Dufour 40 Sailboats for Sale

Layouts on the Used Market

The Dufour 40 was sold with three interior layout choices and later described with four permutations around a fixed central area of galley, saloon, nav desk, and aft head. On the used market, owner three-cabin arrangements dominate, offering either two heads or one, while two-stateroom, single-head versions are also available. A frequent permutation gives up the starboard aft berth for a large storage compartment, and forward buyers choose between a Pullman double and a V-berth that includes a second head. Ex-charter boats often retain the higher-berth-count plans, so a three-cabin, two-head example is the likeliest find.

Equipment and Common Upgrades

Most used Dufour 40s carry an autopilot, chartplotter, teak decks, spinnaker or asymmetric spinnaker, bimini, cockpit shower, and hot water as standard brokerage fit. Often-seen additions include a life raft, solar, radar, and AIS. Less common but worth noting as owner upgrades are a dodger, a short-handed sail-handling setup, an inverter, and an EPIRB. For buyer consequence, the power-and-energy cluster (solar, inverter) matters most on boats that have left charter use, while canvas and sail-handling gear (bimini, asymmetric spinnaker, short-handed setup) signals how the prior owner sailed her. Navigation kit (chartplotter, radar, AIS) is usually intact; a missing life raft or EPIRB should be treated as a refit cost, not a defect.

What to Inspect

Check whether the factory-provided bow roller and windlass were actually fitted to your candidate, since the surveyed boat left the line with them uninstalled anchor. The deck is a resin-transfer-molded cored laminate above the waterline over a single-skin hull below, and the cockpit sole hides a hatch giving simple access to the steering quadrant — operate it to confirm quadrant and cable condition anchor. Toerails run aft with stanchions moved outboard, so inspect the rail and stanchion bases for cracking where loads concentrate.

Availability and Buyer's Takeaway

Typical markets for the Dufour 40 are Spain, France, Italy, Greece, the United States, and the United Kingdom. For a buyer, the short list is: confirm the keel draft (5-foot 3-inch or 6-foot 11-inch) against your cruising ground; verify the forward windlass provision; check the cockpit-sole steering access; prefer a three-cabin, two-head owner layout unless charter history is acceptable; and budget for a life raft or EPIRB if absent. The boat remains a sensible performance-cruiser purchase where these regions concentrate supply.