Montevideo Cutter

The Montevideo 43 Yacht has a reputation of a sailing yacht built for the tough Southern Hemisphere seas. This model is popular with sailors that want to sail between continents or around the world. Comments on sailing forums about the Montevideo 43 are universally positive and many owners have used the boats for long sailing voyages including circumnavigation. BAHATI started her 2^nd round the world adventure in 2006. She sailed back to Maine in 2011.

Lavranos designed the original rig for the boat and gave some ballasting advice. His own design, the Compass 47 was competing in the marketplace with the Monte and Scholtz was also building another design of his, the Tosca 36. At a later stage, the moulds passed to John Robertson Yachts, and Lavranos specified a sandwich hull laminate for them. Years later, Lavranos did a shallower "wingbulb" keel for a 3rd builder, MedMarine, who by then called her the Monte Carlo 43.

The keels were all (solid laminate) moulded fins, as part of the hullmoulding. The lead was then internally installed and glassed in place. Finally the transverse keel webs (floors) and mast step were glassed in to support everything. It is all solid fiberglass, so there are no keel-bolts.

BAHATI, which means “Good Fortune” in Swahili, was originally called WHISPER and was sailed by her first owners east-wise round the world and back to South Africa and then west-wise across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and north to Annapolis where she was sold in 2001. Next owners, from Vancouver, refit the boat (including the current in-boom furling system by Pro-Furl and all new standing rigging replaced by Steve Madden, the same rigger who had originally commissioned her in South Africa and is now based in Annapolis.) Steve told us when we met at Port Annapolis Marina, “If I were to pick an ideal boat for long-distance ocean cruising it would be the Montevideo!” He remembered her well from her early days in So Africa and showed us records he has kept from the first re-rig he did for her original owners on 1998.

In the fall of 2005 we moved BAHATI to Portland Yacht Services in Portland,Maine. Our more modern but equally seaworthy vessel underwent a complete refit before we set sail, including all new standing and running rigging, electronics, power, sails, completely re-bedded deck fittings, all new electrical and plumbing systems, and much rebuilt and some new woodwork and cabinetry in the capable, careful, & creative hands of the PYS crew. We have been blessed with a practically new and an extremely well-found boat to begin the trip of a lifetime! "