Posts Tagged “Nordhavn”
Last spring, Bob Lane interviewed us and reviewed Dirona for PassageMaker magazine. Bob has an experienced reporter’s eye for detail. And as a long-time boater who has toured and written up a lot of boats, he notices what works and what doesn’t. After touring the boat and describing the systems and upgrades, we discussed our…
Dirona recently was featured in the Three Sheets Northwest My Boat series. When we answered their questions, it had been about a year since we’d taken delivery of 5263, so it was a good chance for us to reflect back on the purchase and decision process. One of their interview questions we had the hardest…
This year at the Miami Boat Show, Northern Lights announced their new Wavenet generator digital monitoring system. Wavenet was installed on Dirona a couple of months prior to the announcement in Miami to test out the gear on a busy NMEA 2000 network in real boating conditions. I was pretty impressed with Wavenet from the…
Glacier Bay has long been high on our list of places to visit. And after nearly a week cruising southeast Alaska, the first day of our permit to enter finally had arrived. We’d technically been in the park for two nights already, as Dundas Bay is inside Glacier Bay National Park, but doesn’t require a…
On our Christmas trip to Desolation Sound this year, we were looking forward to testing the boat in some rough winter weather. We’ve been out in a few gale warnings, and the boat has handled well, but we wanted something more serious. We got our chance one morning on a trip from Gorge Harbor to…
We spent Christmas this year in Desolation Sound (map of area). The area is so popular in the summer that Kenmore Air has regular float-plane service to one of the anchorages there at Prideaux Haven (pictured above). That’s way too busy for us–we prefer the winter, when we can have it all to ourselves. We…
Last April, Circumnavigator magazine came aboard for a day to review the boat and its systems. On board for the magazine were contributing editor James Kirby, photographer Stephen Cridland and John Marshall, owner of Nordhavn 55 owner Serendipity. Also with us was Larry Schildwachter of Emerald Harbor Marine, who commissioned the boat and installed our…
We’ve been ordering a seemingly endless number of supplies and spare parts for the boat, ranging from fuel filters to zincs to alternators to pumps, and even a spare inverter. Stowing it all has been a big job. The boat has a large amount of storage space in various lockers, bilges and other spaces, but…
Because the Nordhavn 52 is a new boat and because we chose to go with a more powerful engine than standard, we receive many questions on how we like it, whether more power is a good idea, and the fuel burn at different speeds. Now that we have over 600 hours on the engine and…
Our Alaska trip was simply amazing. The glaciers and mountain scenery were incredible—we spent over a week in Glacier Bay National Park and several days in Tracy and Endicott Arms (trip map). We also cruised the complex outer coasts of Chichagof, Baranof and Prince of Wales Island, but barely scratched the surface there. The outer…
Dirona has plenty of storage space—we’ve not yet come close to filling all the lockers despite living aboard. But it is a boat, and storage space is at a premium. So we’re always looking for ways to make the most efficient use of the space we have. When we visited the yard during construction, one…
The week before last, our home was up in the air next to Emerald Harbor Marine‘s shop at Canal Boatyard in Ballard. Although we’re happy to be back at Bell Harbor, we had a good week. Living aboard in the yard was an adventure, and we enjoyed exploring Ballard and visiting its many pubs. We’d…
Last weekend we presented our experiences in going through the design and build process for Nordhavn 5263. The slides are at Hamilton_TF10_BuildingTrawlerWebPost.pdf In discussing purchase costs, we broke the total cost into three components: 1) base boat & standard equipment 2) factory/dealer options and 3) post-delivery items. The amount you spend above the base price…
Last week we answered this blog comment: Given you have all these changes taking into consideration the PNW waters, I am wondering if you feel you have had to compromise at all on design given you are introducing the idea of taking it out on the open ocean. In other words, one of the things…
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…
We spent the final two nights of our mid-March shakedown cruise in Hammersley Inlet. Shelton and the Oakland Bay Marina are at the elbow of Hammersley Inlet, where it bends into Oakland Bay. We’ve anchored in the area many nights, and spent hours exploring the area by dinghy and on foot. We enjoy the industry:…
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….