The Cape Cod Mercury 15, also called the Mercury Sloop and just the Mercury, is an American
trailerable sailboat and
sailing dinghy, that was designed by
Sparkman & Stephens
Sparkman & Stephens is a naval architecture and yacht brokerage firm with offices in Newport, Rhode Island and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. The firm performs design and engineering of new and existing vessels for pleasure, commercial, and milita ...
and first built in 1940.
[Sherwood, Richard M.: ''A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, Second Edition'', page 94. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994. ]
The design is sometimes confused with the unrelated Ernest Nunes 1939
Mercury 18
The Mercury 18, sometimes just referred to as a Mercury, is an American sailboat that was designed by Ernest Nunes as a one design racer and first built in 1939. The boat was one of the first one-design sailboat classes designed for plywood ...
design.
Production
The design is built by
Cape Cod Shipbuilding in the
United States, and remained in production in 2020 after 80 years.
Design
The Mercury 15 is a recreational
keelboat or dinghy, depending on the model, originally built of wood, since 1948 it has been constructed of
fiberglass, with wood trim. It has a
fractional sloop
A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...
rig with
aluminum spars. The hull has a spooned
plumb stem, a plumb
transom
Transom may refer to:
* Transom (architecture), a bar of wood or stone across the top of a door or window, or the window above such a bar
* Transom (nautical), that part of the stern of a vessel where the two sides of its hull meet
* Operation Tran ...
, a transom-hung
rudder controlled by a
tiller and a fixed fin
keel or a retractable
centerboard
A centreboard or centerboard (US) is a retractable hull appendage which pivots out of a slot in the hull of a sailboat, known as a ''centreboard trunk'' (UK) or ''centerboard case'' (US). The retractability allows the centreboard to be raised t ...
.
The design has accommodation for five people, but is normally sailing with a crew of two
sailors.
An optional
teak motor mount is available to allow use of an
outboard motor for docking and maneuvering.
For sailing the design may be equipped with an optional
genoa and
spinnaker
A spinnaker is a sail designed specifically for sailing off the wind on courses between a reach (wind at 90° to the course) to downwind (course in the same direction as the wind). Spinnakers are constructed of lightweight fabric, usually n ...
.
Roller furling, a
boom vang and
boat trailer
A boat trailer is designed to launch, retrieve, carry and sometimes store boats.
Commercial boat trailers
Commercial hydraulic boat trailers are used by marinas, boat yards, boat haulers, boat dealers and boat builders. Generally this type ...
s for both versions are also optional.
Variants
;Cape Cod Mercury 15 FK
:This fixed keel model has a draft of with the standard keel. It has a displacement of and carries of iron ballast.
;Cape Cod Mercury 15 CB
:This centerboard model has a draft of with the centerboard down and with the centerboard retracted. The boat displaces .
See also
*
List of sailing boat types
The following is a partial list of sailboat types and sailing classes, including keelboats, dinghies and multihull ( catamarans and trimarans).
Olympic classes
World Sailing Classes
Historically known as the IYRU (International Yacht Racing ...
References
External links
Official website
{{Sailing dinghies and skiffs
Keelboats
Dinghies
1940s sailboat type designs
Sailing yachts
Trailer sailers
Sailboat type designs by Sparkman and Stephens
Sailboat types built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding