Design and Construction
The hull is solid hand-laid fiberglass, more than an inch thick at the top of the keel and holding a half-inch laminate to the gunwale, deliberately avoiding the sandwich cores common among 1970s and 80s contemporaries in favor of sheer laminate longevity solid hand-laid fiberglass. Older boats used polyester resin; newer ones moved to vinylester. Lead ballast is encapsulated inside the keel rather than bolted on, producing an appendage that can take a head-on hit on a coral head or submerged rock without opening the hull. The hull-deck joint in the older boats uses a bedded fiberglass flange with full-length stainless-steel straps, and the teak toe rail and genoa tracks are through-bolted with those bolts tapped into the straps themselves. Decks on older Masons have marine plywood cores; where teak decking was laid over the glass, its screws descend into that core. Interior construction and furniture are excellent, with tank mounts, floors, frames, bulkheads, and engine beds built heavy to the point of robustness, and early-model joinery is woody and dark teak of a grade rarely seen in modern production boats.
Rig and Handling
The Mason 43 was primarily a cutter, though a staysail-ketch version was offered and proved popular with shorthanded couples for breaking the rig into smaller, manageable pieces. The cutter's 899 square feet of sail outperforms the ketch to windward by a quarter to half a knot, while reaching and running the ketch gains through the mizzen staysail's added area; in strong breeze the ketch must drop the mizzen to control weather helm and the cutter must reef. Both tack through 85 degrees, widening to an effective 95 degrees once the hull's five degrees of leeway are counted. Under sail she is a surprisingly good performer: a 6.1-knot average to windward in 8 to 25 knots, 6.5 knots running before steady trades, and 150-mile days without strain, though a 200-miler is beyond her. Her full keel gives immense directional stability and tracks well off the wind up to her 7.5-knot theoretical hull speed before going squirrely, but it also lengthens the turning circle and adds wetted surface, making her less responsive in light air and harder to wrestle in tight marinas. The rudder sits well forward by modern standards, so the turning radius is large, the stern follows the prop rather than the rudder when backing, and in a quartering sea that small, forward rudder struggles to swing the bow out of a broach. She carries a significant prop walk in reverse that demands planning at the dock.
Accommodations
For a boat with only a 31-foot-3-inch waterline, the below-decks layout is expansive, offering a lot of hull volume for stowage and well suited to a cruising couple or a family with small children. Good double cabins sit fore and aft, with a reasonable pilot berth in the saloon; five bunks can stay made up while cruising, and with four aboard nobody sleeps in the saloon. The companionway is shifted off center to starboard, and the aft cabin is among the finest ever built — completely open to the saloon yet closable by a real door, with a full bulkhead at the head of both bunks, its own hanging locker, ample cupboards, and an excellent starboard sea berth. The cockpit is necessarily shallow because the after cabin needs headroom beneath it; owners single out that cockpit as the most criticized design feature of the boat, though period reviews also note it is deep and well protected for offshore duty.
Known Issues
The engine is mounted below the saloon floor and well below the waterline, which makes it hard to service — impossible when hot — and creates a flooding threat with back-siphoning potential through the cooling loop. In earlier models the furniture was built in over the plumbing and wiring, so troubleshooting and repair are difficult without dismantling joinery. The plywood-cored decks of older boats are vulnerable where teak deck screws penetrate into the core: moisture enters the laminate and core over time and gradually rots both. The remedy is to infuse resin into the punky areas and re-screw and seal the soft deck sections.
Refits and Ownership
Pacific Asian Enterprises kept ownership of the molds and supervised every construction detail of new boats, which helps explain the consistency buyers encounter decades on. The thick solid laminate makes the hull a strong candidate for a peel-and-epoxy treatment should osmosis appear. Loaded with cruising gear, anchors, spares, and full tanks, a 43 will displace close to 30,000 pounds against a designed 23,860, and that mass — paired with a 37.6 percent ballast ratio — lets her punch through head seas that stop lighter boats and delivers a slow, predictable motion that wears out a crew far less quickly.
The Verdict
The Mason 43 is a serious offshore passage maker built to a standard that later production cruisers rarely match, rewarding owners who value safety, joinery, and sea-kindly motion over marina agility or light-air speed.
Pros
- Encapsulated lead keel and solid-glass hull tolerant of groundings and collisions
- Expansive, well-finished interior with a standout aft cabin and five usable bunks
- Sea-kindly, directionally stable, and a capable 150-mile-day ocean crosser
Cons
- Shallow, much-criticized cockpit constrained by after-cabin headroom
- Engine buried below the waterline, hard to service and a flooding risk
- Plywood-cored older decks rot where teak screws penetrate; early joinery hides systems
