Review of Compass 34
Basic specs.
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Both the hull and the deck is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season. And outside the sailing season, just bottom cleaning and perhaps anti-fouling painting once a year - a few hours of work, that's all.
The boat is equipped with 2 cabins, 7 berths, a galley and toilet facility.
Note: the boat has also been sold to be self-made/-interiored, which means that the quality of each boat may vary.
The Compass 34 is equipped with a masthead rig. The advantage of a masthead rig is its simplicity and the fact that a given sail area - compared with a fractional rig - can be carried lower and thus with less heeling moment.
Fin keel
The Compass 34 is equipped with a fin keel. The fin keel is the most common keel and provides splendid manoeuvrability. The downside is that it has less directional stability than a long keel.
Compass 34 can enter most marinas as the draft is just about 1.70 - 1.80 meter (5.58 - 5.88 ft) dependent on the load.
The boat may be equipped with an inboard Volvo Penta diesel engine at 23 hp (17 kW).
The transmission is a shaft drive. A shaft drive will in the long run require less maintenance than other types of drive e.g. a sail drive.
Sailing characteristics
This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.
What is Capsize Screening Formula (CSF)?
The capsize screening value for Compass 34 is 1.95, indicating that this boat could - if evaluated by this formula alone - be accepted to participate in ocean races.
Sailing statistics
This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.
What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?
The l/b ratio for Compass 34 is 3.22.
The ballast ratio for Compass 34 is 51%.
SA/D (Sail Area Displacement ratio)
Indicates how fast the boat is in light wind:
- Cruising Boats have ratios 10-15
- Cruiser-Racers have ratios 16-20
- Racers have ratios above 20
- High-Performance Racers have ratios above 24
Sail-area/displacement ratio (SA/D ratio): 17.90
Maintenance
If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.
| Usage | Length | Diameter | ||
| Jib sheet | 10.3 m | (33.8 feet) | 12 mm | (1/2 inch) |
| Genoa sheet | 10.3 m | (33.8 feet) | 12 mm | (1/2 inch) |
| Mainsheet | 25.8 m | (84.6 feet) | 12 mm | (1/2 inch) |
| Spinnaker sheet | 22.7 m | (74.4 feet) | 12 mm | (1/2 inch) |
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