Final post from Grey Pearl

Grey Pearl, a Nordhavn 62, enters the Strait of Gibraltar after crossing the Atlantic. Photo by Ken Williams.

It is with such a heavy heart that I write this last and final blog of the good ship Grey Pearl.

Early in December, while we were spending the winter at our home in Virginia away from our boat, we received one of life’s dreaded phone calls. Our beloved ‘Grey Pearl’ N6208 was on fire in her slip at Yacht Haven Marina in Phuket, Thailand. The fire started in the early evening of Dec. 6th, 2011, and was detected shortly thereafter. The fire quickly became uncontrollable and threatened the marina and other boats. The marina staff and some brave yachtsmen scrambled to remove her from the slip, tow her up a nearby river and run her aground where she continued to burn for almost another day. Needless to say we are devastated by this horrible tragedy.

In order to tend to this matter and our responsibilities, Braun & I immediately flew from our home in Virginia to Thailand. Of course, the hardest and saddest moment was to see her…it is impossible to describe the heartbreak. To see the pilothouse wheel resting on the charred Lugger main engine…we were overcome. The raging fire had consumed her down to the water line. To put her to rest, we had a “viewing” on a Thursday…and her “burial” with flowers and a final good by on Friday.

Although heartbroken, we do understand how lucky we are…no one was injured! And the damage would have been more catastrophic if not for the brave souls that worked quickly to get the boat out of the slip and thereby save the surrounding yachts and dock.

We’ve had 11 ½ years of absolutely wonderful experiences on the Pearl…and happily, we’ve been able to share that on board passion with so many friends & family. Often we’d sit on our aft “Lido” deck and reminisce about where she’s taken us…Gibraltar, Jounieh, Lebanon, Jementos, Bahamas, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Elba, Italy, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Aleutian Islands, Panama Canal, Haifa, Israel, Rome, Petropavlovsk, Russia, Bar Harbor, Me., Singapore, Athens…to name just a few.

I personally have never been more challenged, fulfilled and happier doing anything in my life than the time I’ve spent on my ‘Grey Pearl’. And…more importantly, she was a passion Braun & I enjoyed together. She will live on fondly in our hearts & memories . . . forever.

We are still “processing” this calamity so it’s way too soon to say what our future plans will be…but there will be an Act II. The fun is not going to stop.

We’re OK…and, we have the love of family & friends we can count on to get through this painful time…

A special thanks to our dear friends, Carol & Steven Argosy on our buddy boat N62 ‘Seabird’. They remain in Phuket and we deeply regret having to temporarily leave the “Bird and Pearl” cruising team.

Sadly . . . Grey Pearl, Out.

Tina & Braun Jones
Nordhavn 62 Grey Pearl

Nordhavn 50 Ocean Bear for sale

Ocean Bear is a dual-walk-around Nordhavn 50 with a flying bridge. She has a two-stateroom layout featuring a master stateroom amidship with a V-berth forward in the guest stateroom. Click here for more details.

Trawler Time

Oso Blanco, the Nordhavn passagemaker Eric, Annie and Bear Bloomquist call home.

It's 4 am on our third day out from New Caledonia and we have covered over 630 nm in less than 70 hours. I just came back on watch after 8 hrs of wonderful sleep. I woke up slowly in a foggy haze – unsure of where I was and feeling only a gentle motion. The sound of the engine is a distant hum. Are we moving?

This is Trawler Time. The Pacific is just that, peaceful, but still alive. The boat is doing exactly what it is designed to do – working with the sea – not against it and carrying us toward our next destination, safely and smoothly. The eastern horizon has already taken on a pink orange glow foreshadowing another spectacular ocean sunrise. But the sea is not still today. As I came up to the galley for my morning coffee, I expected to see that mirror like, summer morning stillness we so often experience at our little lake in Wisconsin. This morning, the ocean is still providing 3' – 4' swells, but they are so long, so gentle, and graceful that the boat does not rock, roll, or twist about. Oso Blanco slowly rises and settles as each swell passes under. Each individual swell is visible as it gradually approaches us, one after another - lifting our 90 tons like a duck on the lake and softly settling. There is a gentleness to the ocean at times like this, but it's power is unmistakable.

Sometimes during foolish cocktail hours, we get into the unanswerable debate of which is better, a sailboat or a power boat. To me, there is no more wonderful feeling than a finely tuned sailboat on a broad reach, in perfect conditions. The feeling of power, charging through the water, with only the sound of the waves breaking under the bow. It is what sailing dreams are based on.

Most of our sailing friends have never experienced Trawler Time. Yes, the seas are gentle and the sunrise is imminent, but the wind is very light and wandering around the compass like it's had 3 shells of kava. To be under sail at this moment would be rolling from side to side as the sails flop back and forth searching for direction from the wind. When we used to race in these conditions, we said one had to drool over the side to see if we were moving forwards or backwards. But this is our time. Our Nordhavn is purring along at 1350 rpm doing 7.8 kts toward Australia. The systems are working perfectly together and our stabilizing system reduces any roll to a gentle motion. All our doors and ports are open and the soft breeze drifts throughout the boat. With the engine turning so effortlessly deep below, all one is aware of is the sound of the waves as they roll along the hull.

Sailboat vs powerboat is a foolish debate. Out here, we are all doing it our own ways. We take what the sea offers and hopefully we each enjoy our boat and each day. The fact that we get to drink a beer with interesting folks in far away places and discuss such issues shows how lucky we are. The boat is only a means to an end.

But, then there is Trawler Time . . .

—From the blog of Nordhavn 6409 Oso Blanco

Ode to the Southern Cross

There are nights at sea when all you want to do is see the sunrise. Nights when you just hold on waiting for the next wave or blast of wind to shake your world. You just want it to end.

Then there are nights like tonight. There is no wind. The Pacific lives up to its name. The Milky Way blazes and is repeated in the surface of the sea. The horizon disappears as sea and sky blend into one. Any slight movement in the water—whether the slicing of the water as the boat drives forward or just the ripples on the surface—set off a light show of pixy dust. Countless microscopic critters glow and sparkle with any movement in the sea setting off their bioluminescence.

Everything is alive and glowing, yet all is at peace on the sea.

These are the nights sailors dream of. This is why we bash into head seas and put up with hanging onto to anything within reach just to get a cup of coffee or make it to the head.

Tonight, the Southern Cross is right in front of us near the horizon. Yes, the autopilot and GPS are taking us straight south to New Zealand, but it is easy to imagine the early sailors following the heavens on nights like this.

There is nothing around us that the sea doesn't provide. No boats on the radar no distant lights. As far as we can tell, there is not another person within hundreds of miles. It is so dark that the slightest light from our boat can break the spell, so I dim down the instruments and turn off the running lights. Now, the world around us seems to explode with pinpoints of light in the heavens and deep into the sea.

Ahead are the distant guiding stars. Behind us, our wake glitters and sparkles showing us we have been following a magic path. Soon, the first glow of the rising sun will break the spell. Luckily, these are the nights we remember.

—From the blog of Nordhavn 6409 Oso Blanco

First Nordhavn 120 emerges from mold

It's still two years from the launch of the first Nordhavn 120 but excitement took its first uptick last week when the hull was released from its mold at South Coast Marine in Xiamen, China, one of PAE's two partner factories in Asia.

Garrett Lambert, a Circumnavigator contributing editor, is conducting interviews about the 120 at PAE for the next edition of the magazine. Here are three excerpts:

PAE president Dan Streech: “The Nordhavn 120 will compete on the world super-yacht market with second-to-none quality, style, and pedigree. This boat will never be sold as a ‘bargain’, not even as a ‘good boat for the money’ or as a ‘best value boat’, even though it is all of those things. Rather, this boat will be presented as uncompromising from start to finish. Put more succinctly, she’s way, way over the top.”

Naval architect Jeff Leishman, her designer: “She’s not your typical 120-foot yacht. With her 28-foot beam she’s much closer to a 150-footer in weight and volume. And carrying 18,000 gallons of fuel, she’s a serious ocean-going expedition boat, yet she possesses the luxury of harbor cruisers.”

Project manager Trever Smith: “The Nordhavn 120 is all ABS (American Bureau of Shipping) certified. . . she’s a big, heavy, comfortable displacement hull boat with no inherent noise. She will provide a totally different feeling from semi-displacement boats in the same way a Rolls Royce distinguishes itself from lesser cars. Technically, she’s a different project than any other Nordhavn since it’s the company’s first cored hull, which produces more strength with less fiberglass. We hired an external structural engineering company to produce the lamination schedule. Similarly, we had an outside firm style the interior. Very contemporary, and very, very high end. She’s a proper 120 with no corners cut.”

For more photos of the birth of the N120, click here to reach nordhavn.com.

Failure isn't an option for this 13-year-old Nordhavn

Steven and Carol Argosy of the Nordhavn 62 Seabird (photo) are one of three Nordhavn couples who have buddy-boated from Alaska to Hong Kong via Russia and Japan in what they have dubbed the Great Siberian Sushi Run (GSSR).

On a two-day passage from the southernmost islands of Japan to the Ta Shing yard in Taiwan where the three boats were built, Steven reflected on what it means to be voyaging the world in a Nordhavn. Here's an excerpt from his blog:

Nordhavns are built to cruise in the most unimaginable conditions safely, but it doesn’t mean that it is perfectly comfortable and that we look forward to it or enjoy it. Sometimes you just get caught in the stuff even though the weather was supposed to be clear. Those are the times I am glad to be in a Nordhavn.

On long passages, you can encounter simply miserable weather for days at a time. Head seas with 25-30 knot winds may not seem like much when you are doing a 3- or 4-hour passage, but over a period of four or five days, the 7- to 10-foot seas that go along with that can wreak havoc on a lesser boat—not to mention the crew. For instance, after a day or so of constant pounding, cabinetry can start to deteriorate, drawer fronts fall off, refrigerators loosen from their mounts and all hell can break loose. Other things, like deck hardware, fittings and even your anchor mounts start to fall apart and windows can fail. Big “picture windows” in the pilothouse are great at the dock, and show well at boat shows, but in the real world, waves can hit and smash the ¼-inch glass flooding the pilothouse, pretty much dooming the boat.

There are a few manufacturers that are making big claims about their boats, but none of them can match the 4-million ocean miles that Nordhavns have gone. One in particular has been very vocal in criticizing Nordhavn, touting a new boat that they are producing as a better passagemaker, but without a single mile under its hull. Go figure. Like Dan Streech, PAE’s president, says, “Talk is cheap.”

I can tell you from experience that this 13-year-old boat has been pounded for days on end in simply awful conditions without a single structural failure. So, there!

Seabird has been traveling in the company of Braun and Tina Jones aboard the Nordhavn 62 Grey Pearl and Ken and Roberta Williams aboard the Nordhavn 68 Sans Souci.

Ken, as he is such a prolific blogger and author, is often see as the GSSR ringleader but the fact is that Roberta was instrumental in making the adventure happen when she sold Carol on the GSSR concept after Braun floated the idea. The next day, Ken and Steven learned from their wives that they were taking their Nordhavns to Asia via the Aleutians.

The inspiration for the GSSR comes from the experience of John and Veronica Kennelly who crossed the North Pacific via the Aleutians in the Nordhavn 62 Walkabout with their three children in 2007.

No getting away from Nordhavn

There seems to be no getting away from Nordhavn no matter where you travel.

Rebecca Crosgrey took a holiday from her work as Assistant to the Editor of Circumnavigator magazine and toured the Canadian Maritimes by auto with her husband. They were strolling the pier in Halifax when, lo and behold, two Nordhavns came into sight.

Chip and Kay Marsh with the Nordhavn 40 Beso and Jim and Marge Fuller aboard Summer Skis, a Nordhavn 43, (above photo) were pulling into port for a few days while on a cruise of Nova Scotia. After greeting the two Nordhavns and helping with lines, the Crosgreys continued on their way—but saw no more Nordhavns.