Passoa 46/7 Sailboat Review, Specs, and Listings

Design and Construction

Garcia builds the Passoa only in marine-grade 5086 H3 aluminum alloy, with robust plate work that runs 10mm thick down low and tapers as it climbs the hull anchor. The French builder's construction is integral in the fullest sense: fuel and water tanks, including their baffles, are built into the bilges and form a series of collision compartments, while 11,000 pounds of iron pigs form the fixed ballast, sheathed in glass and sealed inside bilge tanks with an insulating tar bed chosen for galvanic security over lead. Chainplates are not bolt-on afterthoughts but are backed underneath by curved I-beams spanning the hull's midsection, strong enough to lift the boat. Aboard most examples an integral solid-aluminum stern arch sits abaft the cockpit, and some carry a smaller forward arch that makes a natural foundation for a dodger and mainsheet traveler.

Keel, Board, and Seaworthiness

Unlike American keel-centerboarders, the Passoa uses integral centerboards dropping straight from the bilges, paired with a very shallow spade rudder and a retractable daggerboard aft between rudder and propeller to aid directional grip. With boards up she draws only 3 feet 5 inches, making her a genuine gunkholing and beachable hull that stays upright when aground and can be driven onto a shore. The internal ballast and wide hull form support self-righting behavior and a theoretical angle of vanishing stability near 110 degrees; with the board raised she skids off breaking waves that would trip a fixed-keel boat anchor. Several Passoas have circumnavigated and cruised high latitudes with no record of significant capsize problems.

Rig and Performance

The standard cutter rig sits on a relatively short deck-stepped mast just under 60 feet from the waterline, carrying 797 square feet of sail and yielding a sail-area-to-displacement character suited to loaded cruising. The 38-foot waterline and 26,200-pound light displacement (32,000 loaded) give a hull speed around 8 knots. The shallow board-up draft and self-righting ballast plan let her shift between coastal wandering and ocean work without compromise to the core structure.

Accommodations

The standard layout places two small staterooms aft, a large master stateroom forward of the galley and saloon, and a large forepeak ahead of a watertight collision bulkhead. The galley and saloon live within the short raised trunk cabin, and on observed boats this is the only area with full standing headroom over six feet. The arrangement trades full-headroom volume for a low, seaworthy trunk — a conscious cruising choice rather than a deficit.

The Verdict

The Passoa 46/7 is a thoughtfully engineered aluminum voyager whose construction details — integral tankage, bilge-backed chainplates, glass-sheathed iron ballast — answer the demands of serious cruising. She is not a volume-production comfort boat but a purposeful, beachable, self-righting passagemaker with a proven offshore record.

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