Malö 40

2006 April 6
By Robert H. Perry

Bluewater cruiser

Malö sent me a good package on this new model including hull lines. It's nice to have real design documents to work with for the review. The designer of this new Malö and all the other current Malös is Leif Angermark. The Malös are designed as true offshore-capable cruising boats. They have resisted the trend to join the look-alike styling craze and to my eye they are handsome boats.

Today almost everyone wants a light boat with a huge rig. It looks good on paper and light boats with big rigs can be fun to sail at certain times. But consider that a cruising boat between 40 feet LOA and 60 feet LOA will be perceived to need to carry the same cruising gear. We could run down the list but I think you know it by now and it includes big battery banks, gen sets, inverters, watermakers, copious amounts of anchor chain, etc. It's a long list. I'm not saying you need all that gear but over the last 20 years most cruising sailors want that gear and find it essential if they are to be comfortable and safe. It's a problem to find places for all that gear on a 60-footer, but it's an even greater challenge to find the hull volume to install and then float all that gear on a 40-footer. What this means is that a fully loaded 40-foot cruising boat will be heavy no matter what the designer had in mind for a displacement. The best thing for the designer to do is to design in that displacement from the start.

The hull lines for the 40-foot Malö show a very conventional hull shape with deep arc-like sections amidships that extend to the stern and fair forward to a deeply V-ed entry. There is a pronounced knuckle at the cutwater and the V-ed forward sections reduce the appearance of rocker. The D/L is 222. This design will sink an inch in the water for approximately every 1,300 pounds of weight you add, and if you assume at full loaded condition the boat will sink three inches, you end up with a loaded displacement of 22,860 pounds and a D/L of approximately 260. (I added four inches of DWL to account for the immersed overhangs.) Now go back 30 years and you will see that this number has not changed much for a real cruising boat. The L/B for the Malö is 3.23. You can get the hull in what they call the "classic" configuration and this features a traditionally raked transom. Or you can go with the "standard" hull with a reverse transom and a boarding platform. The "classic" hull is 20 inches longer in LOA and looks better to my eye but those boarding platforms are inviting.

You can get the Malö 40 with two heads or one head. You have your choice of a settee berth to starboard in the saloon or chairs. I like the single head version with the settee berth. This way your owner's stateroom forward is much more spacious and the settee berth can double as a sea berth. I'd like to see a pilot berth on at least one side of the saloon but you can see that this is impossible with the chainplates arranged as they are.

The rig is very standard and has an SA/D of 17.55. This is sedate by today's inflated rig standards but it will work and you won't have to reef in 20 knots apparent. I like the way the mast is stepped well forward in this design. This mast placement and rig should give the 40 a nice neutral helm in most conditions. My philosophy is that if you want some weather helm it's no problem finding it. But you can't always get rid of it if you have too much. It's faster to have some helm when you are on the wind but for cruisers sailing short-handed a neutral helm can be very convenient and easy on the autopilot. The mainsheet traveler is mounted on top of the cockpit arch. There is a provision for a staysail to be flown. The head of this staysail is almost at the hounds and the inner stay is detachable.

With 120 gallons of water and 68 gallons of fuel the Malö 40 is well set up for long-distance cruising.