Motorsailers WALRUS

Judges Choice For Best In Show

2025, WoodenBoat Show, Mystic CT

WALRUS

As taken from L. Francis Herreshoff’s Sensible Cruising Designs with some slight editing and updating.

Here is a design (Walrus) for a twin-engine power vessel with enough sail area and lateral plane to get where she wants to go under sail alone if that is her owner’s need or wish. She is a 50 / 50 cruiser or motorsailer, but she really seems to be a power craft with auxiliary sails. This makes a fine type of cruising vessel, for she will make good passages in any ordinary weather and her rig will keep her steady, add to her speed on many runs and make her far more interesting and fun to handle than is the out-and-out power craft.

She is easily handled by a cruising couple, and offers full privacy for a second couple. Walrus has a beautifully appointed wooden interior, yet her fiberglass/epoxy exterior and aluminum rig require the same maintenance level as a fiberglass vessel.

Her hull lines are easy throughout, and she is an excellent sea boat with a smooth motion. The rig is versatile and easy to

handle. Her power is a pair of 75 hp. Perkins diesels turning Luke feathering propellors and these send her along at a comfortable cruising speed of 7.5-8 knots which when combined with her easily managed sail plan should provide excellent fuel economy.

Walrus’s cabin plan shows a sensible interior arrangement with private (double berth with ensuite facilities) sleeping cabins fore and aft separated by galley / dining areas and pilot house. Even more berthing space can be had (if needed) by making use of settees located in the forward cabin and pilothouse or by converting the galley dinette into another double berth allowing for sizable family gatherings / cruises made all the more sweet a memory when the added crew has gone back home or to school and serenity returns onboard.

Walrus seems clearly to be the type of boat most suited to sailors (men and women) who have mostly “seen and done it all” and are now content and perfectly satisfied to use their time comfortably cruising without schedules or agendas.

Please see below complete information as regards systems and equipment (see below). Pictures (as they say) are worth a million words and we hope you’ll enjoy these photos of Walrus and especially so the recent photos of her interior so generously offered for our use by Onne van der Wal