Caliber 40 LRC

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Broker listing video for "Pono", a 1997 Caliber 40 LRC set up for long-range cruising. Ground tackle is a 55 lb Mantus anchor with 150 ft of chain on a 12-volt windlass, and both the genoa and the self-tacking staysail are on roller furling.

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The broker gives the long-range fuel capacity as 212 gallons, with fuel filters reached through a deep port cockpit locker, and says 740 watts of solar panels are fitted on the boat. These are the seller's listing figures.

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The broker lists 179 gallons of fresh water, a watermaker rated at 27 gallons per hour, a Victron 3000 W inverter charger and 600 amp-hours of lithium batteries, with a Yanmar 50-horsepower diesel. He calls the Caliber 40 LRC a proven blue water cruiser, which is a sales claim.

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Tour of a 2006 Caliber 40 LRC on the hard in Port Charlotte. The presenter notes a fin keel with a skeg-hung protected rudder, a three-blade prop, new-looking bottom paint, a sugar-scoop transom, a fuel polishing system and a cutter rig with a double-spreader mast.

warns⚙ nav station

The presenter says the nav station is squeezed aft: "a grown man can fit" but it is "not obviously an ideal nav station". He likes the forward cabin with a Pullman berth and, earlier in the tour, the chainplates that are visible and easy to inspect.

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Advice from John Kretschmer: the boat is built mostly by hand without interior moldings, with very few construction issues and a long thin keel and a rugged skeg-hung rudder. He says it carries its beam forward with full sections and on occasion will pound when punching upwind, and calls it not a great light-air boat but a good moderate-air and pretty good heavy-air boat.

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Kretschmer says the LRC tankage is a key feature: he puts the water tank at close to 200 or 180 gallons and the fuel tank at just over 200, and says it is nice to top off the water tank from the watermaker and know you are good for a long stretch.

warns⚙ nav station

The presenter finds the nav station pretty small, with no sitting headroom and extreme hull curvature in front of the seat, so it works for navigating but not computer work. She says the second aft head on a 40-footer is a compromise that shortens the settee and puts the nav station in an awkward place.

warns⚙ anchor chain locker

On the foredeck the presenter says the chain locker is not very deep, and with the windlass all the way forward the chain does not self-stow, so it has to be flaked out by hand. She likes the all-metal bowsprit with a wood anchor platform and the cutter rig with a self-tacking staysail.

warns⚙ bridgedeck⚙ in-mast furling

The presenter notes the boat has only a short, stubby bridgedeck rather than a full one, and says the recommendation is to put in a washboard at sea. She is on the fence about that and about the in-mast furling main, which she says lets you reef from the cockpit but adds mechanical failure risk. She has no first-hand experience with in-mast furling.

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The broker interviewed says the Caliber 40 is very robust and built extremely well, but an average sailing boat that does not go to windward well. He says a good one should be found for 135 to 165 thousand dollars and that the asking prices he sees are a little high, and that there are better boats (his opinion).