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About the Boat
Right from the start we decided that we wanted a boat that was a bit different from the run of the mill cruising 45 foot yacht. We wanted something that was going to be quick, fun to sail whilst still being solid and safe, and reasonably comfortable to live on for a few months.
We looked at a few options, initially focussing on the open 50 class of ocean racers, but quickly moved towards offshore racers. We came across the sydney 40 and discovered that it would give us a lot of performance yacht with some reasonable comforts without us having to spend huge amounts. This is because the sydney 40 is no longer a current competitive racing yacht - either on the one design circuit or on handicap.
The sydney 40 was designed by Iain Murray as an offshore grand prix racing yacht, primarily to be raced as a one design class, but also to be competitive under IMS.
This particular sydney 40, ‘Pride’, was built in Australia by Bashford International/Sydney Yachts, and then shipped to the UK for Race1. She is one of 5 they chartered and raced from 99 until 2006.
In 2002 Pride was fitted with an upgraded keel to optimise the boat under the newer IRM rules. This was designed and fitted by Ker Associates (http://www.kerdesign.com/) and Bashford confirmed with Race1 that the hull was more than capable of handling the additional weight (the upgraded keel is substantially heavier than the original).
Pride was raced up until 2006 including the little britain challenge cup and the Fastnet. At which point Race1 folded, and the boats were reposessed by the banks. Pride has spent the best part of the last two years out of the water (and on the market).
We’ve bought a ‘new’ mast (9 years old but unused). With our new standing rigging this will give us a mostly new rig. We’ll tidy up the boom and should hopefully be able to make good use of the existing sail wardrobe (much of which is probably less than a season old interms of use).
Other plans are to fit out the boat with some more cruizing friendly features, like more than quadrupling the water tank capacity, installing cabin fans, increasing the domestic battery capacity, sun shading etc (the list is still growing).
Read more about the sydney 40:
http://www.murrayburnsdovell.com.au/PDFs/Sydney%2040%20profile.pdf
http://uk.boats.com/news-reviews/articledetail.html?lid=10174
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