Overview

The Mission

The boat as it comes from the factory and after an ultra-short two week shake down cruise, will be capable of taking a couple with occasional guests around the world in safety and comfort.

She will also be a fine weekend cruising boat for those who have to keep working at their day jobs while they plan their escape.

Target Price

The target price is US$250,000 ready to go.

The Brand

This price is incredible value but, if you think about it, most every boat buyer eventually becomes a boat seller. So when measuring the real cost of owning a boat, what matters most is the delta: the difference between what you paid and resale.

And the best way to assure a good delta is to build a lot of boats and create a brand, and that’s just what we intend to do. So the boat will be designed to appeal to a wide audience—the Adventure 40 is not a specialty expedition or high latitude boat.

Low Maintenance Cost

If you think buying an ocean capable boat is expensive, try maintaining one. The Adventure 40 will be standardized, simple, high quality, and have great equipment access, which means she will be substantially less expensive to maintain than other boats, new or used, even when you are piling the miles on.

Low Cost of Ownership

Guess what? We could probably build the Adventure 40 for even less than US$250,000, but we won’t. The reason is that what we are aiming for is low 10 year cost of ownership, not low sticker price.

Let me give you a couple of examples of how that works:

• We could save several thousand dollars by going with a SailDrive. But what’s that decision going to cost you if the thing craps out in Fiji?
• We could save some bucks by making the keel to hull joint less massive and “overbuilt” than it will be. But if we did that, and you are sailing in Newfoundland and hit a rock and the aft end of the keel drives up through the hull and the boat sinks…what’s that going to cost you?

Enough, you get the idea.

The Need

Someone new to the Adventure 40 concept could certainly be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that the boat is a solution looking for a problem. After all, there are tens of thousands of used boats out there and scores of companies building new boats.

Used Boats

But the reality is that the vast majority of second hand boats will require an extensive refit to be ocean capable that will push the total cost way over the Adventure 40 price (even if the owner does most of the work him/herself) and take many years to complete.

Worse still, such a refit has an intrinsic Catch-22: It takes years of offshore sailing and boat ownership experience to learn what you need to know to perform, or even supervise, an extensive refit efficiently…and how do you get that experience without owning an offshore boat?

New Boats

So what about new boats? Surely there’s a boat on the market already that can fulfill the A-40 mission? Well, no. The boats that are currently on the market are far too complicated and/or far too expensive; and most have hull forms, interior arrangements, and rigs that are simply not suitable for offshore voyaging.

Marketing

That begs the question: if the market has failed to produce a good voyaging boat for a fair price, what makes me think that it’s doable?

Good question. The problem is not that building a boat with the A-40’s capabilities at the target price is that difficult.

No, the problem is the market, which has over the last 30 years metamorphosed into one that buys wide, overly light, overly complicated boats that are designed with one criteria in mind: cram the biggest fanciest interior and the most gadgets possible in a given length. Boats that by very definition are near useless, and in many cases downright dangerous, offshore.

Given that, what makes me think we can persuade people that the Adventure 40 is a good idea? Simple, we already have. (And when I say “we” I’m including you, our readers, and particularly all of you that have commented on the Adventure 40 posts.)

To date (March 2023) over 673 people are signed up as interested in an Adventure 40 with more signing up every week. And that before we even have a design finished, never mind a boat.

What The Adventure 40 Is

So exactly what is an Adventure 40? Well, to really understand that you need to read, or possibly reread, everything about the boat. But here’s the short version:

Seaworthy Hull

Above all, the boat will be seaworthy and by extension seakindly and fast. She will have a moderate displacement fixed fin keel on a comparatively narrow hull that will not pound going to windward and that will be easy to to steer both upwind and down. She will displace about 18,000 pounds and be about 40-feet overall.

Nothing, but nothing, will be allowed to compromise the boat’s ability to sail well, and that goes double for the interior arrangement.

Deck

The deck will be laid out for simple easy sailing offshore and will include a hard dodger for shelter and top quality blocks and winches for sail handling. In keeping with this simplicity, all halyard handling and reefing will take place at the mast.

Rig

The rig will be a simple mast head cutter with roller furling jib and slab reefed main. It will be fitted with a removable internal headstay and runners to further support the mast and carry a storm staysail.

Sails will not be supplied with the boat, but several pre-tested packages will be available from one or more sailmakers at advantageous prices.

Interior

The interior will be simple, quite traditional (because it works), designed to be safe and comfortable offshore, and likely be fabricated by a mass production furniture maker, probably from plywood covered with white Formica or something like that. There will be very few drawers and some lockers may even be closed with zippered fabric doors.

I hope that we will be able to afford some CNC cut and mass-spray-varnished wood trim to give her that classic Herreshoff style interior look that is so much more pleasant to live in than the dark wood cave that one sees so much of.

Strength

This is a mass production boat because that’s the only way we can hit our reliability targets at this price. So the hull will be fiberglass with scantlings strong enough to withstand years of hard use at sea and the inevitable groundings that happen in cruising.

Simple Boat

The boat will be equipped with the best gear money can buy installed to the highest standards. She will have everything that you need to sail around the world—great deck gear, reliable engine, bullet proof rig, vane steering—and not much else: no shore power, no refrigeration, no electronics. Before you head off round the world, pick up two hand held GPSs (one spare).

Customizable Boat

Want shore power, refrigeration, solar panels and/or a fancy plotter? Go for it. The boat is designed with a spacious equipment bay where you can install stuff to your heart’s content.

There will be extra breakers on the panel and hard points in the hull for extra sea-cocks. Cable running will be easy in large builder-installed conduits with messenger lines. There will be a well insulated icebox that can easily have refrigeration added.

This reflects one of the fundamental design focuses: the builder will provide the base infrastructure that would be difficult and/or expensive for an owner to install but the owner installs all the bits and pieces like solar panels and wind generator.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you will have to spend months installing stuff before you go cruising. Like I said above, the boat will come with everything you need. In fact, you might even have a better time cruising if you don’t fill her up with a bunch of expensive gear to satisfy your wants.

Quality Control and The Standard Boat

Every detail of the boat will be exhaustively tested by experienced offshore sailors during a prototype phase. After that the production boat specification will be frozen.

No Options

There will be no options, none, zero, zip. However, you will be able to order the boat in any colour you want…as long as it’s white.

Seriously, this is the only way for the builder to hit the price point, make a fair profit, and build a reliable boat that can cross oceans right out of the box without years of debugging and frustration.

Not A Leading (Bleeding) Edge Boat

The Adventure 40 is all about reliability and safety. There will be no funky experimental hull form, or high-tech deep bulb keel. The only gear on the boat will be stuff that has been around and in general use on offshore boats for at least a decade and twenty years would be better.

There will be no un-stayed carbon mast and no hybrid diesel electric drive. If you want to experiment with new technologies and be a developer, that’s great, but it’s not what the Adventure 40 is about.

Sales

There will be no dealers. Marketing will continue to be via this site and sales will be direct with the builder.

Commissioning

Over time, a network of Adventure 40 Commissioning Companies will spring up, many of whom will specialize in installing pre-designed packages of gear into the boats. The builder will keep a web site listing of these companies and owners will be able to rate and comment on their experience with them there.

Sign Up

If this sounds like the boat for you, please sign up to be kept informed of developments: