SHOGUN 43, A DREAM BOAT

Dreamboats are not the same for all sailors, and what is a dream for one, just does not make any sense to another, depending on their requirements for the ideal cruising sailboat. Most will value cruising amenities and interior volume over sail ability and sail fun. For those, this will not be a dreamboat and they will have difficulty understanding how this can be a dream sailboat for anybody, except a racer.

And then there are the few to whom this boat offers enough cruising amenities for a couple, with a spare cabin to be used occasionally by guests, and another for storage and being satisfied that requirement, all priorities go to having fun while sailing, to performance, and to beauty, the one that kind of makes you proud of owning a truly beautiful and exceptional thing, being it a car, a motorcycle, a jewel or a house. 

Beauty is a value in itself and in regards to sailboats and cars it is related to speed, fast is almost always beautiful, from the fast (in their time) J Class, to contemporary racing boats, and no doubt, Shogun 43 shapes have speed as a direct function.

All on the outside is speed-oriented, not so in the interior where a naked spartan racing interior gives place to an almost luxurious treatment of surfaces, offering a cozy and comfortable interior.

Of course, this is a semi-custom boat that can be more specified for racing (where the interior will be very spartan to save all the possible weight) or more as a cruising boat, which eventually will make some races (cruiser-racer), and in that case, the interior will be the one in the drawings, the bowsprit will be redesigned to offer an anchor stand, a furler will be installed for the forward sails and, for the ones that desire it, a carbon boom furler for the main.

Clearly, the first produced boat is racing-oriented, and maybe that is why they did not show the interior (or because it is not finished), but what they show is more than what I would have expected.

I never thought this boat would see the light of day because today very expensive boats are almost exclusively offered starting at the 50ft range, and there is some logic in that. The ones that buy them want to spend money on something that is impressive, and that gives them status, and a relatively small yacht like the Shogun 43, costing the same as a luxury 50ft, will only impress the ones that truly know and like fast sailboats and very fast performance cruisers, and those are few. 

Most people will not even understand why the boat has such a high price, which will be  940 000 euros, at the shipyard, without taxes, sails, or electronics.

I had already posted about the Shogun 43, when it was a project, and about its bigger sister, the Shogun 50, already on the water, and if you want to know more about the dimensions and comments about the hull and performances, have a look here, because I am not going to repeat what I have already said:

https://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2021/05/shogun-43-as-fast-as-it-looks.html

https://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2020/03/shogun-50-and-shogun-426.html

https://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2019/03/shogun-50.html

Personally, I find the 43 more interesting than the 50. An extreme 50ft performance cruiser-racer of this type can hardly be sailed solo, or with a short crew, unless we are talking about professional racing sailors, or extremely good and fit racing amateur sailors, and even so far from the potential the boat will have if sailed by a crew, but the Shogun 43 is another story, and the size of the sails makes it manageable by a good sailor, used to sail performance cruisers solo, and more so by a duo.

The running rigging, which can be set for a crew, can also be set for short-handed sailing, and this boat should not be much more difficult to sail solo than my own sailboat, a Comet 41s, which has not a very different sail area, even if a bit less (107m2 to 114m2), more 1.900kg of displacement, but less ballast (2.500kg to 2690kg) and much less draft, on a much less efficient keel (2.20 to 2.40 or 2.70m), for a much shorter water length (10.90 to 12.30m) and curiously more beam (3.92 to 3.70m).

Comet 41S

It would heel more than my sailboat, but after 20º of heel it will become increasingly stiffer, to become very stiff at 30º of heel, knifing water and waves as only a narrow boat can do. It will heel more because it has less beam and less displacement, but due to a huge ballast (43.6% B/D), on a very efficient carbon keel with a lead torpedo (2.40 or 2.70m draft), when heeled it will be rock solid, giving a great sense of security, not to mention the huge safety stability, the big AVS, and the very small inverted stability.

Pogo 12.50

My forward sail is a big 135% genoa, that is bigger (52 to 49m2) than the (big) Jib used on Shogun (due to a mast pulled aft), mounted on a self-tacking rail, and that will make the Shogun easier to handle and to reef. The more obvious difference is the size of the main (55 to 65m2), due to the bigger size of the mast and boom, but a big main, if with well-mounted reefs (or a boom furler), is easier to handle and reef than a big genoa, and contrary to the genoa does not lose performance when reefed.

In this case, assuming that the ballast is the same for the two keel versions (2660kg), contrary to what I usually prefer, I would choose the version with the smaller draft, not only because it offers more cruising possibilities, in what regards ports and anchorages, but because in a relative narrowboat, a huge RM coming from the keel, not compensated by a huge hull form stability (large beam), can be tricky to handle, especially downwind, or with waves and little wind, inducing roll movements.

Anyway, the stiffness provided by that hull and a 43.6% ballast, with the ballast on a 2.4m keel, will be already plenty big, and more than enough. More will only be useful for racing with a good crew.

However it should be said that a boat that sails with considerable heel is not for all, some love it and some hate it, and it is certainly not the best and most comfortable cruiser to cook, eat or sleep while sailing (out of downwind sailing) but it should also be said that it is much more comfortable and safer to steer this boat with heel than a large beamed boat like Pogo or one of the many cruisers that today have large beams, with all beam pulled aft. I am not referring to safety, as in what regards stability, but in what regards the safety of the one that is steering the boat.

On those boats, when the boat is deeply heeled it is scary to look at the other end of the steep transom while being seated on the opposite side, and I imagine that I would not be the only one that in demanding conditions, had been thrown off by a wave, to the other side of the boat, dragging sadly my ass over the cockpit floor.

Not a nice sensation, but my boat has not the max beam pulled aft and it has only a 3.90 beam, while a smaller Pogo 12.50 has all beam aft and a 4.50m beam and then the fall will be much bigger. It is a bit scary to sail fast, close upwind in that type of boat, even if they lose very little if they open a bit more, and sail less close to the wind, with less heel, but then there is the lost pleasure of really sailing very close to the wind.

Anyway, a Pogo, or any fast boat with a large beam and a considerable ballast, has only the advantage of sailing very close to the wind if there are no waves. With waves, the wave drag (and pounding) of a Pogo will be so big that the boat will be faster with a much more open course, where it would sail with more speed.

The Shogun 43 is all about sailing fast upwind and its small beam and very narrow entries will allow it to knife the waves, passing with little drag and no pounding, really close to the wind. The Shogun 43 will be very fast in all circumstances but will be excelling sailing upwind, and on light winds where the performance should be phenomenal, making wind and sailing much above wind speed.

I love the Shogun 43 and it is on my very short list of dreamboats, but then, what I like to do is to sail for 4 to 8 hours each day, stopping in a nice cove to enjoy life at anchor, have a swim, a nice dinner on the boat (or at a beach restaurant) and to sleep without worries.

Not that sometimes I don't sail for 24 hours or even 3 days non-stop, but that usually happens 3 or 4 times a year, and does not justify a more comfortable boat to sail, easier on the autopilot, and one that sails with less heel. I would not trade the superior fun while sailing most of the time, for convenience on some relatively few occasions.

And for short 4 to 8 hours jumps, there is nothing more pleasant than sailing a boat like this, taking into consideration that if you don't sail in the trade winds, most of the time, you will sail upwind, especially in a boat with such a great ability to make wind.

To cross oceans in the trade winds the Shogun 43 is not the most comfortable boat due to a bigger heel than others, a heel that is always uncomfortable while cooking, eating and sleeping, and if that would be the type of sailing and cruising I would enjoy more to do, I would prefer a boat like the Pogo 44 or the JPK45, but that does not mean that a younger, and more radical sailor, would not prefer the Shogun 43 over those boats for doing that. 

I know a good sailor that sails extensively and crossed the Atlantic several times, always very fast, always in a narrow sailboat (Luffe 37 - Faurby 363), outsailing many bigger sailboats, and he sails that type of boat, not because by chance he has one, but because he prefers them, and the way they sail.

The Shogun 43, in regards to cruising, offers a very nice and comfortable interior, a 2.40m draft, that will allow it to enter most ports and marinas not constituting a problem to stay on anchor in almost all anchorages, and a two-rudder setup, that will come in very handy when med mooring, because most of the time the depth at the rudder is one meter less than the depth at the keel, and a deep spade rudder, almost the length of the keel, can be a liability, touching ground first, before the keel.

I will not enter detailed comments about the boat's dimensions and characteristics, having done it already here:

https://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2021/05/shogun-43-as-fast-as-it-looks.html

But it should be pointed out that this is an all-carbon boat, including furniture, that has a layer of oak veneer over it to give it a warmer feeling. The building quality is similar to the one of a top racing boat, being the deck and hull glassed together, forming a very strong closed shell.

With all hull, structure, keel support, and bulkheads made in carbon sandwich, with some monolithic small areas, with carbon spars, the Shogun 43 can be very light (6 100kg), and yet very strong. Unfortunately, the cost of producing a boat like this, without any compromise regarding cutting corners, is very high, and even if the Shogun 43 will be a dream boat for many, few will be able to afford it.