MatuaMai is a 1981 Serendipity 43 sailboat that was designed by Doug Peterson. The same designer as my last boat, the well-traveled Peterson 34 QUIVER, I found myself repeatedly drawn to Peterson designs, and to MatuaMai. I found the boat over the internet and bought her in San Pedro, CA in March of 2022. MatuaMai is hull #26 of 26 Serendipity 43’s built and is a semi-custom boat that was completed and launched more than 10 years after her hull was laid. Purchased as a hull, deck, rudder, etc in 1991 in Point Richmond, the boat was finished off and launched in Santa Cruz in November of 1992. She went on to have a long and successful career racing as ‘Samiko’ on San Francisco Bay, and then down in Santa Cruz before being sold and moved south in 2018.
To me, MatuaMai represents a solid 43-foot high performance cruiser with a nice interior that offers a lot of bang for buck. A relatively large boat with attractive lines, very sturdy offshore racing build quality and exceptional design and handling characteristics, MatuaMai turned out to be the coolest boat that I could afford, and something that I feel is a worthy candidate of investing a good bit of money into and turning into a high-performance cruising boat. Her original 38 hp Westerbeke wasn’t the selling point, nor were her obsolete electronics or lack of a windlass, solar power and autopilot. MatuaMai isn’t a cruising boat yet, but with a solid re-fit she should be an incredibly cool and capable boat that fits within my budget.
Custom built with a cruising keel that only draws 6’2″, the boat loses perhaps a slight bit of upwind performance compared to her sisterships and their 7’6″ keels, but she still proved quite successful on the San Francisco Bay ‘IOR Warhorse’ division during the 2000’s. The boat came with a lot of Dacron cruising sails and laminate racing sails, including spinnakers, and should hopefully get me a good number of miles before needing a huge investment in the sail inventory. At the current time, I am still located in Hawaii and the boat is in California so I can only sail it sporadically. In the Fall of 2022, I plan to add a hydraulic autopilot, solar power, pull the mast out and do some rigging/ instrument work, new electronics, safety gear, inflatable dinghy and windlass/ anchoring re-fit. As far as cruising boats are considered, she will still be quite basic but I plan to sail the boat in the Baja Haha ’22 and then out to Maui in somewhat of a delivery/ cruising mode. Once in Hawaii, the boat will be sailed frequently, and will likely include some charter work while planning our return to Fiji.
This page will eventually become a boat blog as the boat gets sailed, re-fit and we plan our first voyages!