ETAP 22 - is it a good boat?

[carljbray]

Hi All,
I'm new to the forum, and just looking to get started in yacht sailing, after a reasonable bit of experience in crewing yachts with friends/relatives etc, plus dinghy sailing.

I'm on the lookout for my first boat and just had a look at an ETAP 22, £4000, year 1980, and could do with some advice: mainly on whether this is considered a good boat, what I should look out for, is this a good price for one of these. ( I realise that it is difficult for people to say without seeing the boat themselves - but any advice given would be appreciated)

It had a lifting keel, outboard well (inc motor), was a bit dirty, but apart from that everything looked visually sound (hull, fittings, interior etc) so just cosmetic complaints really, nothing I could see looked wrong

Things I'm specifically concerned about:
I viewed the boat out of the water, and the owner didn't really want to put it back in - due to the cost involved, but this means I wont get to see it sailed - is it normal for boats to be exchanged dry?
the age of the boat, at over thirty years old I didn't really want to get a project, if too much goes wrong with my first boat, I might get put off.

Seemed a pretty sound boat to me, considering the age and price,
The other thing is I can't really aford a survey, on a boat of this value - would you consider one of these essential?
Many thanks for any help

Carl

 

[Simon054]

Carl.
My first yacht was and etap 22. 1979 model, great little boat and virtually unsinkable due to the double hull.
Things to look out for,
1. As it is a lifting keel unless the previous owner had it in a cradle the upper part of the keel never gets any attention and therefore can be quite badly corroded, what type of lifting mechanism does it have? and you should be able to view the keel through a small inspection glass at the side of the keel housing.
2. Is the mast up or down? If down check the lower shroud fastners as these can be cross threaded very easily and are difficult to obtain I think they are called a ball stem fitting.
3. Lift the floor and check the condition of the timber bearers, mine where rotten and needed to be replaced.
4. If you are going to insure the boat it is highly likely the insurer will want a survey.
5. If it is on a trailer and the owner does not want to put her in the water for you then ask yourself why when it could earn him a sale. Otherwise it is normal for the buyer to cover the costs.
6. What condition are the sails in?
I could go on and on and I am surprised you haven't had any other advice
PM me if I can help you. Si

 

[Tranona]

The boat has a good reputation. It is double skinned so important to ensure it has not been damaged and badly repaired.

Unless you are very confident and prepared to live with the consequences, the question really is can you afford not to have a survey - once you have bought it you have no comeback on the vendor, no matter how serious any problems you have. As suggested you will probably need a survey if you want to insure it other than third party.

Quite usual not to be offered a sail particularly if it is not on the water, although you may be able to make it a condition of the final payment that the boat is seen floating and the engine working.

Worth buying the RYA book on buying and selling secondhand boats as that goes through the process in detail.

 

[ex-Gladys]

It's also quite normal to make an offer "subject to survey and/or sea trial". If a boat is in the water and needs to come out, you as a prospective purchaser would have to pay the cost...

AS has been said survey money is "Insurance".. I paid £300 ish for a survey on a £6k boat that needed £3k spending for fundamental issues that weren't "visible"... Money well spent

 

[Seajet]

Carl,

for a start surveyors vary enormously in price, shop around.

Also there are various grades of survey, from 'insurance' to satisfy them, to 'full' which covers everything.

One little thing you could do; put your eye looking along the groove in the aft edge of the mast; gentle curves are fine as it's not set up, but sharp kinks mean bad, expensive news.

The advice about keel plate corrosion is spot on, it applies to all lift keel boats, if left on a trailer or ashore with the keel retracted, the plate is inaccessible for maintenace.

It's always possible to have a new keel made, I did this for my boat; now we have the original foundry in contact so can get new keels; it may well be possible to keep the original ballast bulb.

I don't know about the Etap, but changing keels on my lift keel Anderson 22 is reasonably straightforward, not something you'd do for fun though.

Speaking of which, does the keel retract fully on the Etap 22 ?

I have a feeling that like the Etap 26 it doesn't, more of a draft reducing measure than a drying mooring user.

If this is the case it's going to be very important where you plan to sail from; on the South Coast a deep water mooring is stupidly expensive for a 22' boat ( same price as a 35' fin keeler ) but half tide moorings on soft mud are a fraction of the price, closer to shore and more sheltered too.

Don't even think about putting her on a hard sand drying mooring, it would knock any boat to bits.

If the keel should be corroded, allow the costs ( say £1,300 ish very roughly for a new galvanised keel plate ) effort and time fitting a new one, you need to be quite handy at engineering DIY or have a good friend who is.

Some 'unsinkable' double hull boats are said to collect water in the internal foam, a moisture reading check by a surveyor would be a good idea.

If the survey and keel work out OK and you have a decent mooring which suits, it seems a good price.

 

[DaveS]

The Etap 22 is a good boat. I had one for a good few years before buying my current, bigger, Etap. No arguments with points made by others, but just to add: have a look at the aluminium rudder blade where it goes into the grp casing and check for any cracking; also check that the blade is vertical. The keel does not fully retract; the iron bulb on the end remains outside the hull. With the boat on its trailer the lead screw can be withdrawn for greasing which should be done annually. Depending on age the lead screw is either wound directly or via a pair of bevel gears. In either case it's a slow job involving around 200 turns. For raising and lowering the mast an A frame helps considerably.

 

[Sans Bateau]

Our first boat was an Etap 22, we hatted it so much we eventually went on to buy an Etap 28i and now sail an Etap 35i. Our Etap 22 was a very early one, a 1972 model. We did buy it as a project and restored her over a number of years whilst learning about boats and boat ownership.

All Etaps are very tough, the 22 no exception. The keel has a large bulb and as others say, to antifoul it you have to suspend the boat in a cradle and lower the keel. We kept ours on a drying mooring in Emsworth where she leaned balanced against a post.

With a deep keel and bulb the boat is very stiff, the downside is she will always have a draft of about .5 metre. The boat is easy to sail and very safe.

Rumours that the foam is porous is just that, a rumour, it will not absorb moister, thats fact!

Do though get a survey.

 

[davidpbo]

Several people in the Trail Sail Association have or have had Etap 22s, two I think traded up to larger Etaps. I am a member, membership at £6 or so per annum is pretty cheap.

I have not had one but know they have a keel lifted by mulitple turns of a a drive of some sort. I would imagine if that is causing a problem it could be a big one, but I don't know what access is like. Some people adapted battery electric drills to raise and lower the keel.

The boat is of foam cored construction and some have said not as prone to condensation because of the insulation. I have a balsa cored deck and am having some problems with water ingress around fittings rotting the balsa core. Gadriel says this is not a problem with Etaps, nevertheless I would look at the boat closely and see if you can spot any signs of external impact damage. Try pressing on the deck especially near any fittings and see if there is any movement which might indecated the skin coming away from the core. Cored areas are bouond to be a little more involved to repair.

It ought to be fairly easy to organise a tank or bucket tied to the leg of the outboard to see if that starts and runs. I have just done that on my Jeanneau Tonic with the bottom of the motor 4ft in the air for flushing.

Have a look at all the other fittings and do a thorough inspection of the sails, if they are original they are very old, if the boat has been lightly used, trailed and sailed then they may still be servicable, mine are 22yrs old. I have just had the UV strip on the jib replaced as that was UV damaged. Cost £145+VAT inc some repair to the sail. (JKA Pwllheli, took it in Monday 17.00 and it was ready 15.00 Tues. Good Service.)

Have a very, very good look at the trailer, jack the wheels up and check the bearings and brakes before towing it anywhere. I bought my boat, and towed it 20 miles home and it was fine but when I stripped the bearings several were in need of replacement. The 22s where sold with a break back trailer so the boat could be launched without getting the wheels wet, is this one of those?

Check your vehicle can tow the weight!!!!. Also do you have the appropriate entitlement on your licence to tow that weight? Ideally the boat and trailer with all the bits that are needed for sailing needs to be weighed on a weigh bridge. Quoted weights are often significantly lower than reality. In my case by 350Kgs which made the difference between towing it with an Espace needing a large 4x4 at significant extra expense these days.

The boat is a generaly reckoned to be a relatively easily (for its size) trailerable boat, easy to rig and launch, you need to check the keel mechanism is working properly so it really needs to be launched or lifted in slings.

If you are new to boating I would suggest a survey for your own peace of mind, you have then done as much as you can not to buy a pig in a poke. It is surprising how the cost of even minor repairs mount up, if you had to do something on the keel that could be major.

 

[Bobc]

It's £4k. Just buy it and have some fun.

 

[Sans Bateau]

It's £4k. Just buy it and have some fun.

With respect, to some people £4K is a lot of money.

 

[Bobc]

With respect, to some people £4K is a lot of money.

It wasn't meant as a "it just loose change" jibe. The guy obviously knows what he's looking at having crewed yachts and sailed dinghies. So he's not stupid. If he was a complete beginner then my advice would be very different.

What I was meaning is that when it comes to a boat of this type, size, age, and price, it's not worth bothering with surveys and sea trials. If it all looks ok, buy it, take it home, give it a once-over and make sure that everything works, service the outboard and make sure that's all ok, and then go and enjoy it.

 

[V1701]

Do your own survey - RYA do a relevant book, see also Don Casey's Inspecting the Aging Sailboat. Re insurance, Yachting 24 insure fully comp without survey, are underwritten by Pantaenius who have a very good rep, my 1972 Vega is £157 p.a., or you can arrange 3rd party online for £80/£90...

 

[Sans Bateau]

Do your own survey - RYA do a relevant book, see also Don Casey's Inspecting the Aging Sailboat. Re insurance, Yachting 24 insure fully comp without survey, are underwritten by Pantaenius who have a very good rep, my 1972 Vega is £157 p.a., or you can arrange 3rd party online for £80/£90...

Sounds like the way to go.

 

[Seajet]

Galadriel,

sorry chum but one doesn't need to suspend lift keelers from a crane to antifoul them !

If one tried that at my club the penalty would be at the very least keel-hauling for getting wet paint on the crane slings.

For a long time now I've used home-made trestles to keep the boat up high over the winter; this allows maintenance of the keel plate, with the added bonus of putting the boat up high out of the range of casual thieves / yobs.

In the Spring when antifouling I do one coat, then jack the boat up one end at a time, shifting the trestles just enough to get at the previously hidden patches.

I use a simple hydraulic bottle jack, and - crucially - a wooden block about 10" long with a deep vee to fit the boats' forward hull and skeg respectively; on the opposite face there's a steel pad to spread the load of the jack.

Very easy to use, and the beauty is that the trestle is always under the boat in case the jack should topple or fail.

I give plans for these trestles to all members of the Anderson 22 owners association and a lot of people use them; it would be simple to make such things for any similar boat, given the hull shape.

The trestles fold flat and can be transported in a small box trailer or a van, they each consist of one 8 X 4 sheet of exterior ( it's all exterior nowadays ) ply, cut in half and sandwiching a hardwood structure, anyone remotely handy at DIY can make them.

The boat is hoisted on and off the trestles for layup / launching.

This is vastly preferable to keeping a lift keel boat on a trailer, with no access to the keel plate...

 

[DaveS]

Check your vehicle can tow the weight!!!!. Also do you have the appropriate entitlement on your licence to tow that weight? Ideally the boat and trailer with all the bits that are needed for sailing needs to be weighed on a weigh bridge. Quoted weights are often significantly lower than reality. In my case by 350Kgs which made the difference between towing it with an Espace needing a large 4x4 at significant extra expense these days.

My Etap 22 was bought on the Humber and I towed it to the Forth using a 1.6 litre Talbot Alpine. (It was a company car which, as everyone knows, can carry heavier loads and go over rougher ground than a private car...) Progress was slow and the journey took about 10 hours. This was in 1989 and I suspect the towing rules have since been tightened up.

 

[Seajet]

My Etap 22 was bought on the Humber and I towed it to the Forth using a 1.6 litre Talbot Alpine. (It was a company car which, as everyone knows, can carry heavier loads and go over rougher ground than a private car...) Progress was slow and the journey took about 10 hours. This was in 1989 and I suspect the towing rules have since been tightened up.

Too sure the rules have tightened, I can't imagine that being legal now !

The police have made it public they will go after towed boats " as they've got away with it for far too long ".

Which translates as soft easy target to get 'crime detected' points...

In the South, at the end of the M27 it's been reported plod lay in wait, then nab anyone towing and commandeer them to a weigh bridge.

One might wonder why this takes 2 expensive police patrol 'interceptors' and how many real criminals are going past in the meantime...

 

[Sans Bateau]

For the sake of clarity, I repeat below the line from my post which it seems has been misunderstood, I have made bold the the key words.


"All Etaps are very tough, the 22 no exception. The keel has a large bulb and as others say, to antifoul it you have to suspend the boat in a cradle and lower the keel. We kept ours on a drying mooring in Emsworth where she leaned balanced against a post.

Thats cradle, not crane.

 

[Seajet]

For the sake of clarity, I repeat below the line from my post which it seems has been misunderstood, I have made bold the the key words.


"All Etaps are very tough, the 22 no exception. The keel has a large bulb and as others say, to antifoul it you have to suspend the boat in a cradle and lower the keel. We kept ours on a drying mooring in Emsworth where she leaned balanced against a post.

Thats cradle, not crane.

Galadriel,

apologies I was too busy wondering if you hated or hatted the 22, I was misguided by 'suspended' in the cradle, the first thing I do with my A22 as soon as she's on the trestles is to lower the keel and take that weight off the hull.

Similarly I have a steel 'keeper pin' to take the weight of the keel when raised on the mooring.

These are both home grown ideas, other Andersons get on fine without them ( though a very good mechanic chum has done the same ); just seems kinder on the boat in an engineering sense.

 

[jackho]

Etap 22

In answer to your question - yes it is a good boat. It was our first sailing boat. Bought new 30 years ago. Had never sailed before so launched and quickly learned the ropes. sailed with family, one in a moses basket and other 2 year old. Managed the western isles on a regular basis. Very safe boat. Like a lot of your replies I moved on to a Etap26 and then a 30 as another 2 crew were born into boating. Now sail Bavs. as Etap got too expensive.
Getting a feeling of envy now as I reflect so - Buy - sail - enjoy.

 

[Me_has_a_Boat]

An ETAP 22 and the price point is in the ballpark as the first boat. Less is always better - but £4k for a decent boat is wayyyy better than £2k for a dog....err I mean a project that could do with a bit of TLC .......actually nothing wrong with that approach, especially if a bit short of the readies at the getgo - but as you have already identified, for a first (own) boat could put the kybosh on the whole idea so I would suggest (for anyone starting out) getting at least "good to go" - even if the price of that is less in size of boat.

On which note.........

Things I'm specifically concerned about:
I viewed the boat out of the water, and the owner didn't really want to put it back in - due to the cost involved, but this means I wont get to see it sailed - is it normal for boats to be exchanged dry?

For that size and value of boat I would say not unusual - but certainly not ideal. Especially in the absence of a Survey I would really want to see her on the water (water coming in from below = bad / sails going up = good /- motor starting = very nice / keel dropping = life cheaper and easier.....most other things can be lived with).

I can understand why the Vendor would not want the aggro (you will not be the only one who has asked - they won't all buy!) - but if you can convince the Vendor that you are serious then no reason why he should not. I suggest agreeing a price subject to getting her wet (and the above minimums - and also help getting her back on the trailer (if you need her back on). and if needed offer him a £100 non-refundable deposit for the sale (if the sale does not happen because of any of the above reasons £100 will be far far cheaper than fixing any of them! - so consider the lost £100 as a cheap exit!) and with the balance in cash when boat back on the trailer. If you can also bring a mate who "knows a bit" about boats (or can at least pretend he does!) both to have another look at her on dryland and also when you get afloat.

Good luck!