L to R: Jeremy Henderson, James and Jennifer Hamilton, Jeff Merrill

Jeff 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 power, with pictures of all. 

Thanks to Jeremy Henderson, the 47/52 project manager for delivering a great boat, and Jeff for all his help and insight throughout the project.

 

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 PAE Northwest handled it with an extraordinary effort.

We’ve posted more details and pictures of the delivery at http://www.mvdirona.com/topics/nordhavn/n5263delivery.aspx

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.