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 first view as the Ever Ethic emerged from the fog:

5263 tucked safely away up on deck:



Getting lowered into the water:



Floating in the sun:



Underway heading North towards Seattle:



When we left this morning at 5:45 it was 28F. Its warmer now at 43F but its been a long cold but exciting day. We'll post more pictures and details soon.

--jrh
jrh@mvdirona.com

Following Hong Kong, we stayed two nights in the Li River area, the first at Guilin and the second at Yangshuo. The area had long been famous for its dramatic karst topography of jagged peaks, sheer cliffs, and complex limestone caverns.  We spent much of the time taking in the scenery from the water, in two different boat trips, but also underground and from atop a mountain.

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Nordhavn 5263 finally is en route from Asia, on board the Ever Ethic. The ship is scheduled to arrive into Tacoma on December 4^th. 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 Harbor Marine docks will be another.

Our boat originally was scheduled to ship to Seattle from Xaimen between October 22-27^th on the Dijksgracht, and that ship had been delayed until Nov 8^th. Then the shipping company dropped the Seattle stop to more quickly deliver an emergency shipment of generator parts to a customer on the east coast. Fortunately, Nordhavn was able to get our boat on another ship only a week later. Rather than a direct shipment from Xiamen, however, our boat was first transported to Taiwan, then loaded onto the Ever Ethic bound for Los Angeles, Oakland and finally Tacoma. We're lucky that the delay was not a lot worse.

We've been watching the Ever Ethic's progress using VesselTracker.com, one of several sites that display ship locations using AIS data. You can view by vessel, port or general region. For example, this page shows all the reporting AIS vessels in and around Seattle.

The Ever Ethic no longer is within range now--it's somewhere in the Pacific. But we'll be looking for it near Los Angeles in a couple of weeks.

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 as the crew worked in rough waters to secure the anchor.

It's not clear at this point why the anchor dropped--a BC Ferries spokesperson said the crew did not deploy it. According to a comment posted to the CBC story linked above, the anchors normally are locked on deck. But in close quarters or when approaching a dock, the lock is removed and a clutch is used to hold the anchor in place. On exiting Active Pass, the anchor should have been locked back in place. Perhaps the lock failed or was not engaged properly, or the clutch failed before the anchor lock was in place.

They're lucky the anchor didn't let loose inside Active Pass, particularly while passing another ferry. The channel is narrow, with swift current, and has blind entries at both ends. BC Ferries has already had two major accidents in Active Pass. Three people were killed with the BC Ferry Queen of Victoria collided with the Soviet freighter Sergey Yesenin in 1970. And in 1979, the BC Ferry Queen of Alberni went aground there, incurring extensive damage but fortunately with no lives lost.

The picture below shows the two 550-foot Spirit-class ferries, the largest in the fleet, just inside the west entrance. The waterway barely has sufficient passing room. Donuts are out of the question.



We see plenty of pleasure craft where a windlass clutch is all that keeps the anchor properly stowed when underway. Securing the anchor is as important for pleasure craft as it is for larger ships. An anchor can come loose in rough water and deploy, or bash about on deck or into a windshield. We’ve heard stories of pleasure craft where anchors deployed accidentally and the rode fouled the propellers. This resulted in thousands of dollars in damage, in addition to putting the vessel and crew at risk.

We secure our anchor with a short length of half-inch line with a carabiner permanently tied on one end. Once the anchor is stowed, we clip the carabiner to the anchor's trip line eye, and tie the other end to a nearby cleat. This is a simple and efficient system, and we can easily tell at a glance from a distance if the anchor is secured.

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 ice and snow-covered boats either sunk at the dock or were seriously damaged. These boats typically are in the central and northeastern United States, where winters are cold and long with plenty of snow. In Who Needs to Winterize?, however, they report that state with the their highest number of freezing-related claims was California. Because winters aren’t as harsh, people don’t take winter preparations as seriously, so cold snaps and storms pose a greater risk.

The article provides tips for winterizing a boat and concludes with a recommendation to stow or remove biminis over the winter. The bimini provides no protection, and can be destroyed or age prematurely. This is good advice to follow no matter where you keep your boat. An extended bimini acts like a sail in strong winds. A few years back, a winter storm destroyed the bimini of the boat moored next to us at Elliott Bay Marina, and we’ve seen others damaged as well.

 

Seaworthy documents real claims and discusses how they might be prevented, in order to improve boating safety. Like Safety Digest, it is a publication every boater should read. Learning from the mistakes of others is much cheaper and safer than learning from your own.

 

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 and forth between our winter moorage at Bell Harbor Marina, and Elliott Bay Marina, where Emerald Harbor Marine will be commissioning the boat. The two marinas aren’t that far apart (map of area), and, having sold the car, we’d been biking back and forth this past year without much trouble. But the bike trip does take time, and can be a uncomfortable in the rain. And Seattle does get the occasional winter storm. :)

The new dinghy is a real step up from our old 9-foot West Marine RIB with its 8 HP motor. The high seat back on the center console is very comfortable, and the deep-V hull and raised tubes make for a smooth, dry ride, even in near 30-knot winds. We can run between the marinas in less than 10 minutes, and there’s plenty of room for dive gear, or our bicycles on board. For now it will live behind our current boat at Bell Harbor until we mount it on the boat deck of the Nordhavn. It will be a tight fit—we’ve had removable rails installed along the starboard side of the boat deck to make that more workable.

We hadn’t needed a separate registration for our current dingy—we’d instead just numbered it with our main boat’s registration number appended with a “1”. Our current boat isn’t documented (partly because we weren’t US Citizens at the time we purchased it). But the new boat would be documented, and we weren’t sure what the impact would be, since documented vessels don’t display state registration numbers.

According to the USCG, “documentation of your vessel does not cover the vessel's tender or dinghy. These craft fall within the jurisdiction of the motorboat numbering laws of the state of principal use. Please contact your state agency that handles the registration or numbering of motorboats for further information.”

The new one, it turned out, would need to be registered separately. To be exempt from registration in Washington State, under RCW 88.02.030, the vessel must be:

1. equipped with a motor less than 10 HP;
2. owned by the owner of a vessel for which a valid vessel number has been issued;
3. display the number of that numbered vessel followed by the suffix "1" in the manner prescribed by the department; and
4. be used as a tender for direct transportation between that vessel and the shore and for no other purpose;

Even if the motor was less than 10HP, that direct transportation clause was a concern. In researching the registration requirements, we’d read about the Coast Guard questioning folks who were simply touring around in the dinghy and not using it for direct transport between the vessel and shore. And while out in the dingy near Point Defiance this summer, the Tacoma Police stopped us to verify the dinghy’s registration and confirm that we had all the required safety systems on board, including lifejackets and a whistle. It’s apparently a $280 fine not to not have the vessel properly registered, and they seemed eager to enforce it.

Because the new dinghy is less than 16 feet long, we didn’t have to pay the Watercraft Excise Tax, and the total bill was less than $40. The adhesive numbers we’d bought for the current dinghy hadn’t lasted well, so we are instead going to try this number plate system to display the registration.

After visiting the yard in Xiamen, we stayed two nights in Hong Kong. We spent most of the time within sight of Victoria Harbour (map of area). The harbor separates Kowloon Peninsula on the north from Hong Kong on the south. The waters are constantly busy with boat traffic of all kinds, ranging from ferries, tour boats, high-speed catamarans, and cruise ships to tugs, and all manner of commercial boats.

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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 Lugger didn’t produce one that would fit.

The Nordhavn 52 is a longer, heavier version of the Nordhavn 47, and we had heard from many Nordhavn 47 owners "wonderful boat, but I wish it was just a little faster." This is not a universal sentiment. Many hold the opposite view and argue that the boats would be better with less power. Nonetheless, many owners I respect wanted more speed, and this influenced our decision.

The arguments against higher horsepower include greater fuel consumption, increased engine weight and the risk of engine underload. What folks sometimes don't understand is that a 265 HP engine operating at 150 HP will consume very nearly the same fuel as a similarly designed engine rated at 165 HP also operating at 150 HP. Fuel consumption is driven by the horsepower produced, rather than the engine’s rated horsepower. And in this case, engine weight is not a factor. The Lugger 1066T.2 that is standard with the Nordhavn 47 and 52  is a marinized John Deere 6068—the same engine series that we are installing.

Some folks agree that a higher horsepower engine occasionally would be nice for increased speed, but argue that the additional horsepower rarely would be used. As a consequent, the main would spend much of its life very lightly loaded. There is no question that engines need to be run at the designed operating temperature to reach full life. My experience with 4,000 hours on my current Cummins engines is that engines can be operated at very low HP outputs while still maintaining proper operating temperature. This, however, is a hotly debated topic. Personally, given the choice of 1) not having the power to achieve a speed-length ratio of at least 1.34 or 2) being able to achieve 1.34 but with the engines often operated at a lighter load, I prefer the second camp. And, I've seen more engines damaged by overload than under. But I don't discount the concern entirely. Boating is full of compromises and tough decisions.

In thinking through whether the 52 needed more horsepower, we calculated horsepower per thousand pounds across the Nordhavn fleet:

•        N40: 3.30     (50,000 lb @ 165 HP)

•        N43: 2.75     (60,000 lb @ 165 HP)

•        N43: 1.75     (60,000 lb @ 105 HP original engine)

•        N46: 1.75     (60,000 lb FD @ 105 HP)

•        N47: 1.94     (85,000 lb FD @ 165 HP)

•        N50: 3.75     (80,000 lb FD @ 300 HP)

•        N55: 2.66     (124,500 lb FD @ 330 HP)

•        N57: 2.66     (122,000 lb FD @ 325 HP)

•        N62: 2.19     (155,000 lb FD @ 340 HP)

 

Note: Weights are based on published specs at the time we did the calculations. Some are full load (FD), others are ambiguous. It’s rare, however, that any boat weighs exactly what a manufacturer claims.

 

With the extended cockpit and flybridge, not to mention all the equipment we planned to install, the 52 would be a heavier boat that the 47. If we assume it would weigh 100,000 lbs fully loaded, the standard 165 HP would be make it the lowest powered boat in the fleet with a ratio of only 1.65 HP/1000 lbs. I've been on the original 43 with only 105 HP, and did not want to have less power to weight.

Lugger doesn't make a more powerful engine that will fit, so in this case, the decision was not really based on brand as much as output requirements. We went with a keel-cooled John Deere 265HP 6068AFM75. This provides 2.65 HP/1000 lbs, which is just about identical to the Nordhavn 55 and 57, although still less than the 50. As an added bonus, the 6068AFM75 is 14% more efficient at rated output, is more efficient across the operating range, and is closer to a continuous duty engine than the Lugger 1066T.2.

Nisqually Flats is an Unusual Puget Sound Anchorage along the south shore of Nisqually Reach, halfway between Tolmie Marine State Park and Nisqually Head (map of area). We first stopped there on a clear, calm spring day because we couldn’t decide which mountain view we preferred, Mount Rainier or the Olympics, and this anchorage gave us both. At night, water slapped gently against the hull and reflected the lights from the nearby hillside community of Beachcrest. Our log for that stop reads “This is what it’s all about.”

 

We’ve returned several times, and have found plenty to do. The deteriorating wreck of the Tsar, a WWII-era wooden tug, lies off tiny Beachcrest marina, accessible only on higher tides.

 

 

Boats frequently are underway to and from an active oyster farm southwest of the anchorage.

 

The Nisqually Reach Nature Center at Nisqually Head is effectively a small museum that described the history, ecology and biology of the Nisqually Delta.

 

McAllister Creek and Nisqually River form the Nisqually Delta, which is protected as the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. The waterways are excellent dinghy territory, and popular with kayakers and canoeists. The channels are peaceful and protected, with quite a different feel from the more open outside saltwater. Waterfowl abound, and bits of the old dike and old buildings are along shore.  We’ve travelled south through both waterways well beyond I-5.

 

 

 

The anchorage also is a short dinghy ride away from Andrew Anderson Marine Park and Tolmie Marine State Park. Perhaps the most delightful aspect of this anchorage, however, is the piper. She has walked the beach every morning we’ve visited, sending the mournful notes of her bagpipe far across the sea.

     

 

Anchoring and other notes: Anchor in the 3-fathom finger southeast of buoy G “3” on Chart 18448. Chart 18448 has good detail of the delta area. A marked channel (not charted) leads to the Luhr Beach boat ramp at Nisqually Head and the mouth of McAllister Creek. The entrance to the Nisqually River is almost directly south of /font> buoy G1 on chart 18448 or 18445 and can be reached by following the shoreline from the McAllister Creek mouth. CCaution: Southerly or westerly winds can generate significant chop at the mouths of the Nisqually River in particular. Motorized boats are permitted in the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, but cannot exceed 5mph. Boat are not allowed inside the Brown Farm Dike (map of refuge). No landing or shore access is permitted anywhere in the refuge. The refuge is undergoing extensive renovations; which might impact where boats can enter in the future.

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 new boat. We had a great time, learned a lot, and really enjoyed ourselves.

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