Boat Review: Sage Cat / Sage 15

This exciting new microcruiser is available with a choice of rigs

The Sage Cat in her element. Photos by Debra Colvin

In our review of the Sage 17 back in issue # 75, we talked about how few production sailboat companies remain. At boat shows in the 1970s and early 80s, the golden era for little plastic boats, you’d see multiple small-boat builders—many with competing models in a variety of classes. But various factors such as rising oil prices, government regulation, the boom-and-bust nature of the economy, and to some extent the extraordinary durability of fiberglass boats themselves, has made the manufacture of small sailboats less lucrative than it once was.

So it was remarkable when Gail and Sal Glesser decided to venture into the market with their own brand of trailersailer. They wisely avoided the biggest risk—building a poor design—by asking recognized and accomplished small-boat designer Jerry Montgomery to draw their boats. Montgomery had, in a previous life, designed a fleet of small boats with which most of you are no doubt familiar—his Montgomery 15 and Montgomery 23 being among the most notable, along with his Montgomery 17 designed by mentor Lyle Hess.

Sage proceeded cautiously at first, focusing on a single design. But following the positive reception and steady sales of the Sage 17, they decided to launch the next boats in the line, the Sage 15 sloop and the SageCat. These two 15-footers share a common hull and look, at a glance, much like the original Montgomery 15, but as with their Sage 17, Jerry Montgomery and Sage were largely trying build a refined version of an already-winning concept, as opposed to starting out with a blank sheet of paper.

“The biggest concern folks had about Jerry’s prior 15-foot design,” says Sage Marine Sales Manager Dave Scobie, “was her cramped interior and lack of sitting headroom below. Both the Sage 15 and the SageCat have two seats with sitting headroom—as much headroom as the Sage 17 in fact.”

Another tradeoff on the original Montgomery 15 was the shoal keel, which although fairly shallow, does make launching and retrieval from shallow ramps more difficult.

“Jerry employed a daggerboard to reduce the Sage 15’s draft versus a shoal keel,” Scobie says. “The retractable board provides ease of launching and retrieving, and the trailer comes standard with guide posts so there is no way you can ‘miss’ the trailer when loading at the ramp. The daggerboard bulb partially nestles into a recesses in the hull, further facilitating launching and retrieval. Another bonus is that she sits low on the trailer, making it easy to climb aboard when inside the garage.”

Of course the daggerboard, which boasts a 220-pound bulb, was chosen for more than just shallow draft. “Folks want to know their boat will stand up to a blow,” Scobie says. “All that lead in the bulb provides exceptional righting moment. There is far more leverage per pound of ballast in a deeper bulbed-daggerboard than in a shoal keel.”

Another big new idea, of course, was offering a cat rig. The thinking that led to the SageCat revolved around simplicity and easier sailing. Besides being somewhat quicker to rig, the SageCat, with its single sail and single sheet, would be easier to single-hand.

“The SageCat will spin inside her own length and just keep going round and round—like the Scamp. And without a headsail it’s very easy to sail to and from the dock,” Scobie says.

“The cat wasn’t my idea,” Jerry Montgomery says. “An interested party suggested the concept in the very early stages, saying ‘This boat would make an excellent catboat’ and I answered that it probably would, but reminded the guy that in the kind of racing I do, if there are 50 boats in the race, only one or two might be catboats, so the market might not be there. He pointed out that essentially all of these other boats were larger, mostly not impressive performers, overpriced, and mostly built on the East Coast with heavy shipping costs to us fortunate West Coasters. The more I thought about it, the more I realized he had a point.”

Scobie acknowledges that developing the SageCat has been a challenge. “You can’t just take away the jib and call a boat a cat,” he says, “We have changed multiple items on the rig multiple times: mast location, mast type, rotation system, gooseneck fitting, mainsheet boom bail, and the thickness of the sail battens.” Jerry Montgomery wrote about some of these same challenges in his recent column in this magazine—how they had to repeatedly adjust the mast location to find proper helm balance.

A vivid example of just how difficult the process can be was the early SageCat prototype dismasting at the Cruiser Challenge in Monterey, California. To Sage’s credit, they do the hard work of prototype testing and striving to get things right. Drawing a boat and “running the numbers” is obviously critical, but it’s out on the water in the wind where you learn for sure what worked and what didn’t.

The Sage 15 slicing along near hull speed

“We try hard to be very public about what we are doing—including sharing our failures,” Scobie says. (The SageCat dismasting was shown on Sage Marine’s Facebook page live, and the video remains on the site). “Since we started with the Sage 17 in 2011 I’ve pointed out to people that I sail the boats hard. Every time I leave the dock it’s a test sail and I’d rather break something myself than have it break on a future owner.”

With prototypes of both boats now thoroughly tested, Sage Marine is working to fill orders, with the first 15-footer being delivered mid-April.

Over the course of the last year or so we had a chance to sail both the Sage 15 sloop and the SageCat with Dave Scobie on Port Townsend Bay.

PERFORMANCE: