A One Owner Hinckley Bermuda 40

ACORN is a beautiful one owner Hinckley Bermuda 40 MK II Yawl. The Hinckley service team considers here one of the very best B40’s ever, and she has clearly benefitted by the impeccable ongoing maintenance of her owner in Maine, described by Hinckley as a “true yachtsman”.

She’s had many upgrades over the years, including a new 55hp diesel in 2007, recent electronics, a new boom, and Edson steering pedestal and mechanics. She’s in overall excellent condition structurally and cosmetically – certainly one of the very best B40s we’ve ever come across.

After the war, Hinckley began experimenting with fiberglass as a potential boatbuilding material, though, true to his conservative Maine heritage, he didn’t rush into it. The Hinckley Bermuda 40, introduced in 1959 and still in production today, was a watershed for the company.
According to company notes on the B 40, “The firm had built a wooden 38-foot yawl in 1959 and had called her a Sou’wester Sr. It was Henry’s plan to sail the boat hard the coming summer and if she proved her worth, he would use her as a plug from which to build the mold for the first fiberglass Hinckleys. But this was never to occur.”
At the 1959 New York Boat Show, Hinckley was approached by a consortium of eight men, who had commissioned Bill Tripp to modify the Block Island 40 for them. The group’s front man, Gilbert Cigal, persuaded Hinckley to build the boats. The decision to abandon the Sou’wester Sr. was difficult, but from a business point of view, it made more sense to invest in tooling for boats already sold.
Practical Sailor

Bermuda 40s, B-40s for short, are relatively well-known to people familiar with cruising sailboats. The Henry R. Hinckley Company of Southwest Harbor launched the first one in 1960. They were of the early generation of fiberglass auxiliary sailboats designed for both ocean racing and cruising, which in that era could be done successfully in the same boat. To create the B-40, naval architect Bill Tripp, Sr., slightly tweaked his Block Island 40 design. Block Island 40s had appeared in the late 1950s and enjoyed much racing success, the first fiberglass ocean racers to make a name for themselves. A group of sailors impressed by the Block Island 40s had gone to Henry Hinckley for what they hoped would be an even better performing and more elegantly finished near sistership.
The B-40 class has a relatively wide keel-centerboard hull of the type popularized by the famous Finisterre, the only boat ever to win three consecutive Newport to Bermuda races, beginning in 1956. The Cruising Club of America handicap rule then used for racing large sailboats in the United States favored that type of boat. Although long since obsolete in many people’s minds, the type remains popular with many as a pretty and safe boat with a comfortable motion.
B-40s, because of their less than four-and-a-half-foot draft with the centerboard raised, are especially well suited to cruise shallow water areas such as the Bahamas. With the B-40s, the Hinckley Company established its reputation for top-quality, beautifully finished fiberglass sailboats, and the company built 203 of them.
Maine Boats