Overview
The Shannon 37 is a heavy, shoal-draft cruising boat that Walter Schulz drew for his own yard, Shannon Yachts of Bristol, Rhode Island. It was a redesign of the earlier Shannon 38, and only 19 were built between 1985 and 1993. Most were rigged as ketches with a staysail on an inner forestay; the rest were cutters. Two of those few boats have documented long voyages: Silk, a ketch that went around the world, and Landfall, a cutter that has crossed the Pacific and rounded Cape Horn.
Design and Construction
The hull carries a modified fin keel with a centerboard that retracts into it. Board up, the boat draws 4 feet 3 inches, so it can anchor in water most 37-footers avoid; board down, it draws 7 feet 7 inches for windward work. Displacement is 17,500 pounds on a waterline of just under 31 feet, with 6,500 pounds of lead ballast, and the rudder hangs on a skeg.
Practical Sailor’s used-boat review praises the attention to detail below and the teak handgrips along the overhead, and notes that white panelling on the coachroof and headliner lightens what is otherwise a dark teak interior. The centerboard trunk takes up stowage space a fin-keel boat would keep.
Under Sail
Practical Sailor describes the boat as seakindly and as tracking well even dead downwind. It puts the average speed at about 5 knots across a wide range of conditions and says windward performance falls off as the apparent wind moves forward. The review prefers the cutter for going to windward and the ketch for the wider choice of downwind sail combinations.
Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger, who sailed Silk around the world, liked the ketch offshore because it kept every sail small, and they report that she hove to well under mizzen alone. They averaged 130 to 135 miles a day on long passages, with a best of 178 miles in 24 hours. Silk carried twin headstays for running with two jibs, a 7-foot bowsprit, and after Madeira a Monitor windvane, which they say steered her for most of the next 25,000 miles.
Landfall, a Shannon 37 cutter, has sailed about 50,000 miles with her owners, by the account of Allison, the owner’s stepdaughter. The voyages include a rounding of Cape Horn, a 42-day passage from Chile to French Polynesia, and the Pacific to Australia. In February 2023 Allison and her partner James joined the boat for a 15-day crossing of the Tasman Sea from Western Port to Opua, and the boat later returned to South America through the Roaring Forties.
Buyers Notes
With only 19 built, a Shannon 37 rarely comes up for sale. Practical Sailor flags three things to check. The centerboard trunk was originally sealed and bolted shut, some boats had mixed metals inside it, and work on it needs a haul-out. The teak and Plexiglas hatches and the teak toerail let water in with age. On boats with two headstays, the masthead crane welds can crack under load. Batteries in the cockpit locker are harder to reach than on most boats.
