Erik Aanderaavideo
My Contessa 35 FULL TOUR! -PART ONE-
February 27, 2026 · 22 min · 89K views · Haugesund, Norway
Contessa 35 sails past cruise ship near coastal town
What this video covers
A 1976 Contessa 35 named Tessi, owned and single-handed by Erik Aanderaa for 22 years, is toured as a purpose-built North Atlantic offshore passage-maker.0:46 The boat's 3.2-ton lead keel — 50 percent of total displacement — is the foundation of its ocean-worthiness; Aanderaa describes surviving a full-speed collision with a submerged rock because lead absorbs impact better than steel.1:32 The Volvo Penta D240 43-hp diesel drives a Gori folding propeller; two alternators produce 117 amps combined and charge three 150 Ah lithium batteries plus a starter battery, with a Victron 30-amp shore-power charger.3:45 Fuel capacity totals 343 liters across tank and jerry cans, giving roughly 550 nautical miles of motoring range.4:25 The sail wardrobe — mainsail, genoa, inner cutter jib, storm sail, and gennaker — is built from polyester-Dyneema laminate by Raleigh Tasker in Phuket; all running rigging is Dyneema.6:42 A four-reef mainsail system handles winds from light air to 40-plus knots.7:34 Steering redundancy runs six deep: hand steering, Raymarine EV200 electric autopilot, Hydrovane wind-vane self-steerer, emergency autopilot on the Hydrovane tiller, hand-steering the Hydrovane tiller, and an emergency tiller on the main rudder.14:22 Navigation uses a full Raymarine chartplotter and radar suite with a self-leveling dome, duplicated at the cockpit and nav station.15:48 A Raymarine M300C pan-tilt-zoom camera with 30x optical zoom and gyro stabilization, plus fixed cameras on the masthead, cockpit, engine room, and anchor, give 360-degree situational awareness while sailing single-handed offshore.19:34
Boats in this video
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