I have enjoyed sailing quite a number of different boats over the years, and have been lucky enough to own four sailboats before purchasing my 1973 Ericson 25CB "Nordic Thunder". My very first sailboat was a tiny Sunflower sailboat with a single triangular sail. I spent many summers sailing on that boat on lakes in Michigan and Long Island Sound before moving up to Snipes and Lasers at summer camp, and eventually to owning a 16' Wayfarer. The Wayfarer was a great boat, fast and exciting and I took her many places, but not very stable for a family and kids. After I sold the Wayfarer I bounced around sailing on friends boats and occasionally renting one before purchasing our current boat a Starwind 19. I found that I loved the design of the small cruiser with a shoal draft keel and centerboard. It was stable enough to make my wife and non sailor friends feel safe, easy to trailer and set up, good in shallow waters, I could park it at home, and it was family friendly. For the past 10 years we have trailered her to local lakes in North Carolina for fun and regattas, up north to Lake Michigan for sails on Sleeping Bear Bay and Grand Traverse Bay, and way down south to Charlotte Harbor, Sarasota Harbor, and along the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Many many cross country miles.
Although the Starwind has been a great little boat, I always dreamed of something much bigger and spent hours on the internet and magazines looking at larger boats. Ever since I was a little boy I dreamed of owning an ocean going yacht and traversing the Atlantic Ocean. Though no matter how tempting those larger yachts were, my wife and I knew our life style would not lend itself to owning a boat that was trapped in a local lake Marina full time. We needed (ok, I wanted
), a small and beautiful "
yacht" with more size and stability, comfort and room, and strength to venture farther away from home. And with one brother living next to Lake Michigan, and the other brother next to the Gulf of Mexico, we needed a boat we could regularly trailer to both places. And so I gave up the dream of a thirty or 40 foot yacht and began the search for the perfect (and more appropriate) boat for us.
The Search
Believe it or not, we scoured the internet for boats for sail, read "The Sailors Book of Small Cruising Sailboats" cover to cover, and then compiled a list of 11 different boats that matched our criteria, and then made a decision analysis scoring sheet to compare. True, many of the items were not easily quantifiable, and some were downright silly opinions based on our looking at different boats, but it was much better to use some logic than passion alone. As we built our decision analysis we spent a lot of time digging up facts, reading articles on the boats we chose, and putting scoring to items which did make many things very quantifiable.
- Size we could easily haul behind our truck, 3000 lbs was optimum.
- Fixed ballast shoal draft with simple centerboard was optimum, swing keel much less so
- Would fit inside our building and be legally trailerable, with 8' width and 25' length being optimum.
- Realistically launch at a public ramp, 2' shoal draft and centerboard optimum.
- Private flushable toilet for my wife and quests
- Small galley where we could heat some soup or boil water for tea
- Room for two to comfortably weekend on
- Full size settees, table, normal sitting position with feet on floor
- As close as possible to standing headroom with 6' being optimum.
- Enough performance to participate in the local regattas, lower PHRF rating was better
- Quality reputation for strength and seaworthiness
- Quality build materials and yacht like fit and finish
The selection process led me to the Ericson 25 Mk 1 as the best match. Interestingly, we actually never even heard of her before we had read about her in book of small cruising sailboats. This was where the research and selection process really paid off, because it led us to a boat design we had never heard of, but was the best fit for what we wanted to use her for. Most of the boats we had heard of were either more recent production, or had so many of them built like the Catalina 25 that you would be hard pressed not to come across one.
Of course the logical selection process had to be followed up with deeper research and a pleasing aesthetic match to our eye, but the more we researched the Ericson 25 Centerboard on the internet we found we really liked the boat. Nice lines, nicely laid out interior, yacht like construction details, very good PHRF rating indicating good performance, and of course the solid Ericson reputation. They only made a few hundred of them from 1972 to 1978, but the more we read about her the more she looked like a great match to what we wanted, and about as big a "yacht" as we could reasonably haul and launch. In fact, as we studied the original sales brochure, we realized that she was designed to be EXACTLY what we were looking for. A true little performance "yacht", built like her bigger sisters, and optimized for cross country travel to waters far and near.
For several years after the selection criteria fun, we looked on line and saw occasional ads for Ericson 25CB's come up, but not frequently. Having done considerable restoration on my Starwind 19, we were comfortable buying a "fixer upper" and bringing it back to life. In fact, the journey for us is as much fun as the destination. But most boats we saw were too far away, or the timing was bad. But eventually we found one in Maryland that was reasonably priced, the timing to buy was right for us, and was within a days drive from our home. So off my wife and I went to look at her which is where this blog really starts at.
Below is a picture of my wife on board at the marina when we drove up to see her. The other picture is me on deck with the salesman at the helm. I was most impressed with how rock stable she was compared to my Starwind 19. Of course 6000 lbs versus 1500 lbs is no comparison. The last two pictures are of her being hauled out for inspection.
John Olsen
Wishing for an Ericson 25CB
