Cabo Rico42
by BWS Staff
Blue Water Sailing
Juner 2004
New Cabo Rico 42 Pilothouse
The Cabo Rico 42 has become one of the builder’s most successful boats with 18 of the semi-custom cruisers now out sailing about the world. With the distinctive clipper bow and short bowsprit, sweet sweeping sheer and handsome stern, the 42 looks as salty as she is seaworthy.
The 42 is in all ways a dedicated cruising boat, designed by Chuck Paine for fast comfortable passages and long periods of living aboard. The boat’s size is particularly suited to a couple cruising on their own. The design features a fuller keel with a cutaway forefoot and a unique attached rudder that gains efficiency from the large propeller aperture; the boat will steer easily under power in close quarters, which is unusual among fuller-keel designs. The boat has a modest 12-feet, eight-inches of beam so it is easily driven and will maintain high average speeds over the long haul.
Cabo Ricos are built in the company’s yard in San Jose, Costa Rica under the direction of longtime owner Fraser Smith and his experienced staff and with design input from yacht designer Chuck Paine. Each boat is built to order so each reflects an owner’s specific requirements for cabin layout, systems, cabinetry and so forth—within the bounds of structural bulkheads and the hull itself.
The new Cabo Rico 42 Pilothouse version is a design that grew out of a prospective owner’s desire to have all the elements of the classic CR 42 but with a pilothouse that could be fitted with an inside steering station and a raised dinette. The design challenge facing Chuck Paine was to make the new pilothouse fit the boat gracefully while providing for the interior volume to accommodate the dinette and nav station.
Paine accomplished this task with real panache, as his elegant drawings indicate. The pilothouse integrates into the coach roof with sloping windows forward and trim side windows. Two opening hatches are placed on top of the pilothouse and a large companionway hatch slides open from the cockpit. The pilothouse will be warm and dry in bad weather and then can be open and airy in pleasant conditions.
The pilothouse configuration opens up several interesting interior arrangements to suit an owner’s particular needs. The main living area will be in the pilothouse where the views are excellent. Two large double cabins are shown in the plan, with the master stateroom forward and the guest cabin aft, down a step from the pilothouse. The galley lies amidships to starboard and the huge head and separate shower stall are to port.
Along the port side of the cabin Paine had drawn in a blank space that can be a third sleeping cabin, an office, a utility room or even a small second dinette depending on the owner’s needs. Just aft, Cabo Rico has added a full workshop hidden under the settee.
The new Cabo Rico 42 Pilothouse is one of the most original and attractive cruising boats for a couple to come along in a while and takes what was a great design in the CR 42 and improves on it. Three of the new designs have been purchased thus far and are under construction in Costa Rica. Hull number three should be on view at this fall’s Annapolis sailboat show, while hull number one will be at the next Seattle show.
Specifications: LOA 44’10”; LOD 42’6”; LWL 32’2”; Beam 12’8”; Draft 5’3”; Sail area 1,134 sq. ft.; Displacement 26,800 lbs.; Ballast 10,400 lbs.; Water 165 gals.; Fuel 72 gals.
For more information contact
Cabo Rico Custom Yachts,
2258 SE 17th St.,
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316.
Ph: 954-462-6699.
