Review of Dufour 56

Basic specs.

The Dufour 56 is a large sailboat. The Dufour 56 is built by the French yard Dufour Yachts s.a..

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Hull

The hull is made of fibreglass. Generally, a hull made of fibreglass requires only a minimum of maintenance during the sailing season.

Rig

The boat 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.

Keel

The Dufour 56 is equipped with a fin keel. A boat with a fin keel is more manoeuvrable but has less directional stability than a similar boat with a long keel.

The boat can only enter major marinas as the draft is about 2.44 - 2.54 meter (8.01 - 8.31 ft) dependent on the load. See immersion rate below.

Engine

The boat is typically equipped with an inboard Volvo Penta diesel engine at 100.0 hp (74 kW).

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.

Immersion rate

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for Dufour 56 is about 538 kg/cm, alternatively 3014 lbs/inch.
Meaning: if you load 538 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 3014 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

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.

L/B (Length Beam Ratio)

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

The l/b ratio for Dufour 56 is 3.39.

Compared with other similar sailboats it is more spacy than 73% of all other designs. It seems that the designer has chosen a slightly more spacy hull design.

Maintenance

Rig

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.

**Guiding dimensions of running rig**
Usage	Length		Diameter
Jib sheet	16.5 m	(54.1 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)
Genoa sheet	16.5 m	(54.1 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)
Mainsheet	41.2 m	(135.3 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)
Spinnaker sheet	36.3 m	(119.1 feet)	16 mm	(5/8 inch)

Boat owner's ideas

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

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Finally

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If you have any comments to the review, improvement suggestions, or the like, feel free to contact us. Criticism helps us to improve.

References

[Ref 1]: ISO 8666 Small craft — Principal data.
[Ref 3]: ISO 12215-5 Small craft — Hull construction and scantlings.