Starboard Home is a forty foot sailboat built by Valiant Yachts. The
Valiant 40 was designed by Robert Perry and has established an extraordinary
record as one of the world's most decorated cruising boats. To learn
more about the Valiant 40, and other boats by Valiant, visit the Valiant
Owners Home Page (See Tom's article about on-board email) or the Valiant
Story.
Starboard Home was built in 1986 in Gordensville, Texas, 
and Tom and Peg
are her third owners. She is rigged as a cutter with roller furling headsail and
staysail and roller furling mainsail. With this rig the crew can reduce sail
from the safety of the cockpit at any time. Additionally, Peg and Tom have a
spinnaker for light air downwind sailing and a drifter for light air reaching.
They also have a storm sail which sets inside the staysail on its own removable
inner forestay for very heavy going.
To help steer the boat, they have both an
Alpha Autopilot (electric) and a Monitor wind vane self steerer. 
When the
wind dies down, Tom and Peg rely on their Universal/Kabota 4 cylinder 44 hp.
diesel motor, which has a tankage of 90 gallons diesel fuel. They carry 100
gallons of fresh water and have a water maker that converts sea water to fresh
water at the rate of 3 1/2 gallons per hour. The boat is equipped with 40 lbs.
of propane to fuel the galley stove/oven and the stern grill. There is a
12 cubic foot refrigerator and a six cubic foot freezer on board as well.
Starboard Home's electronic equipment includes radar, depth and
wind instruments, engine and 
battery monitoring, two VHF marine radios, both a
ham and a commercial single side band (SSB) radio, two on-board portable
computers, chart plotting software, and satellite positioning receivers (two).
For the crew's comfort, the boat is equipped with a diesel heater and an
air conditioning unit. Safety equipment includes a four man cannister life raft,
a Satellite Emergency Position Beacon, and enough flares for a Fourth of July
celebration. In addition, Peg painstakingly stripped, stained and
varnished all of the interior woodwork to restore it to original condition, as
shown in the adjacent photo.
This page has been visited a total of
times since 03/12/2000. Last page update:
03/12/2000.
