Wild Fire

Cruiser-Racer Wild Fire

This boat has good all-around performance upwind and downwind, in both light and heavy air. Despite a wide maximum beam, the boats ends are fairly well balanced, and the rudder was deep enough to stay in the water in all but a flat-out broach.

You’ll find a number of different keel and rig combinations in the C&C 40. As designed, the boat has a high-aspect-ratio fin keel drawing 7 feet, with an I (height of foretriangle) dimension of 53 feet. This configuration is reasonable for all-around performance, but is a little lacking in power for lighter air. A rig 2 feet taller was introduced, and to increase sail-carrying ability, it was usually coupled with a 4-inch deep, 300-pound lead shoe bolted to the bottom of the keel. Stability of the two versions was virtually identical: The addition to righting moment from the shoe was almost exactly offset by the heeling moment of the taller rig.

The tall-rig, deep-keel version is on the average about three seconds per mile faster than the standard rig, standard keel model.

Note: WILDFIRE has the Deep Keel and Tall Rig

The C&C 40-2 is a completely different design from the earlier C&C 40.

Disp: 17985 lbs./8157 kg.

Ballast: 8795 lbs./3989 kg.

Deeper Keel: 7.5'/2.29m

TALL RIG:

I: 55.00'/16.76m

J: 16.60'/5.06m

P: 48.50'/14.78m

E: 13.30'/ 4.05m

Tot. SA(100%): 779 sq.ft./72.37 m2

C&C never skimped on the interiors of its racer/ cruisers, and the 40 is no exception. The interior is built up of teak-faced ply, rather than incorporating a fiberglass liner with molded furniture bases.

The oiled teak ply makes for a darkish interior, which could be lightened considerably by varnishing both the ply and its solid teak edging. A nice combination is to use satin finish varnish on the ply, glossy varnish on the solid teak trim. This is time consuming, of course, but it can noticeably brighten a drab interior.

The cabin sole is teak and holly-faced ply, and the teak veneer is so thin that it chips easily, particularly at the edges when you pry up the floor boards. There are plenty of berths for racing, and too many for cruising. The V-berths forward can be made into a double with an insert, and the quarterberth is wide enough to form a very tight double or a very big single.

Interior layout is fairly prosaic: V-berths forward, settees and pilot berths both port and starboard in the main cabin, quarterberth aft. Some early boats were built with a split quarterberth, with a narrow inboard berth and a narrower pilot berth outboard, tucked under the side deck. This is a particularly useless arrangement for cruising, and we wouldn’t be too happy getting stuck in either of those berths when racing, either.

The head compartment is good-sized, and is accessible from either the main cabin or the forward cabin. We’re not sure you really need two doors mere inches apart to get into the head, but perhaps the additional privacy for head access from the forward cabin is important to some people. We’d rather have the separation that a solid bulkhead between head and forward cabin would provide.

Main cabin storage is sacrificed to get in the two pilot berths. If you’re planning long-distance racing with a big crew—or weekending with lots of friends—the pilot berths are nice. But the lower third of the pilot berths is recessed behind a longitudinal bulkhead which serves as the shroud anchorage. There will be no air circulation around your lower body in this berth.

Space over your feet is further reduced in the pilot berths by a locker tucked into the upper part of this longitudinal bulkhead. The result is a pair of berths that would be okay in cooler climates, miserable in the tropics.

Ventilation below is generally inadequate for anything but cooler climates. While there are good-sized aluminum-framed hatches over both the forward and main cabins, plus a small hatch over the head, the only provision for ventilation in bad weather is a pair of cowl vents in dorade boxes at the aft end of the main cabin.

C&C racer/cruisers have good galleys. The galley—aft on the starboard side—is the classic U shape, with double sinks and a large bin in the forward counter; a large, well-insulated icebox under the aft counter; and the stove in the middle, at the base of the U.

The builder was a pioneer in the use of propane aboard boats, and that’s what you’ll find as a cooking fuel in virtually all C&C 40s. It’s a good installation, with gas bottles located in small lockers on either side of the helmsman’s seat at the aft end of the cockpit.

The nav station opposite the galley has its own seat (you don’t sit on the quarterberth) and a big chart table. The bookshelf outboard is usually sacrificed for navigation and communication electronics, leaving you no place for your navigation texts.