Dulcinea is a Moody 40 designed by Bill DIxon and built by Marine Projects in 1997, although for some reason it wasn’t commisioned and sold until the end of 1999. Only about 40 Bill Dixon Moody 40s were made, although an earlier design by Penrose had also been called a Moody 40 in the 1980s. Dulcinea had the later MK II interior design, which is only slightly different from the MK I – I’m not sure of the exact differences, but almost all the Moody yachts of that era from the Moody 38 to the Moody 45 were centre cockpit boats and had many common interior and exterior design features , with fairly shallow fin keels. The 40 was made in a ‘standard keel’ version with 1.65 m draft (?) and a shallow draft version with 1.5m draft and with 300 Kg for additional ballast in a bulb on the base of the keel to give it comparable stability to the deeper keel version. Dulcinea is the shallow draft version.
Dulcinea was named SPIRA when first commissioned in 1999, and after a couple of years was sold to owners in Belgium. She appears to have been kept in the Mediterranean and changed hands as Dulcinea in 2015, after which she moved to Brittany, before returning to the UK before the Brexit deadline in 2020.
When we bought her she was, as far as we can tell, more or less as built by Moodys , with almost all of the original equipment. The only thing that was not standard was the fitting of two armchairs in place of the settee on the starboard side of the saloon – this was clearly a modification after the original build, but is in upholstery matching the rest of the saloon, so it isn’t clear if this was a change made by Moody to a stock boat after it was made in 1997, when it was eventually commisioned and sold, or if it was a later change by an early owner. I suspect the former on no evidence whatsoever!
She came with the original Kemp furling genoa and Kemp in mast furling main, and with an unused Belgian made storm jib, trysail and No 1 jib, a Belgian spinnaker having been sold by the previous owner. I think the Belgian sails may have been originally destined for another yacht ( or Dulcinea had another name between Dulcinea and Spira.