyster sharpies to have a centerboard. I have two Jim Michalak leeboard boats (neither are sharpies) -- also a crime not to mention him in your discussion of leeboards -- he modernized the form with a leeboard that does more than claim to set on one side of the boat for both tacks. You can see my brother and I sailing our leeboard Piccup Prams here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yj0PSeFDciA.html The Michalak style leeboard is braced from both sides, the hull on one side and timber/through bolts on the other so the board has support on either tack. Finally, I want to bring up Phil Bolger's slab sharpies from his "Micro" to the "Advanced Sharpie" series. These are seaworthy, oceangoing sharpies that are high sided and ballasted with heaps of room inside. I think of these boats the same way I think of modern architecture. Form follows function. Your typical yachty will scoff and turn their nose at these boats b/c they aren't "beautiful". But the owner won't care as they sail along in comfort in their homebuilt boat across the sea. Check out Reuel Parker's book The Sharpie Book for a thorough discussion of sharpies. And his website to peruse some really cool designs. Again, thanks for making this video. I know it's not easy to write a perfect script. These are great boats worthy of attention. And you're right, they can be FAST. Nothing quite like sailing up on a plane at 10 kts flying a traditional sailing rig watching a big modern yacht disappear in your wake! :)

I have a 54 foot fiberglass sharpie for sale that was designed by Clark Mills patterned after Commodore Munroes designs if anyone is interested.

No mention of Reuel Parker, author of THE SHARPIE BOOK and builder and sailor of numerous versions? And what about Bruce Kirby, the designer of the Laser and the Norwalk Islands Sharpies that are quite popular “down under?” Once again, you seem to have fallen into your “size matters” mentality and good boat design is sidelined for your perceived seaworthiness calculation. You haven’t finished your homework.

How do these compare to a catboat, say the Marshall Sanderling? Not really sure if a Sharpie would make a decent live-aboard, but I would like to research these boats some more. Thanks for the video!

Have you seen the 65 foot Farr Sharpie?

No way I going to board that vessel with that color scheme, ....haha

Great video , for anyone thinking of building one do your homework . even a simple design probably has sentence's in the plans that are 6 months long .

This boat is local and been on the market for years fyi. Would be tough to resell.

Similar to Scows built in Midwest more recently

If you want a quick project that that makes the most of the sharpie design take a look at the Duck Punt, canoe sized, floats on a puddle, can be made very quickly, uses an easy to scrounge Opti rig and even dispenses with the leeboard, using the chines and a paddle to make progress up wind. Best part is that you sail it lying down 😉

Can you talk about the "proa" next time?

00:49 Leeboards were actually known to be in use in China in the 8th century, and the Netherlands in the 16th century, long before your 18th century claim for New Haven in Connteicut. Perhaps a unique type of leeboad sailing boat was developed in Conneticut, but it did not invent the leeboard itself.

Did you ever try to capsize one of such boats???😮

I've never heard of anything like this. Making me rethink the whole thing. Hmmm.

More boat for $ invested. Ruel Parker was the most recent proponent of the sharpie. For those who have no interest in crossing oceans, a sharpie can do pretty much everything else.

Anybody on here from around point Judith? I have an old sharpie ketch called Jenny Diver and am looking for her history.

I think modern sailboats evolved from sharpies. The first step was to make them wider. But this wouldn't work with a flat bottom. So, what they did was put a slight "V" section in the bottom. This was originally in the stern bottom only. Later, it was included in the entire length of the bottom. Then, it was increased in depth, so it could carry sufficient ballast for self-righting. Later, still, a fin keel was added. This was originally a long, shallow one, with an attached rudder. Look at the original SEA BIRD 26 ft design of the early 20th century. The final step was to make the fin-keel shorter and deeper and put the rudder separate and far behind that. Just round off the corners of the bottom section, and you have a modern keel-boat.

that design comes from Europe, just as most "Americans" of the day

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Hear me out: Leeboard catamaran. Now it is self-righting.