Wind Horse has finished her seventh season of cruising, there are 5600 hours on her engines, and more than 50,000 miles have passed under her svelte canoe body. She has traveled from New Zealand to Alaska, through Panama to Greenland, across the North Atlantic to the British Isles, and cruised Norway to Svalbard and the Arctic ice pack to within 600 miles of the North Pole. She has coasted Spain, been with the glitterati in the Balearic Islands, and set a record in the ARC from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, that could stand for a long time. She made it fom Las Palmas to St. Lucia (across the Atlantic) to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and on to Marathon without stopping for fuel. This year has been less ambitious, with just the East Coast of the US to Maine and back on the itinerary. All of this in comfort, with minimal maintenance, and a very limited list of gremlins.
So, we think Wind Horse is due for a bit of pampering.
Monday, she will start by having her motor mounts replaced, engines realigned, and installation of noise abatement concepts we want to test. After a brief trial Wind Horse will be hauled out at the Jarrett Bay Marine Park near Beaufort, North Carolina. Circumnavigator Cory McMahon (Triton Marine) will do many of the projects.
We will start at Bausch American Towers where Danny Meadows’s crew will fabricate a framework for the flying bridge canopy similar to the FPB 64. We’ll be (finally) bringing our sonar, radar, and nav system up to the flying bridge. There’s a short list of preventative maintenance items, and a longer “maybe” list, depending on how the primary items go time and cost wise.
We will also be remoding the hydrostatics to bring Wind Horse closer in scale to the FPB 115. This will be accomplished with a swim step extension, which has other obvious advantages. Circa have fabricated this, including underwater main engine exhausts, and it is on a ship heading for Norfolk.
Between doing a bit of work on Wind Horse ourselves, and keeping up with the FPB 64 and 115, we’ll not be bored. We shall endeavor to keep you abreast of how things go.
Posted by Steve Dashew (October 29, 2011)
November 15th, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Thanks so much for the updates and all the pictures,you and your wife are truly remarkable.I can’t find any trips you have made to Micronesia{especially Marshall Islands} It is a wonderful place.Thanks again for all you guys do.
November 18th, 2011 at 12:45 pm
Hi Steve,
I read this and began to chuckle,what is your take on this? And am curious what you think about Marlows’ boats? Thanks again for your time. FPB’s are the best in my book
“At the boat shows we routinely hear the claims of range at ten knots to cross the Atlantic for example on vessels of 60-75’ length. To be candid, we know better, as there is not another cruiser in this size sector, (other than Marlow) that can cross the Atlantic at ten knots. In fact very few can cross it at 6 knots and virtually none at 7,” Marlow says.
November 18th, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Hi Alan:
As is obvious, we crossed the Atlantic the long way, Las Palmas in the Canaries to St Lucia – ten days if memory serves and we’ll leave the math to others. We should also point out that FPB 64-2 Sara Sara did Hawaii to Puget Sound at ten knots, the distance of which I’ll bet is longer than the North Atlantic route from the East Coast of the US to the Azores. I am wondering if anyone else in a motor yacht under 120 feet has done this well?