Review of Grand Soleil 43

Basic specs.

The Grand Soleil 43 is a large sailboat designed by the Slovenian maritime architect bureau J&J Design in the late nineties. The Grand Soleil 43 is built by the Italian yard Cantiere del Pardo S.p.A..

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Hull

The hull is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season.

Interior

The boat is equipped with 6/8 berths.

Keel

The boat can only enter major marinas as the draft is about 2.10 - 2.20 meter (6.89 - 7.19 ft) dependent on the load. See immersion rate below.

Engine

Grand Soleil 43 is typically equipped with various engines at 40.0 hp (29 kW).

Sailing characteristics

This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.

Stability and Safety

What is Capsize Screening Formula (CSF)?

The capsize screening value for Grand Soleil 43 is 1.97, indicating that this boat could - if evaluated by this formula alone - be accepted to participate in ocean races.

Immersion rate

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for Grand Soleil 43 is about 352 kg/cm, alternatively 1976 lbs/inch.
Meaning: if you load 352 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 1976 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

Sailing statistics

This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.

L/B (Length Beam Ratio)

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

The l/b ratio for Grand Soleil 43 is 3.31.

Compared with other similar sailboats it is more spacy than 54% of all other designs. It seems that the designer has chosen a slightly more spacy hull design.

SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)

SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)
Indicates how fast the boat is in light wind:
- Cruising Boats have ratios 10-15
- Cruiser-Racers have ratios 16-20
- Racers have ratios above 20
- High-Performance Racers have ratios above 24
Sail-area/displacement ratio (SA/D ratio): 23.43

Maintenance

Rig

If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.

**Guiding dimensions of running rig**
Usage	Length		Diameter
Jib sheet	13.2 m	(43.3 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)
Genoa sheet	13.2 m	(43.3 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)
Mainsheet	33.0 m	(108.3 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)
Spinnaker sheet	29.0 m	(95.3 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)

Boat owner's ideas

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

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Finally

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References

[Ref 1]: ISO 8666 Small craft — Principal data.
[Ref 3]: ISO 12215-5 Small craft — Hull construction and scantlings.