About Eric
Eric Sorensen has a wide-ranging, 40-year background in commercial and pleasure boats, and onboard U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrol craft and ships. Starting at age 17 in the Coast Guard, he was a coxswain and surfman, training boat crews in boat handling, surf operations, towing and salvage. After college, he was commissioned at Navy OCS in 1981 in Newport, RI where he was regimental commander of his class. He served for 15 years on four ships in both deck and engineering positions, and was the officer in charge of a squadron of 108-foot training craft in Newport, RI, used to train navy officers in shiphandling, navigation and seamanship.
ric Sorensen, Owner
Eric Sorensen is well regarded internationally as a powerboat authority. His background includes 24 years of U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy operational at-sea service, as well as experience operating and analyzing many hundreds of commercial and recreational craft. Mr. Sorensen has a unique balance of academic training and operational experience and the ability to communicate highly technical subject clearly to a client or lay audience.
Eric also is an entrepreneur and advisor to pleasure and military boatbuilders, shipbuilders, engine manufacturers and the US Navy. He has developed disciplined and targeted methodologies for analyzing and improving powerboat and small ship design, better matching vessel capabilities to their missions.
His company works on behalf of leading, highly regarded boatbuilders in overseas business development, by closely studying domestic and international product offerings and trends, and developing and implementing dealer product training programs. He has also worked with foreign Coast Guards to modernize their infrastructure, patrol craft and training to meet emerging requirements.
Mr. Sorensen was a founder and the director of the Marine Practice at J.D. Power and Associates, the customer satisfaction marketing research firm. His specialty today is applying customer satisfaction research directly to current product improvement and prototype development to improve boats’ competitive strengths.
He works with customers shopping for a new boat, to help them first define and then select the boat that will best serves their needs, and to help with problem solving and customer advocacy with their current boat. He acts as a personal guide or tutor to help owners learn boat fundamentals thoroughly quickly to help them make better-informed purchase decisions.
He is a strong advocate of boats that are easier to buy and own, that are safe, ergonomic and economical, operate with much greater efficiency, and have inherently seaworthy and seakindly designs.
Mr. Sorensen is the author of Sorensen's Guide to Powerboats: How to Evaluate Design, Construction and Performance, McGraw-Hill, an in-depth 500-page reference for the marine professional and inquiring boat owner alike. He is a former U.S. Coast Guard coxswain and surfman, and was a U.S. Navy surface ship officer serving aboard four warships and patrol boats in operations and engineering positions.
