[All posts](https://sanderr.nl/blog/) 24 August 2026 · [Sailing](https://sanderr.nl/blog/?filter=sailing) · 8 min read # Finally, a sailboat I’ve been sailing for as long as I can remember. I used to sail a lot more when I was younger, but over the last few years it has mostly been limited to two weeks every summer with my uncle and the occasional rented Valk. For about four years I’ve been looking at getting something of my own. I came close a few times, but there was always a reason not to do it. At first I mostly looked at Valks and Randmeers. Great boats, but once you add a berth, winter storage and maintenance, renting one for the few days I’d actually use it made a lot more sense. A trailerable boat would solve most of that, except I don’t have a towbar. So I kept looking. ## Slowly figuring out what I wanted Over the years just about everything passed by: Randmeers, Etaps, Clevers, Jouet Foxtrots and a long list of other small boats. Recently I went to look at a Lanaverre 17. Really nice little boat, but the interior made me reconsider what I was actually looking for. At 1.92m, there was no way I was going to sleep in there. If I was going to deal with a permanent berth anyway, I wanted something I could spend at least a weekend on, preferably much longer. Somewhere to sleep properly, cook some food and store enough stuff to disappear for a week. Shallow draft was another big plus, because eventually taking it onto the Wadden is definitely part of the plan. And that brought me back to the Tonic 23. A long time ago I spotted one in some harbour on the eastern Wadden and immediately liked it. It reminded me of the Fantasia 27 my uncle used to own, just shrunk down a size. Since then I’ve had saved searches running on both Marktplaats and Kleinanzeigen. They were always outside what I wanted to spend, but I kept checking anyway. On the way home after looking at the Lanaverre, I searched for one again. This time there was one on Facebook Marketplace that actually made sense. ## Looking past the mess The Tonic was built in 1991, making it one of the later examples. On paper it ticked almost every box I’d been building up over the years: a lifting keel, mast-lowering system, roller-furling genoa, four berths, a surprisingly wide aft berth, a sink, cooker, toilet and plenty of storage for a 23-foot boat. The outside looked remarkably good too. No obvious damage, cracks around the mast or signs of osmosis. The lifting keel moved smoothly, the genoa looked good, the mainsail was used but perfectly serviceable and the Yamaha 8hp two-stroke started from cold on the first pull. The inside was another story. It looked like nobody had properly cleaned it in years. Dirt everywhere, filthy upholstery, loose headlining and a fair few dubious old additions. But none of it really looked like wear. There was still antifreeze standing in the toilet, and the gas hose turned out to be dated 1999. This boat hadn’t been used hard. It had mostly just been left sitting. That’s also why it was affordable. I’d never seen a Tonic this cheap, and the state of the inside explained most of it. But nearly all of that could be cleaned or replaced, and underneath it the boat seemed sound. The final hurdle was finding somewhere to keep it. A permanent berth and all the costs around it had always been one of the main reasons I hadn’t bought a boat before. Once I’d found an affordable spot in Workum and worked out what winter storage and lifting would cost, the numbers finally made enough sense. So, after years of looking, I finally had a Tonic. She’s called L’Esprit. I haven’t decided yet whether that stays. ## Six hours of two-stroke Two days later we picked it up in Wergea and took it to its new berth in Workum, via the Sneekermeer, through Sneek and past Heeg. There wasn’t enough useful wind to sail, so the Yamaha got to do all the work. Six hours and somewhere around twenty litres of petrol later, we made it to Workum without any problems. The engine did make sure it wasn’t exactly a quiet trip. Six hours behind the tiller is also long enough to notice that almost every line coming out of the mast ended up in the wrong clutch, in the wrong place on deck. Re-leading all of it the way I actually wanted it became one of the first jobs. ## Starting over inside Then the real work started: everything had to come out. Every cushion, floorboard, loose cable and piece of junk that could be removed came out. By the end there was basically a full trailer of stuff next to the boat. Everything underneath the floorboards, the bilge, hull and cupboards was cleaned and the cushion covers went through a proper wash. Some mould, broken taps and a questionable DIY battery charger disappeared along the way. It took the best part of a week, spread over two weekends. Structurally we didn’t find any nasty surprises. One thing did stand out, though. There was a hole in the hull at the back, which I think used to be the cooling water outlet running from the outboard well to the transom. Whatever it had been, there was no skin fitting left in it. Just a hole. Don’t ask me why or how. Fitting a proper through-hull went straight to the top of the list, so at least that part is safe and tidy now. The cooking arrangement had its own history. The original setup was an odd blue tank with a burner mounted directly on top of it, rusted well beyond saving, so that went. The gas cooker that had clearly been added later came with that 1999 hose and regulator, so those didn’t last long either. For now there’s a new hose, regulator and a disposable cylinder so I could cook at all, but I’ve since found an Origo 3000 spirit stove to replace the gas entirely. A spirit burner feels a lot better to me than a gas bottle sitting under the cooker. After the clean, the interior already felt like a completely different boat. Some plates, cutlery, towels and other essentials went aboard and suddenly it was somewhere I could actually cook and comfortably spend the night. Before the clean I didn’t want to sit in there for more than half an hour. The big job that’s still waiting is the headlining. Like quite a few boats from this era, the interior uses foam-backed vinyl. Over the decades that foam slowly breaks down into powder, leaving the vinyl hanging loose. Simply gluing it back isn’t much of a solution, so eventually the old material has to come out, the remaining foam and adhesive need to be removed and the interior needs to be lined again. That’s definitely a winter job. ## Out on the water The next morning I took it out properly, sailing from Workum towards De Kuilart and eventually spending the night in Heeg. I started with the full sail plan, which was a bit ambitious for the wind that day while sailing alone. After dropping the mainsail and continuing on the genoa, everything became much more relaxed. And the little thing moves. I saw 6.1 knots on a broad reach with both sails up, and around 5.3–5.4 knots upwind on just the genoa. It happily kept up with the Fox 22s around me and felt much more stable in waves than I expected. The cockpit is spacious, it responds quickly and manoeuvring alone is fine once you get used to handling an outboard. The wide aft berth also passed the most important test: I can actually sleep in it. The built-in diesel heater was less convincing. It fires up, runs for about three minutes and then gives up, which made for a fairly cold night. ## A growing list That first trip naturally produced a small list of things to change. The furling line was too thick and kept binding, so I’ve replaced it with 6mm double-braided polyester. I’ve also added a wind indicator to the stay, and made a temporary topping lift from a length of line and two shackles, since the Tonic doesn’t have one and the main halyard isn’t always free to do the job. The mainsail slides kept dropping out of the mast every time the sail came down, so for now there’s a line tensioned between two cleats for them to land in. I still haven’t found an actual sail slide stopper in the right size. More importantly, sailing alone made me realise how much I miss an autopilot. Stowing fenders and lines, walking up to the mast, grabbing a sandwich or a beer: all of it means letting go of the tiller. I’ve since picked up a cheap Simrad TP20 that supposedly stutters, so fixing and installing that is another project. Before taking the boat onto the Wadden, I also want a proper depth sounder, probably a shoot-through in-hull transducer. The electrics could use a full refit as well. They’re simple and not exactly neatly installed, but there’s so little of it that even I can follow what’s going on. The batteries need replacing, the heater needs sorting, and I should probably get my VHF licence while I’m at it. There’s plenty left to do. For now, though, I mostly want to sail it. A few more trips around the Fluessen, maybe the IJsselmeer before the end of the season, and then it can come out of the water for antifouling and the bigger jobs. After four years of looking at completely different boats, I ended up with the one I’d been keeping an eye on all along. And so far, it’s pretty much exactly what I was looking for. In this post Slowly figuring out what I wanted Looking past the mess Six hours of two-stroke Starting over inside Out on the water A growing list ## More writing [All posts](https://sanderr.nl/blog/) - [One folder, three tools 1 Oct 2026 · Code · 4 min readRead](https://sanderr.nl/one-folder-three-tools/) - [Making a dumb watch smarter 19 Aug 2026 · Technologia · Watches · 2 min readRead](https://sanderr.nl/making-a-dumb-watch-smarter/) - [Building a smarter plant 26 Jul 2026 · Technologia · 3 min readRead](https://sanderr.nl/building-a-smarter-plant/) --- - [Sander de Vries for agents](https://sanderr.nl/llms.txt) - [Sitemap](https://sanderr.nl/sitemap.xml) - [Contact](mailto:hello@sanderr.nl)