Elizabethan 23 Sailboat Review, Specs, and Listings

Design and Construction

What distinguishes the 23 from many of her size is the visual and conceptual lineage she carries from the larger Elizabethan offshore racers. With a length overall of 23 feet 7 inches and a waterline of 18 feet 6 inches, she draws between 2 feet 6 inches and 4 feet 11 inches on her lifting keel, and her beam of 7 feet 1 inch keeps the hull narrow enough to feel like a proper yacht rather than a broad pram. Period reviewers consistently described her as a particularly pretty design, and that prettiness is structural rather than cosmetic: the long overhangs pretty design with long overhangs were the defining gestures of a scaled-down cruiser-racer ethos. Some early hulls were home completed rather than finished by the builder, a fact worth remembering when assessing the consistency of any individual boat's joinery and systems.

Rig and Handling

Despite her modest size, the 23 was credited by her period reviews with behaving like a steadier craft than her length suggests. She is very stable and can be quite quick in a decent breeze, a combination that made her a credible small cruiser-racer rather than a mere pond boat. The lifting keel is central to her appeal: it lets her skim into drying anchorages or onto a trailer at 2 feet 6 inches, yet stand up to sea and sail with a 4-foot-11-inch fin when lowered. A Yachting Monthly test report on the design was published in May 1969, placing her firmly in the early wave of modern small lifting-keel cruisers.

Accommodations

The four-berth interior was a serious attempt at live-aboard scale in a 23-footer. The original layout was revised with the Mk II, which arrived in the mid-1970s and raised headroom by 6 inches to a full 5 feet, together with various other improvements to the four-berth interior Mk II raised headroom to 5 feet. That extra clearance transformed a cramped early layout into something a crew could actually move around in, and the four berths meant the boat could genuinely cruise two couples or a family for a weekend.

Power and Equipment

The 23 was built in both inboard and outboard variants, with the inboard versions diesel-powered and the outboard models using petrol outboards. That split means a used buyer must identify which propulsion a given hull carries, because the systems, weight distribution, and maintenance profile differ sharply between the two.

Known Issues

The home-completed early hulls represent the one area where original-build quality cannot be assumed uniform. Because some early models were finished by amateur builders rather than Peter Webster's yard, joinery, electrical routing, and tank or engine mounting may reflect non-standard practice on those individual boats.

The Verdict

The Elizabethan 23 is a charming, able little cruiser-racer that punches above her length through stability, a lifting keel, and a genuine four-berth interior. She is best understood as a scaled-down offshore type rather than a bareboating dinghy, and the Mk II's extra headroom makes the later boats markedly more livable.

Pros