The Norwalk Islands Sharpie is a line of boats from 18 ft. to 43 ft. designed as a shoal draft weekender/cruiser by Bruce Kirby. He used the traditions of the Sharpie and the advent of modern building materials to draw a boat easy to build for the inexperienced. The simple cat ketch rig with unstayed masts is prevalent on most of the designs except the 18, where a single cat rig is used and the 43 which uses a more conventional rig. Despite the shoal draft and internal ballast, Kirby showed in stability tests that the NIS concept is surprisingly more resistant to capsize than originally thought.

I have sailed a 23 foot one from Victoria Australia to Hobart and return, and I was very impressed with its behavior in the boisterous conditions that we encountered. The unstayed rig delivered an enormous dividend, it has extremely low parasitic drag, so much less sail area is required for the same thrust. The low weight aloft helped stability significantly, and when running before a lot of wind, having a single sail right at the front of the boat was an extremely stable configuration. Ian Phillips 2009