Design and Construction
The 240 carries a solid fiberglass hull beneath a wing keel, with a beam of 8.25 feet and a displacement of 3,600 pounds balanced by 1,200 pounds of lead ballast. That 33 percent ballast ratio, paired with a length-to-beam ratio of 2.98, gives her a proportionately wide, low-slung body for the era. The wing keel is the headline: dependent on load, draft runs just 2.66 to 2.96 feet, letting the boat slide into shallow marinas that swallow deeper-finned contemporaries. Her wetted surface measures about 172 square feet, and the immersion rate of 597 pounds per inch tells you how little she sinks under gear and crew.
Rig and Handling
She is a masthead sloop, and the rig is where the design gets interesting. With the ISO reference sail the sail-area-to-displacement ratio is 17.0, climbing to 20.1 with a 135 percent genoa. YachtDatabase's review notes she carries more rig than 100 percent of similar sailboats, labeling her significantly overrigged. The halyard and control-line schedule is thorough for the size: mainsail, jib, and spinnaker halyards all run 64.5 feet at 5/16 inch, while sheets and the 61.4-foot mainsheet are 3/8 inch. That overdriven sail plan on a 178 displacement-length ratio hull — categorized among light racers — suggests a boat built to feel lively rather than docile.
Performance Profile
The numbers paint a specific picture. Theoretical hull speed is 6.1 knots, and the Motion Comfort Ratio sits at 15.2, modest for offshore smoothness but typical of a light coastal racer. The capsize screening value of 2.15 means she would not qualify for ocean races under that metric. Read together, the light displacement, wide beam, and tall overdriven rig point to a daysailer and short-course racer, not a voyager.
Accommodations
No interior arrangement, berth count, or tankage figures are published for this model. What can be said is geometric: at 24.58 feet overall with an 8.25-foot beam and a wing keel robbing little interior depth, the platform is compact by nature. The cabin plan is best confirmed aboard a specific example rather than asserted from missing data.
Known Issues
The wing keel's shallow draft invites grounding in unfamiliar shoals, a user-risk rather than a manufacturing fault. The overdriven rig places higher loads on chainplates and deck hardware than a conservatively rigged 24-footer would see, yet no attendant failures appear in service histories.
The Verdict
The O'Day 240 is a purpose-built light racer with a shallow-draft wing keel and an unusually powerful rig for her length. She trades offshore credentials for dock-access flexibility and on-the-wind sparkle, and her late-eighties Hunt & Associates pedigree places her at the tail of the O'Day Corp. era before the brand's molds scattered. For a sailor wanting a trailerable, marina-friendly daysailer with race potential, she is a coherent design.
Pros
- Wing keel holds draft to under three feet, opening shallow marinas
- Overrigged masthead sloop with genoa drives a 20.1 sail-area-to-displacement ratio
- Light 3,600-pound displacement and 33 percent ballast ratio for responsive handling
Cons
- Capsize screening value of 2.15 excludes ocean-race eligibility
- Modest 15.2 Motion Comfort Ratio limits offshore smoothness
- Cabin accommodation details absent from published data
