Skipper 17 Sailboat Review, Specs, and Listings

Design and Construction

The Skipper 17 began life as a 17-foot dayboat and was built through several distinct generations. Early boats carried a single 3/4-inch retractable steel centreplate, while from the late 1970s onward every example left the mould with twin 3/8-inch retractable steel bilge plates that weigh only 75 pounds each and can be raised or lowered from the cockpit. All versions share fully retractable steel keel plates, and the hull form itself supplies much of the stiffness because the ballast ratio is modest. Sources differ on the exact figure, but the boat's stability comes largely from shape rather than lead. The 1972 cabin version kept the single centreplate, which consumed cabin space until the twin-plate layout removed the case entirely and opened the interior.

Rig and Handling

This is not a racing dinghy — short, beamy, and too heavy to plane easily — yet she will beat most mini-cruisers up to 17 feet and remains directionally stable while always tacking readily. She sails well to windward, shows little broaching tendency downwind, and handles heavy weather competently, bouncing back upright virtually dry even when laid on her beam-ends. Most boats carry jib roller reefing and main slab reefing, and because she sails quite well on the main alone, a crew can completely furl the jib if the wind rises unexpectedly and tame her right down. In gusty conditions she grows too lively unless sail area is shortened. The Mk II refinement brought spreaders on the cap shrouds, plating to the toe rail, jib sheeted inside the shrouds, and a black anodised mast and boom.

Accommodations

Early production examples were open day boats with a forward storage cuddy, while later boats gained a proper cabin; a 1972 redesign offered overnight space for two adults and perhaps two small children, and the twin-plate layout greatly increased cabin room. The saloon provides good sitting headroom, a table slides down from the roof on the king post, and there is storage for a cooker and a loo. The cabin will shelter four adults or sleep two adults and a child. The cockpit is genuinely large — source descriptions range from space for four seated on the windward side to room for six to eight adults — self-draining, and fitted with two stowage bins useful for fenders, while the crew sit well forward to avoid stern squat.

Known Issues

The raised, raked cabin top paired with slim side decks makes moving about the cabin for mooring work admittedly awkward. Visibility around the coachroof from the cockpit remains quite good, and the boat is stable when stepping onto the side decks or foredeck, so the shortcoming is one of ergonomics rather than insecurity. A fixed-bilge-keel variant of the Mariner did not sell well chiefly because it trailered poorly.

Refits and Ownership

The 1985 Mk II introduced larger windows, cabin-side and headlining mouldings, revised cabin-roof hand rails, and a V-shaped dropped transom section for the tiller that replaced a slot not entirely weathertight. Later Eagle 525 iterations added a cockpit well for an outboard, a tabernacle with A-frame mast raising gear as standard, and incremental ballast and sail-area growth. Morton Boats of Eagle nr Lincoln built the Eagle 525 into the late 1990s, to all intents the same boat.

The Verdict

The Skipper 17 endures because it asks little of its owner and rewards short-handed cruising with stability and shelter in a package that trails and launches without drama. The long production and many generations mean a buyer can choose an open dayboat or a cabin cruiser, but all share the reassuring habit of standing nearly upright when dried out and recovering dry from a knockdown.

Pros