The Self-Made Sailor - About "Al Hoceima"

The Boat - "Al Hoceima"

Summary: About our boat, "Al Hoceima" - A French built steel ketch, model type Petit Prince, designed by Marcel Sobrero. Included are Interior layout drawings; information on her home berth at Port Credit Harbour Marina, and the town she was named after - Al Hoceima, Morocco.

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“Al Hoceima” is a French-built steel Ketch of the model type, Petit Prince, designed by Marcel Sobrero. We’d like to link to Marcel Sobrero or Petit Prince, but Petit Prince is no longer being made anywhere that we could find and any searches on Marcel Sobrero bring up nothing. Al Hoceima’s first owner loved a beautiful, coastal, town in Morocco and named his boat after the town (see below for more information).

The hull was professionally built in 1980, and the interior was completed by the original owner to, as I like to say, “Somewhat less than professional standards”.

LOD 41’
Beam 13.5’
Draft 6’ 1” originally, but it’s become more like 6’ 6” after living aboard for the past few years
Displacement is 16t, approx.

The underwater profile is a very long fin keel, and a very beefy full-length skeg and skeg mounted-rudder.

Ballast is lead with the rest of the keel cavity used for fuel storage.
Fuel capacity is approximately 800 liters of diesel, based on my measurements and calculations, but I’ve never had it more than half full. Water capacity is approximately 400 liters in two tanks under the main saloon’s port and stbd couches.

Engine is a 50hp Perkins 4.108 diesel mated to a bronze 3-blade fixed propeller. The propeller lives in a cutout in the skeg.

She is Ketch-rigged with a removable staysail and associated running backstays.

Sails at the moment:
Spinnaker
Genoa
#1 jib
#2 jib
#3 jib
Staysail
2 storm jibs (one new)
Mainsail with 2 reefing points
Main Trysail on a dedicated track
Mizzensail with 2 reefing points

I’d love to get a mizzen staysail… I’ve got a halyard ready and waiting for it!

(We haven't had the boat out of

the water since we bought her,

so all we have are the design

drawings to show you her

underwater profile!)

Our Interior layout differs from the drawing. Starting aft:

- We've got an aft cabin with a small private head to starboard. The bunk takes up the whole width of the aft cabin and is laid out fore/aft with small lockers to port and starboard.

- Our galley is to port of the engine compartment. An unfinished tool room (eventually to be an additional berth?) is to starboard.

- Navigation station is to starboard, forward of the tool room and engine compartment

- Main saloon is forward of that, with a very good sea-berth to starboard and a partially U-shaped couch to port

- Forward of that is the forward head on the port side, with a hanging locker to starboard

- V-berth (small!) is forward of that

- And the anchor locker takes up the remainder of the pointy end.

She has two cabins, fore and aft, sleeping two normal-sized people aft and two tiny people in the v-berth. She can sleep two people in the saloon and another in the tool room if and when it is built into a berth. There are two heads with sinks and manual toilets. Our galley (kitchen) contains a three-burner gimballed propane stove with oven and a small fridge with the wee-est freezer. She was altered from the original layout to incorporate a head aft, but isn't too far off the original interior drawings except the nav station and galley are on opposite sides.

Al Hoceima sailed from France to Canada along a circuitous path (we inherited a huge bin full of charts covering Europe, parts of the Med, Japan, West Indies, US Intracoastal, etc.), then to the West Indies for two years and back up to Lake Ontario. She’s seen much more of the world than we have.

She is currently in Port Credit Harbour Marina in Lake Ontario. We have owned her for four years and someone has lived aboard her full-time since then, less about three months during the moving-in process.

Port Credit Harbour Marina in the early spring

Note the damage from the winter ice and storms as evidenced by some of the wonky dock angles!

Click HERE for the Google Maps page close-up

"Al Hoceima" at her winter slip.

The winter frame and plastic has been removed at this point, and she looks ready to move to her summer slip. Pretty cool that you can see details like the boats' mooring lines from a satellite image!

The Town - "Al Hoceima" (where the boat got her name)

Photos of the town Al Hoceima, Morocco are from: http://lexicorient.com/e.o/hoceima.htm

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