Sparrow 16 vs Dovekie

A Round 1 Mini-Cruiser Madness Match-up

Here’s in interesting match-up. Sure, they seem like very different boats, but both are lightweight, trailerable sailboats used for camp-cruising—and really, how many designs by the eccentric genius Phil Bolger fit neatly into a category?

Long before this Mini-Cruiser Madness spectacle we referred to the Ron Holder-designed Sparrow 16 as a “sleeper.” If life were fair the surprisingly lively, exceptionally accommodating Sparrow 16 would upset a few boats and find itself in the Sweet 16 or even the Elite 8 of this contest. But then we only have one vote, and the Dovekie is an iconic design with its own remarkable virtues.

Here’s what we said about the Sparrow in our review article (Issue #52): What surprised us was how well the Sparrow responded in the light breeze. We were making progress even in the lulls—a nice track behind us and barely a ripple from the hull. The Sparrow seemed to slip through the water with very little disturbance. Helm was perfect, with just a touch of weather pull in winds up to seven knots.

With a shoal keel we anticipated her performance would suffer when hard on the wind. This was not always true, the Sparrow would actually point fairly high and make good progress to windward. It was only with increasing heel that you could tell her shallow keel was losing traction. Overall performance was good—and much better than we’d expected.