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Kretschmer review of E34 / offshore ready

Rick R.

Contributing Partner
When I met Kretchsmer at the St Pete Boat Show last year he asked me what kind of boat we had. When I told him an Ericson, he said they are great boats and built well.

Nice to get a compliment like that.
 
Another thumb for Web Chiles - he writes wonderfully - I have been following his latest adventures on Gannet. His Ericsson 37 circumnavigation (the first one he experienced) is such an amazing story - totally nuts in so many ways.... And although his sheer resilience - how he made it into Auckland is totally flabbergasting!!-- is amazing, I am not sure the book endorses Ericsons overall -- Granted he had the boat made to order with weird quirks, but still... the steering leaks should not have happened... Several other things make the design seem not suitable for blue water, although evidently other Ericsson designs are just fine... It is so interesting to compare Christian Williams' crossing to Hawaii and back (relatively uneventful and an amazing video story, really!) last year with Chiles' round the world attempt in an Ericson - and also his subsequent equally crazy passages including the recent one.

For all it's worth, it's likely the 37 is a great offshore boat if properly equipped and beefed up -- maybe... I still dream of doing some offshore with my old 32-2 (it would have to be heavily beefed up). One of my marina mates has an E37 and he absolutely loves that boat - seems to have an amazing design where everything on it is just right.

It's great to see what they say about the 34 - Overall the construction of Ericsson is very solid. When looking at designs for offshore, and considering the 34 - I am also reminded of a great book on singlehanded sailing that looks critically at all the designs of the boats of notable circumnavigators from Slocum to today, and amazingly he singles out two production designs as unlikely well suited for offshore voyages - one of them is the Catalina 27 (with the disclaimer that it needs a lot of work to make it seaworthy), and the other one the Ericsson 27! So yay Ericsson and Bruce King.
 

Shelman

Member III
Blogs Author
beefed up

I agree about the general build quality of our boats being mostly offshore capable with several good examples, but I would also be interested to see what areas others on the forum feel the need to "BEEF UP" on their boats for off shore sailing.
Maybe a thread on the subject would be interesting, or maybe one already exists that I have not found yet? I mean aside from the usual upkeep kind of items like new rigging, chain-plates, sea-cocks, sails, lifelines, jack-lines, battery tie downs, etc.

Alan and I have found the need to reinforce the rudder skeg area where the tube enters the hull, as well as replace the rudder with a stronger unit. I have added bulkheads, and have tabbed the hull liner to the hull in a dozen places that were not tabbed from the factory. I have added tabbing to the bulkheads where there was small stretches without.
runners on the mast? hull reinforcement? I'm sure each model has its own little quirks. I found one larger Ericson online that had split the bottom of the hull open while sailing in the Caribbean, apparently the mast compression had not been spread out enough and the hull just split in front of the keel.
 

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
That would be a discussion I could learn from. My own thinking at the moment is conflicted.

On the one hand I feel we all make too much of complicating boats with new gear, and ought to keep it simpler and with fewer must-have breakable gizmos and add-ons.

On the other, I believe that nearly every piece of gear on a 30-year-old boat is at the end of its life, and absolutely needs to be replaced or watched like a hawk.
 
I mentioned the catalina 27 because the guy that circumnavigated it has a blog where he describes the modifications he made, specifically. Some were basic things that the design was not well executed (lowers had no adequate backing plates from the factory etc.) one thing caught my attention. He added a cockpit scupper about 2 inches diameter pipe routed pretty much directly down through the transom. For the odd rogue wave that would otherwise flood everything in short order.

For ericsons some of the offshore stuff I would assume other than the additional tabbing etc, would be possibly raising the cockpit bridge deck... by maybe fastening the first hatch boards to the hatch so it's there to stay... Again, this is for preventing the following sea from entering the cabin.

Christian's point is spot on about simplicity - and with today's small footprint gadgets it is possible to forgo some other stuff... Big question I have. Do we really need radar? Would a vesper ais do the trick? To me if might be enough to have that plus an iPod, iPhone as gps backup and a cheap dedicated waterproof gps for a bad eventuality you might need it. Plus a couple of cheap handheld vhfs for redundancy... Can a smaller ericson be equipped for offshore with a small water maker and hence a smaller water tank? Do you need a windvane self steer? If you go for auto helm only, there is the better chance you would need more complex systems like solar panels etc... Plus those fail often (read Chiles latest adventure into nz on a 21 ft boat). Anyway those would be my picks. Fibreglass work and rigging would be a totally different story to beef up, and I would be interested in any thoughts from those on this forum that have beefed up their boats and done passages with them. What was worked, what has not, what did they beef up that they in retrospect didn't think they should have, and conversely what did they not do beef up that they now think they should have done so.
 

Shelman

Member III
Blogs Author
What! Why? Maybe he is crazier than I assumed... I read his account of the incident and the resulting three day swim but he never said what the original problem was. I assumed when he talked about the bow dipping under the wave that something had gone wrong, not that he was watching the boat sink lower with a smug grin on his face listening to Led Zeppelin and waiting for some kind of slow motion suicide. I imagined a hull breach or a careless mistake.
He has a true talent for writing though, I enjoyed reading several of his stories.
 

footrope

Contributing Partner
Blogs Author
What! Why? Maybe he is crazier than I assumed... I read his account of the incident and the resulting three day swim but he never said what the original problem was. I assumed when he talked about the bow dipping under the wave that something had gone wrong, not that he was watching the boat sink lower with a smug grin on his face listening to Led Zeppelin and waiting for some kind of slow motion suicide. I imagined a hull breach or a careless mistake.
He has a true talent for writing though, I enjoyed reading several of his stories.

I'm not sure which book or story that he wrote of that final cruise on Resurgam. Maybe I'll find it and re-read it. But a few years ago I did ask him in an e-mail why he did it. I think I asked something like - was there a woman involved? He didn't cop to that in his reply. So, I don't know why he did it.

cd
 

Rick R.

Contributing Partner
I'm not sure which book or story that he wrote of that final cruise on Resurgam. Maybe I'll find it and re-read it. But a few years ago I did ask him in an e-mail why he did it. I think I asked something like - was there a woman involved? He didn't cop to that in his reply. So, I don't know why he did it.

cd

He sure had his share of bot problems didn't he? I imagine he wasn't crazy about his Ericson.
 
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