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35-2 Pre Purchase inspection

Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
Regarding the sailing characteristics of the 35-2, forum member Ignacio has a three-part blog about his solo sail to Hawaii and return.

 

goldenstate

Sustaining Member
Blogs Author
One other market dynamic I observed in my shopping experience last year: Inland freshwater boats seem to sell at a discount to coastal boats near major cities with bigger buyer pools.

This is counter-intuitive as a boat that has lived in fresh water will have held up better (presumably) than one in salt water. But there aren't as many people in the upper midwest with shortish sailing seasons who want to own big sailboats.

Good for you as a buyer, but you will probably experience the "other" side if you become an owner, and eventually a seller.

But sailing is for fun, not money.
 

pbknowles

New Member
Thanks for al the feedback! I am chomping the bit to go take a look as soon as I can. Will report back, meanwhile there is plenty to explore here. Glad to find an active forum!
 

bradh

Member II
I'm an E35-2 owner on the Great Lakes... my impression:
  • That looks to be a fair price based on pics.
  • My boat is older (76) and has an atomic 4 that is center mounted so my experience is a little different than yours will be.
  • The only other items not mentioned above that I would look at is the port lights and the thru hulls. I can see that at least the main cockpit scupper thru hulls are gate valves. You will probably want to get on replacing them at some point. Neither of those items are specific to these boats, a common problem of all boats of this age.
  • I love the cockpit layout of these boats. Learned that after I got it. When out wine & cheese sailing, I get my own area to work in, hah!
  • Boat sails great. Responsive and a fun.
  • Under engine power, turns on a dime. Backs up though like a drunk'n sailor (pun intended).
  • Repeating the truths that were told to me as I have now confirmed them: She is tender (that's not a bad thing), wants to be heeled, but when she gets there she wants to stay there.
  • Listen to the helm, sail balance is key with her. Don't over power and try and fight her. Get her balanced and she will go fast. Get too much weather helm and she will turn-up on you and depower (relatively smallish rudder, but has a nice keel).
 

snowball

New Member
Regarding pricing: All boats over a certain age, maybe about 25 years in round numbers, see quite a drop in market pricing. There are both practical and illogical reasons. Pragmatic point: there are very few used boats maintained in "original condition" -- small %. I have managed our 150 moorage for many years, and can count on two hands, max, the boats that are 100% turn-key. Degradation is so slow for most major maintenance items that owners turn a blind eye to it. Worse, entropy for anything in or on salt water moves faster than for something stored on land. The decline is slower for boats used in fresh water, but still going on. There are few enough knowledgeable buyers to keep the price low for this 96% of the used market. In a declining market, as we have had for over 20 years in sailboats, there are also fewer knowledgeable buyers. Due to a mix or societal and economic factors, sailing as a family sport has trended downward for many years.

And then there is a factor that very few brokers will even mention, unless really prompted: basic Engineering, Build Quality, and Design for Sailing.
Once the market started to skew towards large-interior and mediocre-sailing designs that were selling to people with limited sailing knowledge who simply wanted to view themselves as "sailors", builders found that they could build weaker and slower boats and make a better profit in this constricting market. While every modern/surviving builder has a few models actually known for their sailing ability, most of the "Hunta-Cata-Benolina" boats are aimed at this sailor-wanna-be market.
Note that larger boats now are marketed specifically to a second home market. The owners seldom leave the dock, and those that do use their boat in a somewhat narrow Performance Envelope with a wind range of 10 to 15 kts and seas under 2 feet.
Good news is that their second home sails reasonable well in that specific envelope, absent the ability to point very well.

Like it or not, this has affected the market like a sort of "Gresham's Law". Knowledgeable owners of Good Old Boats keep them a long time - several decades is not uncommon. And in many cases, they invest serious $$ into upkeep.

New sailors, including those who really want to sail, see few good boats at dealers and brokerages, and the brokers (needing a sale in order to make a living) are not going to spend/waste too much time educating a buyer on the boats. After all, if he/she has an inventory of 20 cheap boats and one Ericson/Sabre/Hinterhoeller/C&C, (and some others).... the sales time has to go towards making a living.
I used to know several brokers who were in it full time when I did some part time brokering of small boats, and the wry humor was that for a typical unrealistic shopper, the Third Broker would sell him a boat, after he initially rejected the well-intentioned advice from the first two, and was embarrassed to return to them to buy something!
:(
Which is a roundabout way of saying that there have never been a very high % of knowledgeable shoppers. And was back in 1981.

Now, decades into the flooding of the used sailboat market with poor boats that are accepted as 'normal' by brokers and magazines needing to keep their slim ad revenues working, The good boats have been devalued because, in effect, they are less suited to a live aboard lifestyle.

This can be good news if shopping for a high-end boat with actual sailing prowess.

Stability -- for better or worse the public conception of this has never been too informed, and it's worse nowadays. If you have a hull with slack bilges it will heel some when you step on the deck. This is initial stability. When it heels to 15 degrees going to weather and then is really reluctant to heel any further that's final stability. Newbies really like something that does not move when they step onto it. Once they sail a lot, they will begin to see the tradeoff. Starting out in a Ranger 20, I raced and cruised for five years amidst an equally large fleet of Catalina 22's. The Ranger would heel and then stiffen up a lot and steered easy. The Catalina has a flatter bottom and a harder chine and felt more 'reassuring' when you stepped aboard, but had more helm difficulties as the wind went over 12 kts. It also had, due to this shape, more wetted surface and was slower in light air.
Owners of either design were very happy, but for somewhat different reasons.
Aside: a older smaller Cal-20 fleet would race weeknights with us sometimes. Faster design on some points, but the Rangers could catch them off the wind with spinnakers up. Lesson was that ALL boats are compromises.

Condition is always going to be very important, but for design alone, keep in mind that in many "lists" of the best production sail boats of all time, the King-designed Ericson 35-2, is always there. It was ahead of its time in some key ways, and avoided the disadvantages of many of the other IOR-focused boats of the era. Yes, that is just an opinion; worth about one cent with Monday discount.
Whatever you buy, do stick around and talk to us! You are asking the 'right' questions.
:D

And... Stanchions.... Back in the early 70's (date not remembered) racing rules started to require lifelines. This raised the selling price for all boats. With a minimum distance rule-specified between stanchions, many builders would seize the wire to an outer shroud at that point, since shrouds on the boats designed in the 60's era had chainplates at or near the toe rail. As the IOR "look" because popular with buyers, the wider boats needed another stanchion at that point.
Thank you for this! Looking at a 35 Mark II. Greatly appreciate your thoughts.
 

Hanktoo

Member III
Little late to the party here but if you're still interested. I echo the other comments regarding stability. She will initially heel but then is steady as a rock when she's in the groove. The one issue you should be aware of that I don't see mentioned and I constantly find a bother. They don't back up for $%$. You can spin them on a dime going forward, but with the light bow, fin keel, and prop forward it gets real exciting reversing into a slip! Backing any sailboat can be an issue, but this model takes that to the 9th degree.
 
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