New Ericson owner

Hello everyone,

Just purchased my first sailboat. Its a 73 Ericson 27 with an inboard Universal Atomic Gasoline engine. My first task was getting it from Olympia to Lake Washington. Most of that trip was under motor power. It was beautiful weather. I did sail a bit in Budd Inlet, and the length of Anderson Is. Today I sailed on Lake Washington. I began getting serious about sailing about a year ago by joining Windworks Sailing Club where I took US Sailing courses, BK, BC and BBC as well as Windworks coarse in navigation.

My first impression of my boat is that it has a tremendous pull to port on the tiller under anything more than idle power. It also seems to have a lot of prop walk in reverse. The tiller/rudder feels absolutely normal under sail. I can easily take my hands off it and walk away when sails are balanced. I've been told that this is due to the screw not being located in the center of the hull but offset from the rudder.

I noticed that I was getting flutter in the upper middle of the leach of the mainsail. I further noticed that I'm missing a batton there. I had found an extra batton, but its about 6 inches too long for that pocket. Im puzzled about whether I have a boom vang. There is a block from the base of the mast to the base of the boom? Not sure if this is just stowed and that the top is meant to be attached to the middle of the boom? Also the mainsail has two sets of reefing cringles, but doesn't have a tack hook on the mast or any reefing line. Another thing puzzling me is a knurled nob in the mainsail slot just below the lowest mainsail slider that prevents the mainsail to lower all the way to the boom when flaking the main. Why?

I have a very large furling Genoa.

So far I've only sailed in light wind. Ive gotten the boat to about 4 kts.

Is there a standard height for the mast, or is there a "tall rig"? I did a rough measurement of roughly 40'. Ive made it under the Ballard Bridge, the Montlake Bridge, and the West Side of the 520 bridge. I knew I wouldn't make the Fremont bridge and the University bridge was already opening for another boat.

Welcome to the Ericson world. I can't answer all your questions but others here likely can. Regarding the batten, if it doesn't fit any other pocket just cut it down and use it in the one missing. Your boom vang should mount part way along the boom and attach at mast bottom. Those blocks could be part of a cunningham. Regarding the pull on the rudder and the prop walk, that seems to be fairly common with the E27. The E27 Facebook just had a thread going on that. Sounds like you have a 150 genoa, they work quite well on the E27, lots of power. BTW any Atomic 4 questions/answers can be found on the Moyer Marine website. Fairwinds

Welcome to Ericson ownership!

The knurled knob is there to stack up the sail slides inside the track so they don’t spill out when you drop the mainsail. The allows you to flake the sail on the boom with one person, and makes it much easier to stow the sail and raise it again without having to feed each slide back into the track.

The sail cover is probably designed to accommodate the sail this way.

Yes, welcome.

Regarding reefing, there are lots of ways to set it up.

When you get a minute, give us some photos of each end of your boom and the hardware on it.

Photos are a big help. So is adding your boat model, year and engine to the signature line. (Settings/My Settings/Edit Signature Line).

Re: Air Draft, see this thread http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?11351-What-is-the-height-of-an-Ericson-27

Answers from the web range 40 - 42 feet, probably depending on how much stuff is mounted on the masthead.

I usually add a couple of feet to my best measurement. One bridge operator tried to get me to "just try it" without opening. :0 But I insisted that those extra two feet were real.