Bolger Breakdown Schooner
Description
The Breakdown Schooner (design #60 in Phil Bolger's catalog) is a compact, experimental plywood sharpie schooner featured as a dedicated chapter in his 1994 book Boats with an Open Mind: Seventy-Five Unconventional Designs and Concepts. This design embodies Bolger's signature "form-follows-function" philosophy—prioritizing extreme portability, low cost, and simplicity over conventional beauty—by allowing the boat to literally "break down" into smaller sections for easy storage, transport (e.g., on a car roof or in a garage), or trailering without a dedicated trailer setup. It's a narrow, shallow-draft hull with hard chines, a flat or near-flat bottom typical of Bolger sharpies, and a simple unstayed schooner rig using short spars and small, triangular sails (likely balanced lugs or sprits) for balanced power, easy handling, and quick rigging/derigging.
Construction Details
| Designer | Bolger, Philip C. |
|---|---|
| Builder | Home Built |
| Length | 46.917 ft |
| LOA | 46.917 ft |
| Beam | 7.667 ft |
| Max Draft | 1.500 ft |
| Year Built | 1994 |
The standard boat dimensions
| i | 35.75 ft |
|---|---|
| j | 12.25 ft |
| p | 16.21 ft |
| e | 20 ft |
| p2 | - |
| e2 | - |
| i2 | - |
| j2 | - |
| I | J | P | E | P2 | E2 | I2 | J2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35.75 ft | 12.25 ft | 16.21 ft | 20 ft | - | - | - | - |
Blueprints
Sails
Bolger Breakdown Schooner - MAINSAIL
| Luff | * 16.21 ft - (4941 mm) |
|---|---|
| Foot | * 20 ft - (6096 mm) |
| Leech | * 24.91 ft - (7593 mm) |
| Tack Angle | * 88 ° |
| Diagonal | * 25.3 ft - (7711 mm) |
| Head (inches) | * 6 in - (152 mm) |
| Area | 161.76 ft² |
| Edit in Calculator | |
Bolger Breakdown Schooner - GENOA
| Luff | 20 ft - (6096 mm) |
|---|---|
| Foot | 9.67 ft - (2947 mm) |
| Leech | 16 ft - (4877 mm) |
| Length Perpendicular | 7.63 ft - (2326 mm) |
| Area | 76.32 ft² |
| Edit in Calculator | |
Disclaimer. Boats are not all the same -- even when produced in the same factory of the same model. Sailrite does its best to publish accurate dimensions, but we often find it worthwhile to have our customers measure their boats carefully before we produce kits for them. You should take the same precautions, especially when the data is not from Sailrite. The information on this site is not guaranteed to be accurate. Sailrite offers this content as a service to our community, but takes no responsibility for the reliability of the data provided.