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Home Intro Overview Locate Equipment Pictures Electronics Building Atlantic Crossing |
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Intro Bluewater, Nordhavn 47 hull no. 32, was built for us at the South Coast factory in Xiamen, China, and shipped in May 2005. Commissioning and outfitting took place in Stuart, Florida, and the boat was delivered to us on September 3, about 13 months after we signed the agreement to buy the boat. Since taking delivery, we've lived aboard a large
part of the time and have managed to get in a a fair amount of cruising. Here are our
longer cruises with the boat so far:
As I write this in spring 2008, we're about to embark on our second summer of cruising in the Mediterranean. Our plans are to head north to France, then go in turn to Corsica, Sardinia, the Amalfi coast of Italy, Sicily, along the heel of Italy, then to Montenegro and Croatia. We hope there'll be time for a visit to Venice before we cruise down the east coast of Italy, then back to Mallorca. But, as we are fond of saying, our itinerary is cast in Jell-O. One of the top questions we've gotten about this boat is, “How does she handle heavy weather?” The truth is that we've seen very little heavy weather during our cruising with this boat. However, we weathered a sudden 55-knot squall in the Bahamas on the way from Norman's Cay to Nassau in April 2007 and hit a 24-hour spell of bad weather on our Atlantic crossing: an unavoidable gale off the coast of Portugal a few days out of Gibraltar. Bluewater handled it all easily and safely if not always comfortably. For a sample, this is from my log on July 8, 2007: The big winds and accompanying seas announced their arrival at mid-afternoon and built through the night. The anemometers on our three yachts differ, perhaps because the N55 sensors are mounted considerably higher than ours. Aboard Bluewater we saw steady overnight north winds mostly in the mid- and upper-twenties, frequently gusting to the mid-thirties. Moana Kuewa and Salty Dawg reported winds about 5 knots higher across the board, topping out with a 42.7-knot gust reported by Salty Dawg. Moana Kuewa reported winds to 39 knots and aboard Bluewater nobody remembers anything above 36. Swells built from mid-afternoon, reaching an estimated 4 to 6 feet from the N within a few hours, peaking at 5 to 7 or maybe 6 to 8 feet, possibly higher, with 2-3 foot of chop on top. They seemed huge and knocked our boats around like they were toys! It wasn't truly dangerous, but, yes, it was uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. Reports from all three Med Bound yachts indicated that everyone was having a problem overnight staying-put in bed. Perhaps not all of us slid or rolled out of bed but most of us did at least once. Even with the stabilizers (and, in Bluewater's case, paravanes) working, rolls were typically 15 to 20 degrees, occasionally over 30 degrees. Wind and seas were on our port quarter; as a big roller would approach, the port quarter would rise sometimes ten feet or more to meet it, then the wave would push the boat into a starboard roll; thanks to the stabilizers and paravanes, the boat would roll back. Again and again, thousands of times. Nobody got much sleep. Trying to sleep after my 2100-2400 watch, I finally found that putting a non-skid placemat on the sheet under my butt helped keep me from slipping around in the covers. By morning, Judy and George had their own placemats. Two placemats per person might have been better-one each beneath butt and shoulders! For the most part, Bluewater handles offshore passages with ease, and we always seem to arrive at our destinations comfortable and well-rested. The boat's usual offshore motion is easy, and it's an extremely quiet vessel--both factors help make her a good sea boat. Like most boats, she does not like steeps seas from ahead and tends to pitch considerably in such conditions; one of our most uncomfortable days was heading north into a steep chop and 30 knots of wind on Chesapeake Bay. Another was with our good friends Bruce and Joan Kessler aboard, heading for Venezuela's Isla Margarita when we saw head seas and wind (against current) gusting to about 45 knots in squalls.
This website is a work in progress, and we seem to be perpetually behind in updating it. Somehow, maintaining a website and cruising at the same time seem fundamentally incompatible--and it's the cruising and boat maintenance that get our attention first! --Milt Baker |
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About
us: Judy and I been seriously cruising under sail and power together for
close to 40 years, and we each have over 50,000 miles of cruising in our wake.
We've both been licensed U.S. Coast Guard captains for about two decades.
Judy was a teacher and real estate developer, and I a career U.S. Navy officer,
leaving active duty in 1983 to go cruising on our sailboat. In the mid-1980s we
founded Bluewater Books & Charts, which became America's largest seller of
nautical books and paper and electronic charts during the 15 years we owned and
managed it Our two principal cruising boats before this one were our
32-foot Allied Seawind II ketch, which took us offshore to the Eastern Caribbean
and back by way of Bermuda in the early 1980s, and our Grand Banks 42 which we
owned for a dozen years and which carried us between Havana and Halifax,
with lots of stops along the way. As a member of the organizing committee and head of the advance team for the
Nordhavn Atlantic Rally 2004, I--with Judy at my side--saw
lots of Nordhavns in action and met dozens of happy Nordhavn owners.
That's what made us decide that a Nordhavn 47 was the boat for us.