First Explorer 39 hull is already turned upside.

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Explorer 39 first hull soon to be turned upside.

The first Explorer 39 under construction at Estaleiro Estrutural, Cabo Frio, Brazil, has its hull practically finished. Her owner, Raimundo Nascimento, is intending to invite his friends to a barbecue when turning the hull over. We from the office will certainly be there, since we are quite happy about this design.
We are convinced the Explorer 39 is a unique cruising sail boat, but it is necessary to wait for this hull to be sailing for us to feel at home to fully promote the many particularities of this project. We had a pleasant surprise when we received an e-mail from the prestigious French sailing magazine, Loisirs Nautiques, asking us to publish a note about the Explorer 39 in the Paris Boat show issue. It seems that cruising yachtsmen are already beginning to discover this design. We will keep our visitors informed about the latest progresses of Raimundo's boat.

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Explorer 39, the cruising boat for the years to come.

Anticipating the launching of the first Explorer 39 to be completed, we are unveiling her secrets in a sequence of images produced by our fantasies during a virtual cruise.
Our anxiety to see this unique sailboat already sailing is very demanding. Its swift waterlines together with its cozy interior were already shown in a quite realistic sequence of rendered images recently published in our site. Now it is the turn to show its wake at speeds above its limits, or a glorious close hauled sailing in a tropical paradise.

The class has already one boat almost completed and another with her hull already turned upside. The almost finished Explorer 39 belongs to the Brazilian yachtsman Raimundo Nascimento, and is being built by Estaleiro Estrutural, a very competent boatyard established at the town of Cabo Frio, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The other boat belongs to the Uruguayan computer analyst Julio Gonzales, and is being built by the students of the Technical School of Montevideo, in Uruguay. (see the site: www.explorer39.com/)
Raimundo first heard about the Explorer 39 design in September 2005, when, during the “Recife to Fernando de Noronha Regatta”, one of the most popular long distance races in the South Atlantic, he met Roberto Barros. He was then competing with his former yacht, a series produced thirty-six foot cruiser/racer, while Roberto Barros was aboard his home built MC 28 Fiu. On that occasion, in a fleet of one hundred boats from various countries, twelve were designed by the Roberto Barros Yacht Design (now B & G Yacht Design) office. Highly impressed with the performance of most of the twelve different boats from the office, Raimundo told Roberto about his intention of upgrading his yacht for a larger one, and was searching for a new design. Roberto then informed him that the Explorer 39 brand new design had just come out of the oven. When he knew that the project contemplated a retractable swing keel and that its minimum draught was scants 530mm with the keel totally raised, he knew straightaway that the Explorer 39 was the boat for him.  

The concept of the Explorer 39 was brought to us by Darke de Mattos, a friend of ours who is an experienced ocean racer and cruising sailor. During his racing career, Darke had competed in the most important world racing events, like the Admiral’s Cup and the Bermudas Race, always with top of the line crews and state of the art designs. On the other hand he has a taste for nice looking lines, being one of his boats the legendary Atrevida, a gorgeous one hundred foot schooner designed by Hereshoff and built in New Orleans during the early twenties.
This time, however, he neither wanted a racing boat, nor a classic one. He wished something to be praised in the years to come. He wanted a boat not too big, so she could be sailed single-handed with very little effort, rigged with an easy to handle sail plan, and last but not least, with controllable draught, so he could dream in visiting the most interesting cruising grounds, inaccessible to fixed keel yachts.
For personal reasons Darke didn’t start to build his boat yet, but he is following the progress of the construction of Explorer 39 hull # 1 with great interest, since he still intends to build his one. We are thankful to him for having the opportunity of designing such an exciting cruising sailboat with his collaboration.
Darke, among other plans, has a special interest in visiting the Sub-Antarctic islands and the Antarctic continent. However he keeps a long-lasting dream of visiting many South Pacific atolls, one more reason for willing to own a yacht with controllable draught.

Our group of persons involved with this design have very similar intentions, and we have other potential clients from different countries with the same endeavours.
Our excitement with the near launching of the first unit is inciting us in wanting to foresee how the Explorer 39 will look like when sailing in an admiral’s sea or when surfing freak waves in the roaring forties. Since dreams are free and technology can give a good hand, here is how we expect this design will actually be on those conditions.
In our virtual cruise, the Explorer 39 experiences good and bad weather to return sound and safe to her berth in the hypothetic marina where she is stationed.

EXPLORER 39

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THE FIRST STEPS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE EXPLORER 39

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This note was published in " Loisirs Nautiques", Paris Boat Show issue, December 2006.