Design and Construction
The hull is hand-laid fiberglass with a solid laminate. The fiberglass-sandwich deck reduces thermal transfer, which the original reporting says improves the climate below. An iron fin keel provides ballast, while the teak interior reflects Scandinavian practice of the period.
Boo Marine, the marque’s predecessor, was founded in Sweden in the late 1960s by Ingrid and Bengt Jansson. Qviberg’s work on the Arcona 32 in 1982 began his long design association with Arcona.
Early hulls used a heavily reinforced fiberglass grid to distribute keel and mast loads. They did not have the steel chassis adopted for later Arcona models.
Rig, Performance, and Handling
The Arcona 32 carries a fractional rig. According to one database comparison, she is slightly overrigged, carrying more rig than 54 percent of comparable sailboats. That suggests a bias toward performance rather than bare-minimum cruising trim.
Using the ISO 8666 reference sail, her sail-area-to-displacement ratio is 17.0. It rises to 19.6 with a 135 percent genoa. A displacement-length ratio of 222 places the boat among moderate racers.
The capsize screening value of 2.03 indicates that she wouldn’t be accepted to participate in ocean races. Draft varies from about 1.74 to 1.84 meters, depending on load—enough to preserve a useful keel profile while allowing access to most marinas.
With a Volvo Penta 2002 engine and saildrive transmission, the reported speed is 7.5 knots, compared with a theoretical displacement-hull maximum of 6.9 knots. That performance claim applies to this particular engine configuration.
Accommodations
At 31.5 feet long with a 10.5-foot beam, the Arcona 32 has a conventional cruising interior for her class. The teak joinery gives the living space the character of a period Scandinavian layout, though the available reporting doesn’t provide a quantified accommodation plan.
Verdict
The Arcona 32 is a compact, mildly performance-oriented Swedish fractional sloop. Her hand-laid solid hull and sandwich deck reflect early-1980s construction practice, while the reinforced fiberglass grid in early boats handles keel and mast loads without the steel chassis found in later Arcona models.
She is slightly overrigged for her size and configured more as a moderate racer than an offshore campaigner. Even so, her modest draft and teak interior keep her firmly in cruiser-racer territory. Low production numbers call for careful shopping, but the design remains coherent and well resolved for its brief.
Pros
- Slightly overrigged fractional sloop with a moderate-racer displacement-length ratio
- Sandwich deck reported to improve the cabin climate
- Draft of about 1.74–1.84 m suits most marinas
- Teak interior and solid, hand-laid hull
Cons
- Capsize screening value excludes her from ocean-race acceptance
- Fewer than 200 built, limiting the number of available examples
- Reported engine speed applies to a specific Volvo Penta 2002 and saildrive configuration
