Posts In The “Technical” Category
The seminar schedule for Trawler Fest in Anacortes, WA has been posted. This year we’ll be presenting on Thursday May 20th at 10:30am on our experience in purchasing, configuring and building a Nordhavn 52. We attended our first Trawler Fest back in 2001, and began a trawler shopping process that culminated earlier this year in…
A major spring storm was forecast to hit the Puget Sound on Friday. A 972-mb low over southern Vancouver Island would generate storm-force winds along the Washington state coast. A gale warning was in effect for the more-protected Puget Sound, and winds there were forecast to reach 30-40 knots, with wind waves of 5-7 feet….
This weekend we completely filled our fuel tanks for the first time. We had called around to get pricing for taking on 1,700 gallons: Shilshole: $3.02 Poulsbo: $2.88 (up from previous week of $2.75) Port Orchard: $2.81 Kingston: $2.79 Tacoma: $2.99-$0.20 (for over 1,000 gallons): $2.79 (we were told $2.66) Ballard Oil: $2.73 Covich-Williams: $2.69…
We are now down to one boat and no storage room. Only four dock lines and two jobs tie us to Seattle. We’ve been living aboard Nordhavn 5263 since taking delivery on Friday February 19th, and three days ago, the new owners took delivery of our Bayliner 4087. The past week has been a busy…
Last year, Bayliner Magazine interviewed us for a story about our travels and experiences aboard Dirona, our Bayliner 4087 (article). Soon we will take delivery of a Nordhavn 52, and turn the 4087 over to new owners. We are, of course, eager to have the Nordhavn, but are not desperate to get off the 4087….
We’ve been living aboard for just over a year now, and are absolutely loving it. What started out as an experiment ended up with our selling the house and car and becoming permanent liveaboards. We had a number of infrastructure issues to solve when we first moved aboard, and most solutions will carry forward to…
The 2010 Seattle Boat Show seminar schedule has been posted (http://www.seattleboatshow.com/seminar-home.html). We’ll be doing two presentations this year. On Saturday January 30th at 1pm, we’ll be giving a free one-hour seminar, Waggoner’s Secret Coast, that covers some of our favorite destinations between Victoria and Bella Bella. One that we’ll cover is Alison Sound at the…
L to R: Jeremy Henderson, James and Jennifer Hamilton, Jeff MerrillJeff Merrill just posted 5263 Seattle Arrival – Dirona makes a splash! In this article, Jeff covers the build and delivery of Nordhavn 5263. The article ranges from the early discussion phase, through the build in Xiamen, China, to the delivery and first cruise under…
Last Saturday we ran the dinghy down to Tacoma to watched the offload of Nordhavn 5263. Similar to visiting the yard, but on a smaller scale, watching the offload was an adventure, and an exciting part of the purchase and build process. We did have a minor difficulty in the offload, and Don Kohlmann of…
Nordhavn 5263 arrived in Tacoma at 5:22AM this morning assisted by Weddell Foss and Henry Foss. We took our dinghy down and the fog was so thick we couldn’t see the bow at times. We’ll do a more detailed blog entry with more pictures but here’s a quick sampling of some of the pictures. The…
Nordhavn 5263 finally is en route from Asia, on board the Ever Ethic. The ship is scheduled to arrive into Tacoma on December 4th. We’ll still have weeks of commissioning before the boat actually is ours, but this definitely is a major milestone. A safe splash at Tacoma and an uneventful trip to the Emerald…
Last week, an anchor accidentally deployed on the BC Ferry Spirit of British Columbia at it exited the east end of Active Pass into the Strait of Georgia. The ship apparently did a complete donut as the crew put the vessel in full reverse to slow it down. The ferry was delayed for 80 minutes…
One of the many advantages of boating in the Pacific Northwest is that we can cruise year-round. While many boaters here do winterize their boats, they typically don’t have to do as much work as northeast coast boaters. Seaworthy, the BoatUS Marine Insurance & Damage Avoidance Report, often carries stories of winter damage claims where…
We just took delivery of the dinghy for our Nordhavn 52, an AB 12 VST with a 40HP Honda outboard. We’d ordered it a while back, and weren’t planning to take delivery at least until commissioning on the Nordhavn had started later this year. But we thought it would an efficient way to run back…
Choices like engine brand are personal. We didn’t make a Deere vs Lugger decision on our Nordhavn 52—we would have been happy with either. Although the high quality support offered by Lugger clearly is important, the reason why 5263 will have a John Deere main is that we wanted a little bit more power and…
Moving aboard raised a number of issues to resolve, including internet connectivity, laundry, mail and pump-out. For pump-out, we initially planned to use Bell Harbor Marina’s portable pump-out cart. You wheel the cart to the boat, pump out the boat into the cart, then wheel it back and pump the cart into the plumbed sewage…
The roof is now on the pilot house of new Dirona, and other exterior work is progressing. But the most obvious progress is inside, where many of the changes that we’ve specified are taking shape. We’ll be visiting the yard in Xiamen in early August to see it in person. One of our early challenges…