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Florida Means Sharpies!

Egret is a REAL sharpie.

Here’s Egret.  She’s a real sharpie of the Commodore Monroe type.  Hard to imagine a little yacht that looks more the part for her element.  (her element being really shallow water). Of course if I designed one while she’d look almost exactly like this she’d have little, invisible improvments.  One would be my “Paine turning fork rudder”. It looks just like a tuning fork and by introducing one consonant I came up with a name for it. It is half the depth of a conventional rudder but, being twins, just as effective.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Florida Means Sharpies!”

  1. Chris Wells Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 8:25 am

    I first came across sharpies in the early 80’s in the Keys when I met Billy Schwicker who had built one very similar to Egret. Ten years ago we came to Bokeelia for the winter and recognized Egret immediately in one of those small world moments. Sharpies are elegant vessels and it is great to see them receive high marks in your column.

  2. Chuck Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 11:06 am

    Hi Chris,

    You and Bokeelia have opened my eyes to something that I never even knew existed. Everyone knows the most fun in sailing is to be had close to the land. In the case of these sharpies the “land” can be only 24 inches away (down) and you can still go sailing. One day I’ll have to build one with my experimental bilge keels and the turning fork rudder and we’ll see how she goes.