Elan 40, the Humphreys Racer-Cruiser That Put Elan on the Map

When a ski company built a serious 40-footer

In 2004, SAIL's Tom Dove opened his test by admitting that most Americans did not think of Slovenia as a boatbuilding country. Elan was better known for skis, and it had only just begun exporting boats to the US. He finished by calling the elan 40 fast, comfortable, good-looking and easy to handle, with an excellent ratio of quality to price. That verdict, from a Chesapeake test sail, is a fair summary of the boat two decades later.

The Elan 40 was new at the Southampton Boat Show in 2001 and on the London show stand in January 2002, where Yachting World noted it was already popular with sailors who wanted to cruise and race. It was designed by Rob Humphreys, the British naval architect who drew Elan's sailboats for years, and it marked the moment Elan's yachts started to be taken seriously outside central Europe.

A family cruiser on the British regatta circuit

The boat on Elan's 2002 London show stand belonged to Jim Macgregor, who had moved up from a race-winning Elan 333. He planned to cruise with his family and race the Warsash Spring Series, Cowes, the Scottish Series, Poole and Cork Week. For cruising it carried a furling headsail and lazy jacks; for racing those came off and a Kevlar wardrobe including a carbon number three went on.

That dual life explains the boat's design. The 9/10 fractional rig with a full-batten main and a 95 percent jib keeps the sail plan manageable for a family while staying efficient to windward, and a deeper keel and taller rig were available for owners who wanted to race seriously. The sail area to displacement ratio of about 19.8 is lively without being twitchy.

Picking a keel for your water

Elan offered three keel depths, and on the used market the keel is the most important specification after condition. SAIL's test boat had the standard 6 ft 9 in fin with an iron bulb. Racers could order a 7 ft 10 in keel and lead ballast; cruisers could choose a 5 ft 7 in shoal keel that SAIL called gunkhole-friendly.

For the Chesapeake, Long Island Sound and Florida, the shoal or standard keel is the practical choice. Deep-keel boats were usually built for racing in Europe and often come with the taller rig as well.

• Shoal: 5 ft 7 in, cruising-oriented
• Standard: 6 ft 9 in with iron bulb
• Deep: 7 ft 10 in, lead available, usually paired with the race rig

Build quality, and one detail to think about

Dove crawled through the boat and liked what he saw. The hull is hand-laid solid glass with a balsa-cored deck, and the hull-deck joint is bolted on sealant and then glassed over. Rig loads go through internal tie rods to a bonded grid in the bilge. Wiring runs neatly from a hinged panel at the nav station with proper busbars, hoses are double-clamped, tanks are bolted down and foamed in place, and the bilges are finished with large limber holes so water reaches the sump.

One choice deserves attention on a 20-year-old boat. Winches, tracks and deck fittings are not through-bolted with backing plates but screwed into aluminum plates bonded into the deck laminate. Elan even fitted blank plates where owners might add hardware later and supplied a map of their locations. It avoids holes into the cabin and leaks, but Dove noted it could make removing old hardware difficult and that only time would tell how the system ages. A surveyor should check for corrosion or loosening around those plates and for moisture in the balsa core.

Below, two or three cabins and a proper galley

In the two-cabin version, a huge cockpit locker to port swallows sails and gear and can be reached through a door from the head. In the three-cabin version, that space becomes a second aft cabin, giving three doubles plus a double berth in the saloon, as Yachting World described the boat in 2002. Both versions have two heads with easy-to-clean fiberglass surfaces.

SAIL rated the joinery a cut above average: simple and cleanly executed rather than ornate. The aft-facing nav station sits amidships, the U-shaped galley has a small extension for bracing, twin sinks near the centerline drain on either tack, and the fridge is well insulated with its compressor in a ventilated compartment. Headroom is about 6 feet in the saloon, the settee comes with a leeboard and every port opens.

The Elan 40 on the water

SAIL's test day began with an extremely light southeasterly at the mouth of the Severn River, yet the Elan 40 moved out into Chesapeake Bay at better than 5 knots under main and a 135 percent genoa, with narrow tacking angles and similar speed reaching. The helm was easy and responsive with good sightlines, and the large-diameter wheel made it comfortable to steer from the windward side.

Under power, 2,800 rpm gave about 7 knots into a light breeze with moderate noise below. Tankage is 40 gallons of fuel and 66 of water, fine for coastal cruising and club racing.

Not to be confused with later Elans called 40

Elan has used the number 40 several times, so check which boat a listing means. The Elan 410 succeeded the three-cabin Elan 40, with a longer waterline, less weight and more sail. The Elan 400 of 2013 is a later Humphreys performance boat with twin rudders and a chined hull. The Impression 40, built from about 2017 to 2020, and its successor the Impression 40.1 are cruising boats with a much shallower 5 ft 11 in keel and a very different interior philosophy.

If you want the boat on this page, look for a 2001 to mid-2000s hull with a single rudder, a single large wheel and the classic Elan styling of that era.

What an Elan 40 costs to buy and keep

We estimate US asking prices from about $70,000 for an early boat needing sails and electronics to about $115,000 for a later, well-maintained example. Many good boats are in the UK and Europe, where Elan had stronger distribution, so importing is an option. Annual costs run about $11,000 to $22,000 for a 40-foot slip, insurance, haul-out and routine work, plus racing sails if you compete.

At those prices the Elan 40 is one of the better-built performance cruisers of its era for the money, provided the deck hardware, rig and saildrive have been looked after.

Factory support is not something to count on. Yachting Monthly reported in late 2025 that Elan had stopped building yachts for a period, would not revive any of its previous ranges and would build only large carbon boats from 65 feet up, ending a decades-long design partnership with Humphreys. Owners of a boat this age already rely on riggers, sailmakers and general yards rather than the builder, so the change mostly affects the rare hull-specific part.