Tiara 3100 Open
“Imust have been 14 years old,” recalls Eric Uscinski. “I had a cousin in Delaware City. I spent a few summers down there. He was older than me, and we got into crabbing. We’d go out in his 16-foot boat and be on the river at 3 a.m., back by 1 in the afternoon with our catch.”
It was a beginning, says Uscinski, “driving the boat, working the crab pots, packing the crabs and getting them ready for sale.” Uscinski’s cousin eventually made crabbing a profession, but the 58-year-old Yale University facilities manager from Clinton, Connecticut, went a different way. However, he still has a love for boats and boating, born of crabbing on the river years ago.
The first boat of his own was a 28- foot Celebrity, followed by a 24-foot Sportcraft, an inboard-powered open boat he used for fishing. Along the way, he found he’d kept his penchant for working on boats, doing the maintenance and the myriad chores that keep a boat running — a trait he passed on to his family.
“My son, Chris, bought a 19-foot Seaway, built in Maine, as a project boat,” Uscinski says. “He picked it up cheap. It needed work.” Father and son stripped the boat, removed the outboard, redid the wiring and put everything back together. A coat of flag blue paint finished the job. “I enjoy doing projects,” he says. “It’s always challenging.”
Uscinski’s life in boats might have ended there in 2010. An illness caused him to consider getting rid of the Sportcraft and getting out of boating. “My wife, Kathy, said, ‘It’s something you enjoy — why don’t you get something bigger, something that we can go places on?’ ” he says.
Less than a year later, they owned a 1996 Tiara 3100 Open, a family cruiser with comfortable accommodations, a 20-mph speed and wideranging cruising capabilities.
He’d been on his way home from New Jersey when he decided to take a closer look at a Tiara he’d noticed in the Cos Cob section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Everything Kathy and Eric Uscinski about the boat seemed right, he says. “My wife wanted the basic cruising comforts — an enclosed head compartment with a shower and a comfortable place to sleep,” Uscinski says. “I liked the styling, the look of the boat. It had nice, wide side decks and was easy to get around on. You didn’t have to go through the windshield to get to the foredeck.”
The couple bought the boat in May 2011 for $60,000 through Southpaw Yacht Sales in Cos Cob ( southpawyachtsales.com). “They were good, very helpful,” Uscinski says. “The boat was in good condition, with no serious issues.”
The couple fished and cruised for a summer, enjoying the greater range and added comforts of the 31- foot cabin boat, compared to the 24-footer. “We had more range in going places, and it was easy to stay on board a night or two,” Uscinski says. diesel engines Tiara Yachts, Holland, Michigan, (616) 392-7163.