Design and Lineage
The original Arnold boat was no beauty — flat sheer, tumblehome ram bow, square house, marconi rig — and Marshall set out to fix those deficiencies by eye, spending about three weeks modeling the plug before building it anchor. What emerged was a significantly different hull with a swept sheer, crowned cabin, tapered house, and slightly angled stem, plus an underbody more modern than most traditional catboats anchor. At 18 feet 2 inches overall with an 8 foot 6 inch beam and a waterline beam under 8 feet, the Sanderling carries moderate deadrise and a tapered shape aft rather than the near-flat bottom of many cats, giving her a relatively slippery shape that feels more modern than her type suggests anchor.
Construction
Marshall Marine lays the hull in polyester resin with alternating plies of mat and woven roving for seven layers, then adds four more along the centerline and around the centerboard trunk for eleven total, with the mast step and trunk molded separately and taped in anchor. The hull-to-deck joint is an overlapping flange sealed with compound and through-bolted on 12-inch centers with 3/8-inch stainless steel bolts through a mahogany rubrail, a detail Garfield credits with keeping deck leaks to an absolute minimum anchor. The heavily-glassed hull and deck are glued and bolted the same way, and the cockpit is self-bailing. Boats without the optional inboard carry positive foam flotation.
Rig and Handling
The Sanderling is a gaff-headed cat with a single 253-square-foot Dacron sail above 2,200 pounds of displacement, and the gaff itself is less bulky than a modern full-length spar anchor. It bends to leeward and loosens the leech in puffs, while the upper mainsail gets cleaner airflow upwind; draft is controlled precisely through the peak halyard, though there is no boom vang and the traveler is not adjustable, with the standard mainsheet trimming from the end of the boom to a four-hole cleat aft anchor. Owners report the gaff rig performs nearly as well as an average marconi, particularly in lighter air, and the big sail is good for ghosting, with the ability to shed wetted surface by heeling a little; when the breeze builds she must be reefed and performance fades perceptibly anchor. A hinged painted aluminum mast under 70 pounds lets one man drop it to a cockpit crutch, and the fine entry that the light mast allowed helps the handling anchor.
Accommodations
Below, louvered teak doors open to two comfortable berths with minimal sitting headroom, a designated spot for the head, fold-up cabin tables, and shelves above the berths anchor. An opening front porthole gives ventilation, a nice touch on a boat the builders themselves say was designed more for daysailing than cruising anchor. The 17-inch board-up draft makes her at home in thin water, and the optional Yanmar diesel is the costliest add-on but forces a large box into the center of the cockpit well anchor.
Known Issues and Ownership Notes
The owner of hull #66, built in 1964, confirmed deck leaks were never a problem, but did re-bed weeping ports and found rot in the aft house bulkhead from water through cracked fiberglass tape, plus a centerboard leak where the pivot-bolt glass cracked anchor. That same plywood cockpit floor needed reglassing where the original sheathing wore through. More than 200 Sanderlings race in one-design fleets, so class support exists even if the boat was conceived as a daysailer anchor.
The Verdict
The Sanderling is a genuinely modern interpretation of the catboat, quick to rig, easy to trail, and forgiving in light air, with a construction record that has kept water out of the cabin for decades. She is not a cruiser, and her single-sail rig gives up adjustability that a marconi sailor might expect, but for the intended daysail she remains a benchmark.
Pros
- Continuous production with unchanged hull laminate and strong through-bolted joint
- Gaff cat rig handles light air well and drops by one person
- Shallow 17-inch draft with board up; positive flotation without inboard
Cons
- Needs reefing and loses performance as wind rises
- No boom vang or adjustable traveler; limited sail control
- Inboard option intrudes a large box into the cockpit
