Design
Sport Boat 18
Designed by Jacques Mertens
An 18 ft trailerable high-performance sailboat by Jacques Mertens for Bateau, offered with either a ballasted centerboard or a lifting bulb keel. The five-panel hull keeps a flat bottom for planing downwind with less wetted area than a sharpie. Beam is 8 ft, hull weight about 520 lb, ballast 365 to 400 lb, and sail area 226 or 241 sq ft depending on the mainsail. With the board up it draws 7 in.
This is second-generation stitch and glue: thin plywood sandwiched in directional glass, built on a jig for accuracy. The designer says it should not be a first stitch and glue project because weight and quality are critical. No hours are published; budget 400 to 700. The medians below come from builders who logged this boat here.
What building a Sport Boat 18 actually takes
Medians from the build logs kept on this site, not the designer’s estimate. Nobody has logged this boat here yet, so they are empty until the first builder does.
Those medians firm up as more people log this boat.
Builds of this boat
Nobody has logged a Sport Boat 18 here yet.
If you are building one, yours becomes the reference: the page the next person building this boat finds when they search for it. One photo and one line is a valid first entry.
Start the first log of this boatBoats like this one
Same type, closest in length.
| Design | Plans from | LOA | Logs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lit'l Coot 18 Bilge Keel | Devlin | 18′ 0″ (5.49 m) | 0 |
| Sentinel Explorer 18 | Dudley Dix Yacht Design | 18′ 0″ (5.49 m) | 0 |
| Micro Class | n/a | 5.5 m (18′ 1″) | 0 |
| John's Sharpie | Chesapeake Light Craft | 18′ 1″ (5.51 m) | 0 |
| Lit'l Coot 18 Full Keel | Devlin | 17′ 10″ (5.45 m) | 0 |
| Vagabond 18 | Bateau | 18′ 2″ (5.54 m) | 0 |