[VIEXILE]

C''''mon. Someone on Ericsons?

I know a wide range of boats, but nothing about the Ericsons. Saw a 38 once in Maine that looked impressive (pre-Pac Seacraft) but didn''t look very closely. Where''s the production problems? Any history? The boat I''m looking at is a 1974 37 sloop. Found the brochure online, but it''s advertising. Potential deck problems of the era notwithstanding, what else to look for? Thanks.....

 

[whistler]

C''''mon. Someone on Ericsons?

Hi Viexeile: I just purchased a 1972 Ericson 39''and would like to know any inherant problems. This boat is loaded with extras and has just returned from 4 years in Carribean. We had a thorough survey and have a few things to work on but none seem too bad. The prior owner was a true liveaboard and kept her in top notch shape.
We just got her in August and put about 300 miles on so far. Living on Lake Huron forced us to put "Breakaway" on the hard for the winter. Our to do list I''m sure will grow but that''s what ice and snow are for.

If you gather any further info please forward on to me and I''ll do the same.

 

[Jeff_H]

C''''mon. Someone on Ericsons?

I am not familiar with the Ericson 37 perse but I have spent a lot of time on Mid- 1970''s era Ericson 32''s, 35''s and I believe 27 (but might have been a 29). The early and mid-70''s was an interesting period at Ericson. The early 1970''s Ericson 35 was a real breakthrough boat for its day. Comparatively fast with a good IOR rating. I spent several seasons racing on a 35 in the late 1970''s. In a breeze they were designed to be sailed by big crews and with lots of weight on the rail. They were really a pain to sail in big seas. In light air they were fast for their day, but really pretty dismal by the standards of the boats that have come in the 25-30 years since (or even a few years later).

Construction wise these were really mixed bag boats. The glass work was reasonably heavy but not especially sturdy. We had a variety of minor but potentially more serious structural issues on the boat. One very odd thing about this period is that Ericson experimented with some unusual and less than perfectly successful laminating techniques. To fully set polyester resin needs to be deprived of Oxygen. Typically when boats are constructed laminating resin is used for the hull until the last layup and then a finishing resin is used for the last lamination. Finishing resins use a waxy substance that floats to the surface to seal out oxygen from the laminate and then all of the laminations finish curing. There was only one problem with this system in that you could not paint the interior glass work without stripping this wax. Ericson experimented with painting directly over the partially cured laminating resin hoping that the paint would seal out enough air that the resin would finish curing. It did not work at least on a number of Ericsons that I have seen from this era.Years later you had incompletely cured resin that leeched continuously through the paint leaving the painted areas of the hull feeling tacky. I have serious doubts about the strength of the Ericsons that were constructed that way.

The sailhandling hardware was pretty typical of that era and was grossly undersized for the task at hand. They had a late CCA or early IOR style rig that depended on huge genoas to sail in lighter breezes (we typically carried a 170% genoa into the low teens.)This was a rig that depended very heavily on a huge sail inventory to perform. We typcially carried something like 5 jibs, 2 spinackers and a blooper. We would often have to do sail changes on the spinacker legs in order to have the right sail area for the conditions. By the late 1970''s these were not especially competitive boats under either PHRF or IOR.

Respectfully
Jeff

 

[VIEXILE]

C''''mon. Someone on Ericsons?

Thanks Jeff. I crawled around the deck of the boat today and it looked great and sounded well for a 1974. Racing ain''t no big thing to me and I just want to be able to diddle around in the "local" races and break someone else''s boat during the Heineken series and Rolex. The PHRF is in the 120 range. I''ll check the hull interior stem to stern to see about the un-de-waxed inner laminate and tackiness. I haven''t been belowdecks yet (too busy hauling boats and trying to get to the real job this morning), but what I could see looked clean, well kept. After hauling a Jeanneau 39 this morning that looked like the surface of the moon (both blisters and divots from the last blister job - think about me saturday about 10:00 AM, 9:00 your time) I think I''ll grab a mask and snorkel and have a look at the Ericson in the morning. Otherwise the standing rigging''s been upgraded oversize and the hardware all looks fairly substantial and changed out. The only thing I don''t like is someone retrofitted wheel steering in the forward end of the cockpit about a foot back from the bridgedeck. I may heave it over and go back to tiller. I''m just tired of driving other peoples''s damn boats....KW