How and Why Did We Choose Our Cruising Sailboat?

June 14, 2021 Leslie Godfrey

We sail a 1981 Valiant 40 designed by Bob Perry and built by Uniflite in Anacortes, Washington, USA. Sonrisa has proven herself to be a perfect boat for our purpose and our personalities. How did we choose this boat to sail around the world? Read on.

The Process We Used To Choose Our Bluewater Cruising Sailboat

I’m a big believer that success in decision-making requires you to know yourself well and ask yourself the right questions. This provides a framework to reduce your options into a box of qualifiers that really matter to you. Now, that we have sailed the miles we have, we know even more about our sailing style. Sonrisa still matches our goals as well as any boat could when you try to balance all the possible qualities we care about. She’s the perfect boat for us. Did we get lucky when we found her? Partially, yes. But we also undertook a concerted effort to do our research and ask ourselves the right questions, as follows:

Initial Research for Choosing a Cruising Sailboat

We started by reading books about sailing and the sailing lifestyle. These books helped us get to know from a practical perspective what qualities in a sailboat became most important when other people were out blue water sailing. We didn’t live and die by what these other people said, but we respect experience, and these people had a lot of experience we did not have yet.

Perusing Options To Confirm the Style Of Boat We Preferred

While we were reading books, we were practicing our sailing in a variety of ways. Racing other people’s boats, cruising Lake Mead on our first little sailboat O’Day 27, and chartering bigger, oceangoing sailboats for mini-vacations. We scrolled through brokering websites like www.yachtworld.com all the while imagining what it would be like to sail in any one of the boats we met. We started getting a sense of what our budget had to be to buy a boat in the condition and style we wanted - at least in theory, on paper, as presented by the broker’s websites.

The Questions We Asked Ourselves To Help Us Narrow Down Our Bluewater Cruising Sailboat:

When it was time to get more serious about choosing our sailboat, we sat down and asked ourselves a series of questions to really put our fingers on what would make us most happy. Having followed a number of offshore sailor’s blogs, we realized that starting our circumnavigation in one boat, then stopping to buy a different boat, often stopped sailors’ dreams in their tracks. Our goal, then, was to find the perfect boat for us in the first attempt. These are the questions we asked ourselves to narrow down the style of sailboat we hoped to find:

(1) Realistically, what budget can we allocate for the purchase and maintenance of our cruising sailboat?

For us, at the time we were planning this trip, we allocated $125,000 to purchase price, with $50,000 in initial refit cost, then 10% per year for the market value of the boat in good condition if you do the work yourself. We estimate 30% per year for the market value of the boat in good condition if you hire the work out. These estimates have carried to be true over the course of our 9 years of boat ownership so far.

(2) Where do we want to sail the boat and for what purpose? Do we plan offshore routes? Island hopping, coastal, upwind routes, downwind routes, ice/high latitude sailing?

We knew we wanted to sail around the world. This means long-haul offshore sailing. We knew we wanted the boat to be capable of sailing up wind routes and possibly some colder/stormier sailing.

(3) How fast do we like to go? Do we get seasick? Are we nervous about feeling safe at sea?

We learned to sail while racing sailboats, so we know we don’t enjoy the feel of a slow-slog. On the other hand, we also know days and days of slamming in waves causes greater fatigue. We both suffer some seasickness, and we consider the possibility of falling off the boat the greatest risk sailors face offshore. These realities led us to look for a sailboat that is designed to be reasonably fast, capable of sailing upwind, a hull design for smooth movement over rough seas (as smooth as one can expect, which by the way, isn’t very smooth), with wide side decks, flat walking space on the cabin top, and a protected cockpit.

(5) How often do we entertain? How many people at a time? What style? Cocktails hour, dinners, hosting vacationers?

We like to entertain in the cockpit for sundowners a few times a week, we host dinner parties once or twice per month. We thought we might have visitors fly out and sail with us aboard Sonrisa, but that has not turned out to be true. We are too far away, and our family and friends aren’t seasoned sea-salts, so they prefer to stay in a resort near our anchorage when they come to visit.

(6) Do we want the boat to feel like home? Or, are we willing to accept a bit of a "camping lifestyle"? Or are we really willing to accept the "Roughing it lifestyle"

We knew we could accept some level of the “minimalist” lifestyle, but we needed freshwater showers every day, a kitchen capable of cooking nice meals, and a cold beer ready and waiting for us.

We answered these questions by combining information we’d read about in books, imagined to be true, and learned about ourselves over the years from our personal histories and personalities in our life on shore and in the small number of days we’d spent racing sailboats, cruising Lake Mead, and chartering boats in Key West, Catalina California, and Hawaii.

Then, we started shopping in person.

Scouting Runs: Confirm Expectations Match Reality

We selected a handful of boats we might be interested in and available for purchase in the region close to where we were living at the time. We contacted a broker to help show us those boats, and we made a few “scouting runs” to confirm the possibility of finding a boat in the condition we expect for the price range we set. The purpose of these scouting runs was to confirm our expectations matched reality.

The Cruising Sailboat We Chose: Valiant 40-2

We sail a 1981 Valiant 40-2 named Sonrisa. Valiants are designed by Bob Perry, and when our boat was built by Uniflite in Anacortes, Washington. In 1983, I believe their manufacturing moved to Texas. They were manufactured until 2012, and the Texas facility still handles major refits and redesigns. Valiant had a 37 foot model called the Esprit, the 40, a 42, a 48 and a 50 foot version.

The qualities that attracted us to Sonrisa:

(1) Sailing quality:

She is fast (for her style), smooth, and strong in big seas. When we steer her, we can steer her with one finger on the helm. She is VERY easy to balance the helm, and takes little effort from her sailors or her autopilot to track her course. This also means she hoves-to easily and predictably, holding her 1 knot scuttle sideways with no trouble. A lot of this has to do with the shape of her hull, her "performance keel," her sail layout, the placement of her mast/length of boom, and displacement weight. These are things you can't (easily) change after the fact, so we were paying close attention to those qualities when we were first purchasing. The sailing quality was our #1 priority when choosing our cruising boat because we knew we would be crossing oceans and movement through the water makes a big difference in both safety and enjoyment.

(2) Sail layout and storm sailing qualities:

Sonrisa is a cutter rigged sloop with roller furling on her genoa and her stay sail. All the roller furling runs back to the cockpit and the winches are over-sized. This means either Andrew or I can change the sail area in (most all) sailing conditions without the assistance of the other. This is important on night watches when we don't want to interrupt the sleep of our sailing partner. She has a triple reefed main, with deep reefs and the last two reefs are also run back to the cockpit so we can reef without assistance of our sailing partner if worse comes to worse. With this reefing system and the cutter rig, it means we are prepared to sail in up to 50 knots of wind without ever having to go on deck to install and manage storm sails. We have storm sails, too, but so far we've never had to use them. We also have two extra halyards for a Code Zero (light wind, up wind sail) and an Asymmetrical Spinnaker (light wind, down wind sail). I like these extra halyards for their redundancy and the sailing qualities the light wind sails offer, too.

(3) Safe and Comfortable Cockpit:

Sonrisa's cockpit with its canoe stern and wrap around stern pulpit bars feels very secure while you are sailing. We rarely get big splashes that roll down the deck and into the cockpit. Experiencing big following waves, I can tell you I wouldn't ever want to sail in an open cockpit. She has a lot of strong harness latch points in good strategic places. Her side decks are wide and flat, so it's easy to walk forward if you want/need to. She also has high bulwarks around the cockpit and for whatever reason (I think it has to do with the shape of her bow as well as the design of her side-decks) she is very dry.

(4) Hull and Keel Strength:

Her hull is 1 inch thick full fiberglass layup. There is no balsa wood core anywhere in the hull. There is core on her deck, but in all the important places where there might be water intrusion (around the chain plates, around the deck cleats, etc. there was foam instead of core and that helped protect the boat from deck rot. Since purchasing her, we have replaced most fittings on the deck and inserted fiberglass core around all the through deck fittings, so now, she is deck rot free and unlikely to have that problem in the future. She has a "performance fin" keel (which means it runs a lot longer along the hull than a normal fin) with fifteen keel bolts, it is a very strong keel, and as long as the keel bolts are in good shape (we just replaced all of them) I trust that keel with my life. I like it because it's a middle way approach between the very fast, but somewhat unreliable fin and bulb keels; and the slow but very strong full keel.

(5) Helpful features exterior:

We have a mechanical auto pilot system and also a monitor wind vane. The monitor wind vane is awesome. It can steer the boat without using any electricity at all, just the wind and a few ropes attached to your helm. It's great redundancy to your regular autopilot and we use it more often than the regular autopilot on long passages. The autopilot is used primarily for when there is no wind and we have to motor. The Yanmar 50 HP engine is a helpful feature. Yanmar makes really reliable engines, and I can't speak more highly of that engine. 50 HP is a perfect power range for Sonrisa, I trust that engine to power me through some crazy currents or a wind pushing me onto shore if worse comes to worse. It was important to us that the boat not be underpowered. A powerful windlass with an oversized Spade anchor to keep us locked in place under all anchorage conditions. Sonrisa's side decks are flat and cabin top is flat. This improves our ability to walk around on deck, and the flat cabin top gives me a space to workout and do yoga. This became a really important feature when we got stuck on board during the Covid fiasco and we couldn't go ashore to walk around/exercise our legs. Plus, it is a great platform for storing the dinghy while we are on passage.

(6) Interior qualities we wanted:

"U Shaped galley (so you can pin yourself in comfortably and cook under way), good handholds everywhere, two staterooms, one head, sea berths (long, but narrow place to sleep that you can pin yourself into with lee cloths and sleep comfortably at sea knowing you won't fall out of bed), a watermaker + ample water tank storage (I wouldn't want to skimp just because I had a watermaker. You never know when that thing will go kaput on you), fridge, freezer, good storage space for provisions. I like our dining table because it folds up and attaches to the wall. This makes the salon feel more roomy than a permanently affixed dining table and I have enough space to do yoga in there (but just barely). Good ventilation. It is rather key to have good airflow down below when you sail around in the tropics. Fans in strategic places: Bedroom pointed at both people sleeping in the berth, salon, and kitchen. I wanted a separate shower from the toilet. (I hate a wet toilet), and an on deck shower as well. I wouldn't ever give up my freezer. I consider this a safety feature because it allows us to make ahead and freeze meals so we have easy but high nutrition while on a passage.

(7) A phenomenal owners’ group:

Valiants allegedly have more hulls that have completed circumnavigations than any other production boat designed to date. I don’t know if this claim is true or not, but I can tell you that the owners group is filled with sailors who are actually out and about blue water sailing. We’ve learned so much from that group about Sonrisa and how to maintain her, but also about blue water sailing. We have several “rules” aboard Sonrisa that keep us safe, and that we learned from members of the Valiant Owners’ Group.

Qualities We Wish Sonrisa Had, But Doesn’t:

Let me begin this section by stating up front; Bob Perry designed everything on Sonrisa absolutely perfectly. Now that we have that out of the way, we sometimes wish Sonrisa had:

#1: A well designed hard dodger and Bimini with the ability to make the cockpit "dry" during stormy passages. We have a minimalist dodger and Bimini, and we sail along with friends who have a dry cockpit. My attitude is significantly worse in stormy weather than theirs. I thought I was a purist who wanted to "feel the seaspray" and you always can if you want to, but it's nice to be able to sail dry. But, this takes some very conscientious design because a dodger/Bimini with wrap arounds must be strong enough to deal with waves and some big wind in order to be deployed during a storm. That, and Bob Perry (Sonrisa’s boat designer) hates the way they mess up the look of his design. (Love you, Bob!) Sonrisa already had a stern arch when we bought her, though, so if esthetics is our concern, we’ve already get a D- from Bob.

#2 A mid-ship cleat. Why-oh-why did Valiant build Sonrisa without a midship cleat? It’s really quite helpful for docking in a cross breeze/current, setting spring lines, and tying off the dinghy.

#3 Andrew would always take more solar and more LiPo4 Lithium.

#4 I would take stronger, taller stanchions and stainless steel pipe life rails (rather than wire lifelines we have). Anything you can do to feel more cozy and attached to the boat is great at sea. Sonrisa doesn't have granny bars around the mast, and I honestly don't know where we would put them that they wouldn't add clutter, but if I found a boat where the granny bars were there already and made sense with the rest of the hardware, I know I would enjoy them, too.

#5 Two heads: one with a pump overboard, and the other with a composting head. Because of Sonrisa’s age, she doesn’t have holding tanks. When refitting her to go to places that require holding tanks, we had to decide between tearing out water tankage, placing a very small holding tank in the bow, or using a composting head. We chose the composting head because I like fresh water tankage in case our water maker goes kaput, and I don’t like the idea of extra weight in the bow. Also, hoses and holding tanks almost always smell funky and have a tendency to explode and make a real mess when things go awry. So, we chose an Airhead. It can manage about 3 weeks of full time use for two people. But, it has a learning curve for users and introducing guests to its operation is embarrassing to say the least. Also, the crew member who has to manage the whole thing has a disgusting job. But that might apply to all sailboat heads. Take that for what its worth. The perfect balance for this would be one pump over head for normal cruising scenarios, and the composting head for when you are in a marina or the Galapago Islands where pumping overboard is illegal.

#6 If money were no object, a taller carbon fiber mast and dyneema rigging up top. Even Bob Perry has said this would be the one thing he’d change about the Valiant design. But then, you may as well buy a Gunboat.

Outcome

We’ve been blue water cruising, now, for over five years and we’ve covered 24,000 nautical miles at sea sailing from San Diego, California to Richard’s Bay, South Africa. We just completed the passage through the Mozambique Channel (known to be a bit treacherous), and we are working our way around the Cape of Good Hope over the next month or so, weather windows permitting.

Whenever we head offshore, I trust Sonrisa with my life and I enjoy sailing her. I absolutely love standing behind her helm at all points of sail. When we are at anchor, we are comfortable. We know how to live our lives in these 400square feet of space. We can do yoga, work, write, cook, and even entertain mostly how we’d like. Sure, it would be different to be in a larger monohull or a catamaran, but these are the tradeoffs we decided would be best for us early on, and with all the research and consideration we put into it from the beginning, we’ve lucked out and struck a good balance. Neither Andrew nor I have wanted to trade Sonrisa for any other boat to sail in. I think both of us can imagine living and sailing our whole lives in her.

It’s not about which boat is the best boat. There are as many “best boats” as there are sailors. The ultimate question is which is the best boat for you?

OddGodfrey: The Oddly Compelling Story of a Sailing Circumnavigation of the World