transforming a day sailer into the ideal pilot house blue water cruiser

I’ve bought a 1972 Ericson 27 day sailer that I intend to modify her to be an “ideal” blue water cruiser and take her to Hawaii on my first ocean passage.

I intend to expand the cabin, build or buy furling gear, build a pilot house / covered cockpit possibly soft top / build an outboard motor well expand the quarter berth back and widen the back of the boat and turn the port side stowage to an additional berth, add 1000+ pounds of ballast below the water line, modify it to a trikeel design add a bowsprit, add a mizzenmast, a solar arch, vawt’s, and of course an electric motor powered drive system.

I’m hoping to use a combination of plywood core fiberglass construction and possibly for the keel work ferro concrete encased in.glass or a hybrid with Kevlar or carbon fiber shell.

I’m currently in the San Francisco Bay Area and I’d love to chat with people about my plans and even take people along to Hawaii and back. So far a few others have expressed interest and one has come to work on Angel with me.

 

Welcome to the forum

A decade ago, I lived and sailed a 70's Ericsson27 around San Francisco Bay, down to Monterey, up to Tomalas Bay and frequently the Delta. Awesome pocket cruiser as is. Other than aerial jib storage, how will any of your proposed projects improve its cruisability?

Read Latitude. Join Cal Sailing Club. Do the beer can races. Above all sail that great boat as is for a year or five before making any modifications.

 

She'll probably sink to the gunwales by the time you end up adding all that weight. It is a really bad idea.

 

Morris, I think you are basically hankering after doing something like what Dave Martin did 30 years ago with his Cal 25.

Have a read of this fine article about his adventures, trials and tribulations.
http://www.goodoldboat.com/pdfs/jf05martindream.pdf

I met Dave and Jaja in Barbados in 1989 after they had crossed the Atlantic from the Canaries. I met them again in Antigua in 1995 - in the meantime they had been around the world in Direction, had 2 kids on the way, kid #3 was in the offing (expected to arrive in a few months), and they were thinking that a 25' boat would be a bit small for 5 of them...... so they moved up to a 33' steel boat and then spent a few years (as a family) sailing in high latitudes (Greenland, Iceland et al).