etap 24 sailboat

Better Sailing

Etap 24i Review

The Etap 24i is the boat that will do whatever you want it to. It is small enough to trail, big enough to cruise for a fortnight, and fast enough to win races, the Etap 24i is as versatile as they come.

Back in 2007, I headed across to Holland to sail a new boat from neighboring Belgium. This was the Etap 24i, and she was well worth going to see. Introduced as a big sister to the popular 21i, she shared the same twin rudders, backstayless rig, unmistakable Etap styling, and, of course, the doubleskinned, foam-filled construction that makes all Etaps unsinkable. Today, I had the chance to sail with the same boat again and see how it help up after 14 years. 

A twist to this test session for Europe’s yachting journalists was that Etap had two boats on the water – one with a deep fin and one with a shoal-draught tandem keel developed by the designer, Marc-Oliver von Ahlen, in conjunction with Berlin University. We were not told which keel was on which boat: it was the testers’ job to work it out. 

Since this sail, Etap has ceased production. After building more than 5,000 boats in 38 years, the company was bought by Dehler in 2008. Then it all came to an end a few months later. Although the rights and the designs have been bought by another Belgian company, signs of the long-talked of reincarnation are still awaited. In the meantime, if you want an Etap, it will have to be second-hand. 

The good news is that Etaps tend to last pretty well. When I was sailing the 24i, the company claimed to have known about just five cases of osmosis – that’s 0.1% of the production. By all accounts, the hulls are pretty stiff, and, importantly, the foam injected between the skins means they will stay on the surface if the worst happens. On more than one occasion, it has. Etaps (and their crews) have lived to tell the tale following rather-too-close encounters with ferries and reefs, among other hazards of the ocean.

Refreshingly Different 

While unsinkability has been an influence for some buyers of Etaps, at most, it’s incidental. The boats wouldn’t have sold as well as they did had they not offered a good deal more than the ability to stay afloat if holed.

Take the 24i as an example. Here’s a boat that looks good for a start. Builders of cruisers in this size range have often tended to err on the side of volume, believing that compromising the accommodation as it would need to be compromised to achieve attractive lines would limit the appeal. Etap took a refreshingly different approach, setting out to make the boat sporty – not racy, just sporty – and well proportioned. Never mind standing headroom; the 24i was meant to be fast, fun, attractive, durable, and, of course, unsinkable. 

It’s a formula that appealed to a friend of mine, who was looking for a boat about eight years ago. The Etap seemed to do everything he wanted, so he found a nice-looking fin-keeled example at Hamble, UK, and trailed it back to Weymouth, UK, behind his VW camper van. 

Trailable though the Etap is, that hasn’t stopped him and his wife from treating her as a fully-fledged cruising yacht. They have done all sorts of things with the Echo 42i that many people would never dream of doing with a 24-footer, including crossing the channel most years to Brittany, France and, at various times, most of the Channel Islands as well, spending up to two weeks aboard at a time. 

Initially, they were surprised to find people on larger yachts raising an eyebrow and asking if they had really sailed ‘all the way from England on that?!’, but they soon got used to it. 

In the 1960s and ’70s, a 24-footer was a typical size for a cruising boat, and it was by no means uncommon to find one accommodating a family of four. While expectations have changed over the past 40 years – many owners and crews considering a boat unacceptable if it doesn’t have full standing headroom and a shower at the very least – the practicality of sailing a smaller boat remains the same. ‘It’s so useful to have a boat that’s small enough to trail yet big enough for proper cruising,’ says my friend. ‘We can tuck into corners of marinas where most other boats won’t fit, and on occasions, that has meant being right next to the shower block while other people have been stuck on pontoons in the middle of the river waiting for the water taxi’.

The early years with Echo were a steep learning curve. He recalls a trip to Dartmouth in what turned out to be a south-easterly Force 8. ‘Even with our limited skill levels at the time, we reckoned it was safer to keep going than to turn back. Some of the seas were higher than the boat was long, but she looked after us!’

As well as cruising extensively, they have made Echo a name to be feared in their local racing from Weymouth, last year managing a near clean sweep of the silverware despite often sailing two-handed or with an occasional third. 

Many Etap 24is have the tandem keel. Giving a draught of just 2ft 9in (0.85m), it allows the boat to sneak into shallow water and also to sit lower on the trailer than with the substantially deeper fin. It’s also pretty efficient for such a shallow appendage, with the benefits of being both cheaper and simpler than the lifting keel that Etap had offered on their smaller models until the introduction of the 21i. Also, extra cabin space is a bonus. 

As has been demonstrated time and time again, however, there’s no substitute for draught, so I was pleased to hear that Echo is a fin-keeler. The tip of the fin’s lead bulb plunges to just under 5ft (1.5m) below the waterline. It was a sensible decision for Etap: having given buyers a shallow alternative, why compromise with the fin? 

Despite the secrecy surrounding the two boats’ keel profiles in Holland all those years ago, it soon became abundantly clear which was which. A few yards of sailing and a couple of tacks was all it took to give the game away.

That’s not to say that the tandem keel doesn’t work well for its draught; just that a deep fin is better for stiffness, righting moment, speed, acceleration, and maneuverability. They have proved that it works, as did I during a pleasant early-season (pre-season for most people) sail from Weymouth. Portland Marina had lifted the boat for a scrub only a few days earlier, so she had a clean bottom despite having otherwise remained afloat since the beginning of 2013. Combined with the folding prop on the leg of the Yanmar 9hp 1GM saildrive (Etap offered an outboard as an alternative), it gave her no excuses. 

Thankfully she didn’t need any, reminding me that she’s a fun, fast, and responsive boat to sail. My friend says that she comes into her own when the breeze reaches 15 knots. He has a good deal of experience in fresh conditions, including having planned (not surfed, but planned) at 12 knots down the entire leg of a race a few years ago under spinnaker. ‘It was fine until we approached the leeward mark and had to take the kite down’, he remembers. ‘That’s when it all started to get a bit messy!’

We had gentler conditions for our sail, having to make do with between 8 and 12 knots of wind. It was noticeable how much more positive Echo became at the upper end of this range. In 12 knots, she felt alive and responsive, clocking up to 5.3 knots on the breeze and feeling fully powered up. A marginal lull was all it took for us to lose half a knot of boat speed. She came upright and needed a substantial change of gear – crew position and sail trim – to stop her sticking to the water. Many boats have these transitions at various wind-speeds; the Etap’s just happens to be more pronounced. 

Learning how best to tickle her along is all part of the challenge for a racing crew. At one stage, we were ambling upwind happily enough in 10-12 knots with all three of us in the cockpit – one to leeward – and the log showing 4.7-4.8 knots. Moving two crew up to the weather rail and the helmsman to the forward end of the cockpit brought immediate results, the speed increasing to 5.1-5.2 knots. 

Crew weight affects any boat, and the smaller and lighter the boat, the greater its effect, so this came as no surprise. Harder to assess without another boat to sail against is the optimum pointing angle upwind. Sailing as I was initially, we tacked through around 80°. My friend has found he does better by sailing a little deeper, the extra speed more than compensating for the increased tacking angle. I was in no position to argue, as Echo’s results suggest that whatever he has been doing has worked. Easy ways Lest all this talk of tweaking should give the impression that the Etap is an overly sensitive creature, I should make it clear that she’s not in the least. She’s an easy and forgiving boat to sail; just one that’s agreeably responsive, and that makes her fun to be aboard. 

After beating out through the breakwater and a little way into Weymouth Bay, we turned around, popped the kite up, and made our way back downwind at 6.5 knots. Reaching up as shy as we could, we brought the apparent wind to around 70° and the log to 6.9 knots. The helm loaded up at that point, but the twin rudders continued to grip tenaciously. 

In normal sailing mode, the helm remains comfortably light. If there’s any slop in the rudder bearings, it’s time for new bushes. My friend replaces them every year – it’s a simple enough job. 

The helming position on the coamings is pretty good. If you find it a bit too close to the guardwire for comfort, the answer is to dip your torso underneath. 

The standard boat-testing ‘circuits-and-bumps’ routine showed up with no surprises. Trimmed normally and left to her own devices on the wind, Echo rounded up, tacked, tacked back, rounded up, tacked again, and continued this routine until we interrupted her to carry on sailing. Hove to, she sat almost dead in the water but could still be gybed round with the main pinned in to resume her original course. Making upwind under either just the main or the headsail on its own presented no challenges. She could even be put into the ‘hove one’ position, as I call it – heaving to without the jib. 

Control of the mainsail is helped by the full-width traveler, which can quickly and easily be removed if you want to open up the cockpit for picnics or to socialize. There’s no backstay, however, so you have to use alternative approaches to flatten and depower the wellroached mainsail.

Hardware throughout is up to spec and from well-known names such as Lewmar and Seldén. Most of the aluminum extrusions apart from the spars came from Etap’s own factory. 

>>Also Read: Fin vs Full Keel

Accommodation 

Etap was clever in the way they managed to incorporate enough foam to keep the boat afloat, habitable, and able to sail if flooded without restricting interior space or stowage to an appreciable extent. In fact, the stowage is remarkably good, which is one of the reasons why my friend and his wife were struggling when they eventually started to look for a bigger boat. The question they most often found themselves asking was, ‘where are we going to put everything?’ 

Etap’s trick was to hide the bulk of the foam in the ends, using space that would otherwise be mostly wasted. Side effects of the double-skinning and foam injection are the smooth, wipe-clean insides to the lockers and good thermal and acoustic insulation. Etap’s use of resin-transfer techniques means that every molded surface is smooth gelcoat. 

Accommodation is good for a spirited 24-footer. There’s no double aft cabin. Instead, you have plenty of cockpit locker space on each side and, below decks, generous settee berths in the saloon whose backrests can be removed and clipped alongside to extend their width for sleeping. Also, multitasking is the door to the hanging locker to starboard, forward of the main bulkhead. It doubles as a table in the saloon or the cockpit. 

The galley is split either side, abaft the bulkhead. Moving forward, you find the heads to port and then a V-berth in the bow. Compression loads from the rig are taken by an aluminum arch molded into the deck and by the bulkhead beneath. 

On Echo, the woodwork, finished in beech laminate, has worn well – as has the whole interior. It’s still clean, fresh, and showing no signs of having been lived in extensively.

Etap 24i Review – Verdict

After sailing the Etap twice, once when it was pretty and another one now, my conclusion is that she was out of the ordinary sailboat then and still is now, offering a combination of qualities that simply can’t be found in any other boat, old or new.

She offers a sporty yet easy-going nature combined with unsinkability, a choice of keels, and an interior that, while less roomy than some, is appealing, comfortable, and eminently practical. Although a boat of this size can’t be considered a trailer-sailer, her beam and weight make her trailable behind a suitably robust tow-vehicle.

The 24i confirms that Etap’s reputation for producing cleverly designed, attractive, and soundly engineered performance cruisers with a difference is well deserved.

Etap 24i Specification

Peter is the editor of Better Sailing. He has sailed for countless hours and has maintained his own boats and sailboats for years. After years of trial and error, he decided to start this website to share the knowledge.

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