Just in case anyone didn’t figure it out, the last post, Reality TV, was an April Fool’s joke. Today’s post has us going backwards in time again to October 2009.
Sunday, October 25th“”This weekend was the Nordhavn Southwestern Rendezvous in Dana Point, CA. It started on Friday evening and went through this afternoon (Sunday).
Eric left work a couple hours early and we made the drive up to Dana Point. With no traffic, it only takes an hour to get there from where we live, but it took a little longer with Friday traffic. We arrived just as the cocktail hour was getting started. We were surprised at how many people were there. We had thought the rendezvous was going to be a small gathering, but there were hundreds of people. The owners of fifty four boats had come out, mostly couples, though a few families. There were also prospective buyers there. We spent a couple hours socializing with several of our friends from the Nordhavn community and a few blog readers that we met for the first time. Meeting blog readers is always fun for us.
Among the people we chatted with was Ken Williams. We have an interesting relationship with Ken. Ken’s blog account of crossing the Atlantic was one of the inspirations for us to go on our crazy world adventure. After reading his detailed reports, we knew we could cross oceans, too. But Ken says that we were an inspiration for him and Roberta to go off the beaten path to more exotic and far flung destinations. We have spurred one another forward.
When dinner started, we were honored to sit with Jim and Suzy Sink, the first couple to ever do a circumnavigation aboard a Nordhavn. They did their circumnavigation in 5 years, covering almost 50,000 nautical miles in that time. They took an unusual route, with a few stops that we may consider if we ever do another circumnavigation. We compared notes with them and realized that they had taken a 1.5 year break in the middle of their journey, so in the 3.5 years they were actively moving, they spent 25% of their time underway. Just like us.
Nordhavn has a pennant program in place. Every time one of their boats hits certain mile markers, Nordhavn send the owners a burgee (flag) to hang from the boat. It is a way to show off to the world how many miles you have done. After dinner, there was a ceremony where they recognized everyone who has earned a pennant. The only people in the room with more miles than us were the Sinks. It was kind of weird for us to recognized as the “old salty sailors” when we were amongst the youngest people in the room.
After the mile recognition ceremony, Ken Williams came up and did a presentation on his trip from Seattle to Japan via Alaska and Siberia that he had just completed. He had great stories and fantastic pictures. Ken has just come out with a new book about that trip called “The Great Siberian Sushi Run.”
When Ken was done speaking, Sprague Theobald came on. We first met Sprague back in 2005. He was filming a documentary on Nordhavn that Nordhavn currently uses as a marketing piece. Nordhavn asked us to be one of the three couples featured in the documentary, even though we hadn’t taken possession of our boat yet (Kosmos was still under construction at that point). We suspect Nordhavn asked us to be in it because they were trying to show how diverse their clientele is and at that point we were the youngest Nordhavn owners on the rolls. We were featured in several short clips throughout the movie and there is a short interview with us. The documentary won a Stevie’s award for Best Editing in the Corporate Film or Video category. If you are interested in seeing it, you can order it for free.
Anyway, while Sprague was filming, we met with him several times and got to know him. Sprague has owned Nordhavns on and off again for many years and is a huge fan of the brand. While he was filming, he fell in love with and purchased a Nordhavn 57. Sprague decided to make a documentary about the Northwest Passage and the Arctic, so he took his boat up there to film. While there, he got stuck in the ice for three days and barely made it out. Sprague was very emotional as he told the story of how afraid they were and how they managed to get through it. Remarkably, despite all the ice hitting the hull, his boat suffered no damage. You can check out the trailer to his movie.
After the dinner was over, we headed home for the night. We were back the next day, Saturday, at noon, just in time for lunch. The lunch was at a different place than the dinner, and from here, we had a great view of the Nordhavn boats rafted up at the west end of Dana Point Harbor. Thirteen boats came out in total, and we aren’t sure where the others were. As you can see, it was a beautiful day.
At lunch, we sat with some of the PAE team, including the President, Dan Streech. After lunch, we sat in on Captain Pat Raines seminar on cruising Mexico. Even though we came up the Pacific coast of Mexico, we were in such a hurry that we didn’t get to see or do much. We are hoping to go back someday soon.
After Captain Pat was done speaking, it was our turn to do a presentation. The first half of the presentation Eric discussed why we decided to circumnavigate and how we overcame the typical obstacles that hold people back from making their cruising dreams a reality. In the second part, Christi gave a quick overview of our trip, showed photos of each of the 110 places we visited along the way, gave a little information on each place and major passage, and told a few stories. Afterwards, people asked questions for a half hour. We got a lot of good feedback from the crowd. After so many compliments about our trip and our presentation, our heads were rapidly swelling. A couple people even called us celebrities, which made us laugh.
After we were done, it was time for dinner. We sat at a table of all younger owners and prospective buyers, some of them in their twenties. It was nice to see other young people in the group. Up until now, we’ve always been the youngest at Nordhavn gatherings. Here is a shot of Christi at dinner.
After dinner, there was a raffle, followed by dancing. Right after the dance floor was opened up, one of the Nordhavn owners (we suspect somewhat drunkenly) grabbed a microphone and started talking about how wonderful his boat was. He was followed by several more. It’s good to know that so many people are as happy with their Nordies as we are. It was really late by the time we got home. We barely could squeeze our enormously large compliment filled heads through the door.
We were up early this morning (Sunday), and drove back to Dana Point yet again. Today there were boat tours of various models and an onboard seminar and demonstration on maintenance and repair by Bob Senter. Bob trained us before we left on our around the world journey, and it was nice to see him again. We didn’t go to Bob’s seminar because it had limited space, but we did tour some of the other yachts, including a super decked out 76. We spent most of our time standing in the glorious sunshine and visiting with lots of people, most of whom gave us oodles of compliments. Our heads continued to grow. We were glad to hear that several people found us inspirational. Someone said “I was so excited about your presentation that I couldn’t sleep last night” and another said “My wife wasn’t really into it, but after hearing you, she is now excited”.
The show wrapped up in the early afternoon. You can see a short video summarizing the event.
We headed back home. By now, our heads were really huge and this time we really couldn’t get them through the door. We think it is funny that in the Nordhavn world we are super stars, but in every day life, we are just average Joes. Most people think we took a two year vacation and have no clue what an accomplishment we achieved, but the Nordhavn folks get it! We enjoy spending time with people who do “get it”. We also find it funny that people we don’t know have read every single word ever posted on our website, while some of our friends and families have barely glanced at the site.