Price Reduction – 1998 Victoria 38

JOCARA is an elegant and enormously capable Chuck Paine designed, hand-crafted, UK-built bluewater cruising yacht with incredible 42% ballast ratio, delivered in 1998 and with just two loving owners since new.

FURTHER BROKER’S COMMENTS:

One of just a handful of Victoria 38’s built between 1997 and 1999 to designs by Chuck Paine and with interiors by Bob Hathaway, JOCARA has had just two loving owners since new. Commissioned for experienced owners with a semi-custom build including Kevlar bow reinforcement, cutter rig, shoal draft keel and upgraded engine, JOCARA was used lightly in her first ownership, laid up ashore under cover every winter and seeing use around UK and Northern France waters. After six enjoyable years of ownership, her owners stepped up to a ‘larger model’ with a Hoek 50 and Grabau International’s Alex Grabau sold her to her current Southern Ireland-based owners in the December of 2004. The following seasons have seen JOCARA used for cruising around Southern Ireland and sailed around Irish sea and up to Scotland with a light refit in 2022 including new topsides paint, stripped antifouling, Sikkens, canvas work, stove and so on. After 20 years of enjoyable and 100% reliable ownership, JOCARA’s owners are now looking to step up in size, so a unique opportunity now exists to acquire one of these exceedingly rare, utterly capable, and timelessly beautiful Chuck Paine designed bluewater cruisers.

JOCARA’s specification highlights include:-
• Chuck Paine design (shared with Morris 38)
• Solid laminate GRP construction with Kevlar reinforcement to bow areas
• Shoal draft lead ballast keel with skeg-hung rudder
• Upgraded 40hp Yanmar engine fitted in 2015
• Professionally repainted with International 2-part paints in 2022
• Teak laid side decks
• Selden sloop/cutter rig with keel-stepped mast
• Hood sails
• Yankee and staysail
• MPG and telescopic spinnaker pole
• Lewmar self-tailing winch package
• Edson wheel steering system
• Lofrans electric anchor windlass fitted in 2023
• Sprayhood
• American Cherry interior joinery
• Up to 7 berths in two double cabins plus saloon
• Dickinson Newport diesel-fired heating stove in saloon
• Pressurised hot & cold fresh water supplied with additional manual fresh water supply to galley and heads
• Heads with holding tank
• Gimballed stove with oven and grill
• Raymarine/Raytheon/Autohelm navigation instruments with radar, chart plotter and autopilot
• Icom VHF with DSC
• Outboard engine for tender
• Liferaft

Irish-registered, EU and UK VAT paid, JOCARA can be viewed afloat in Carlingford via prior appointment.

OWNER’S COMMENTS:

We have logged more than 12,000 nautical miles in JOCARA over the past twenty years, mainly sailing as a couple. Our cruises have brought us to every part of Ireland, to Scotland’s wonderful west coast and islands, to Wales, South West England and Brittany. JOCARA sails very well, usually averaging 6 knots when on passage. On this year’s cruise to the Orkney Islands, we once touched 8.2 knots on a beat in moderate wind. In strong winds up to F8, she is very comfortable with the staysail and double reefed mainsail. Fitting a 40 HP engine as specified by Chuck Paine transformed JOCARA’s performance under engine. She was a beautiful boat when we purchased her and we have done our best to maintain her good looks as she aged. The Dickinson stove is a real comfort and joy when anchored or in port following a wet or cold sail. JOCARA has looked after us well and given us great adventure and enjoyment. We will part from her with heavy hearts.

ABOUT THE VICTORIA 38:

The Victoria 38 was a final collaboration with Morris Yachts and Victoria Marine created from splashes of the Morris 38. Utilising a Chuk Paine designed keel, the Victoria 38 was the first Victoria to use a bolted-on outside lead casting rather than the inside ballast used on all previous Victorias. This made the Victoria 38 one of the stiffest sailing yachts of her type.

The interior was essentially a scaled up Victoria 34. Each one was custom designed by Victoria’s in-house designer Bob Hathaway. Unlike the earlier Victorias no fiberglass liners were used anywhere, which lowered the centre of gravity of the yacht. It also lowered the profit margins to nil. The absence of liners gave the Victoria 38 an entirely custom feel, but added significantly to its building cost.

In deference to British tastes Victoria Marine specified a true British cutter rig for this yacht. The foretriangle consisted of a very high cut “Yankee” jib combined with a very low footed staysail that was sheeted each time you tacked, making it much more efficient than anything that would be self-tending. Almost half of this sail’s area was beyond the overlap of the Yankee.

Regrettably the Victoria 38 was the kiss of death for Victoria Marine Ltd. The quality was too good for a market that was more interested in lower prices.

MANUFACTURER HISTORY:

The story of how the Frances 26 came to the UK involves Victoria Marine Ltd., it’s Managing Director, Peter Gregory, and Bernard Hayman, an ex-editor of Yachting World.

Towards the end of the 1970s, Bernard Hayman, an ex-editor of Yachting World Magazine wrote of a very simple cruising yacht which had just appeared in the United States. He considered that the new arrival displayed ideals which had been all but lost on this side of the Atlantic. The yacht that Bernard Hayman was referring to was the Morris Frances 26. Through Bernard Hayman, Peter Gregory of Victoria Marine Ltd contacted Chuck Paine and so brought the Frances to the UK. The Frances was built and sold in the UK by Victoria Yachts, who fitted out the mouldings laid up for them by Northshore. The company was based at Warsash on the Hamble at the Stone Pier Yard.

In 1986 Chuck Paine designed the Victoria 34 exclusively for Victoria Marine. Looking very similar to his equally seaworthy Bowman 40, she had a fin and skeg underwater profile, rather than the full keel of her predecessors. She could be rigged as either a masthead sloop or a cutter with a short bowsprit and had berths below for five or six. There was a V-berth forecabin, forward heads, convertible U-shaped dinette, a quarter berth/chart table to starboard and a good-sized galley to port. The Ministry of Defence was so taken by the Victoria 34 that they eventually put 15 of them into their sail training fleet (the Joint Services Adventurous Sail Training Association) and a further six were built for individual regiments (at the Kiel Yacht Club ) and sail training organisations. In these hands they were truly tested and came through with flying colours. They have calculated that these boats have survived 10 times more wear and tear than the average privately owned boat.

The last design to be produced was the Victoria 38, developed from the Morris 36/38. The first boat was sold from plans after the London Boat Show in 1996, but she did not actually go into production until 1997 when three orders had been confirmed. The Victoria 38 was a significant development of the Morris boat with considerable modifications made to the hull shape, a new keel, rudder and deck moulding. She was a more performance orientated design than her predecessors with a deep, bulbed keel and a powerful masthead sloop or cutter rig. Her extra length made a larger forecabin possible, together with separate aft cabin and aft heads compartment.

Sadly, in 1999, with a brand new Chuck Paine design in development – the Victoria 31 intended to replace the Victoria 30 – the builders succumbed to the pressures of trying to compete with mass production by European yards and closed, ending production of some of the finest cruising yachts of the last 20 or more years.

1998 Victoria 38 ‘JOCARA’ for sale – Now asking Euro 99,500 EU/UK VAT paid – full details here

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