Meet Maia

māia (maa-ee-ya)

Māori – New Zealand (adjective) be brave, bold, capable, confident

Māia is a 38 foot, solid glass classic, designed by Claude Allen Smith, and built in Smith Boatyards, Whangarei, New Zealand in 1976. These vessels, known as Pacific 38’s, are tiller-steered sailboats, as opposed to her Australian sisters, known as Compass 38’s.

She now lays in Langkawi, Malayasia where we are getting some work done in preparation for our future cruising life. She has been a bit neglected over the last two years, mostly due to Covid and it’s related travel restrictions. Her biggest job is going to be under the water-line, as she has not been out of the water for all this time, resulting in a lot of growth and the complete loss of anti-fouling and some chips down to her primer. Then we plan to tackle some other issues arising from her many surveys, such as batteries, shaft seal, cutlass bearing and engine mounts.

There’s not a lot of information online regarding this design as only around 50 were built, and who knows how many are still sailing today. We know she is of sturdy design and workmanship, and is what drew us to her in the first place. Smith also designed the Easterly 30, which have a great reputation of being solid cruisers. So we had to get creative in finding out as much as possible to ensure we were looking at the right boat.  After trolling various blogs and online articles, we managed to track down Smith’s nephew, who was extremely helpful in providing additional information regarding this design and her ability to withstand harsher conditions. She also has a couple of listings from a few years back. After contact with these various websites and brokers, we were able to track down her previous owners, who also assisted us with useful information regarding her history.

We now know she spent most of her “youth” in New Caledonia and participated in many regattas from New Zealand, mostly in the late 70’s and early 80’s. We also now know that “māia” means “boobies” in Papua New Guinea. Her possible, original name would have been “Camdella II” as there is still a plaque with this name on, onboard (I know, no proper name-changing rituals have been properly followed).

New and exciting adventures await, and we will soon be back on the water and getting this classic back to her former glory.