As compared to vessels of the northern Europe, the Greek sakoleva by her rigging and displacement was closer to smack of the North Sea Friz coast. She was a one-and-a-half masted ship with the rake of the mainmast forward at an angle of 14 degrees. The topmast, which was fastened with three lashings before the mast, exceeded in length at 1/7 times and it was closed to the mast at 3/7 of its length. Placed in the stern at the same rake the mizzenmast had a length about 2/3 of the mainmast. As a smack, the sakoleva carried a bowsprit and an arm extended out of the stern (Germ. 'heckspriet' - a stern sprit).
Similarity was also seen in their sail rigging. Both types had a large sprintsail with a long sprint, a square topsail on the yard, 2 or 3 fore triangular staysails and a fore-and-aft mizzensail. Slight differences were seen in rakes of masts, in a lashed topmast, in rigging of several tackles and in other form of the mizzensail. When on a smack this sail was a sprintsail, sakoleva had the simplest form of a triangular sail, the so called 'shafshincken'. One can find some dimensions of this vessel made from the model of the Sea Museum in Paris done by A. Paris.
Length: 12,60
Breadth: 3,50
Length of a mainmast with a topmast: 12,20
Topmast: 5,10+3,40=8,50
Main-yard: 6,80
Top-yard: 5,40
Mast driver: 5.00
Stern arm: 2,50
Jib boom: 3,50
Sails area: 84,60 ì2

The sprint sail had an area of 44.40 sq. m, the topsail - 19.40 sq. m, the fore staysail - 8.45 sq. m, the jib - 7.76 sq. m and the mizzensail - 4.56 sq. m.
There were no dimensions of the bowsprit, the sprit and the mizzenmast. Approximately they were the following: bowsprit - 7.40 m, sprint - 11.80 m, mizzenmast - 5.00 m.
As a cargo vessel sakoleva made her cruises mainly between Greek islands, into Italy and to the Black Sea.