Zora

Zora is a 1981 Mariner 39, built by Mariner Yachts in New Hampshire, USA.

She was designed by Eric White, NA, and Arthur Berry, NA. Her design specifications:

LOA 38'-9"
LWL 31'-0"
Beam 11'-8"
Draft 5'-6" (actually more like 6' when totally loaded down for cruising!)
Ballast 6,000#
Displacement 18,000# (more like 23,000# fully loaded for longterm cruising)
Sail Area (as designed) 653/ rated 781 sq ft (we added a new main with optimized roach to improve sail area)

Mariner Yachts built several models in the late 70's, early 80's, including the popular Mariner 36 and the Ted Brewer designed 47. They were all "overbuilt" with solid glass hulls, beefy rigging, and tons of beautiful teak joinerwork below. The 39 was designed with input from Charlie Cary of the Moorings charter operation, in fact most of the 39s built were in charter service. There were two layouts, the "cruising" layout, with a nav desk and U-shaped galley, and the "charter" layout with a more open main cabin and huge refrigerator, but no nav station.

Our boat was built with the "charter" layout, but since so much of the main salon furniture was rotted from leaking ports and needed to be rebuilt, we decided to build it closer to the "cruising" layout. After visiting boats with both layouts, we designed our interior with a few modifications to correct design problems we felt the original layouts had. We spent many months looking at cruising boat design details both online and at boat shows, and incorporating new ideas into our redesign. We hope that the result will be a safe and comfortable cruising boat!

Here is the layout our boat was built with (more or less):

Here is the other "cruising" layout:

Here is what we intend to build: (update 9/04... we DID build this!)

To see our new electrical diagram, go to "SCHEMATICS"