Posts Tagged “Nordhavn”
From Eagle Island, we made a short trip to another favorite anchorage at Nisqually Flats. The anchorage is a bit unusual, but we love the mountain views in both directions. Conditions generally are calm unless the winds pick up from the north, so even on overcast days, its a good anchorage. Mount Rainier wasn’t quite…
Friday afternoon we cruised south from Bell Harbor Marina for a week-long shakedown cruise in the South (Puget) Sound. We visit there frequently–it’s easily accessible from Seattle and has excellent anchorages, many with views to Mount Rainier and the Olympic Mountains. Relatively few boaters visit however, compared to the cruising grounds to the north, such…
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…
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…
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…
Xiamen is a popular destination with Chinese nationals, but less so with foreigners. Although we were there for three days, we didn’t get a chance to see much of the city. We spent most of our time at the South Coast Marine boat yard as the final details were being completed of what would become our…
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…
The house and hull for new Dirona came out of the mold a few weeks back and have now been joined together. In the top left picture below, our three engines await installation. From right to left: main engine, John Deer 6068AFM75; wing engine, Lugger 40HP Lugger L844D; and generator, 12 kW Northern Lights. …
Our next boat came out of the mold a few weeks back at the South Coast Marine shipyard in Xiamen, China. The yard is efficient in moving the big molds and hulls around. The time between the first picture and the last in the first set below is less than an hour. …
Last Friday I visited the engine for our new boat (next boat). It’s a John Deere 6068AFM75 M2. The standard engine in the Nordhavn 47 and 52 series is a Lugger L1066T.2 with a ZF220A gearbox. Both are great, long lasting components. We chose to move to the John Deere 6068 to get a bit…
For many years, we’ve been planning to buy a world-capable trawler as our next boat. Dirona is ideal for extended cruising in the Pacific Northwest while we are working, and we expected to purchase the next boat when we retired and had time for longer-range cruising, perhaps in a decade or so. The plan was…
Early this morning the commercial ship Amazon River arrived in Seattle from China. Part of the Amazon River‘s cargo was a cross-section of the current Nordhavn line: a 43, a 52, and a 68. The 52 was the first Nordhavn 52 in what I fully expect will be a very successful new line of Nordhavns….