Visiting the second Nordhavn 68

We are now in France, after stopping on the east coast of the US to visit the second Nordhavn 68, Grace of Tides, owned by David Sidbury. Unfortunately the house we rented doesn’t have Internet, so I am having problems posting anything.

Nordhavn’s boats are not “cookie cuttered.” Although they are a production boat maker, each boat is very different. Some of the change is caused by the equipment selection of the owner, and some is a result of incremental improvement as they build the boats. David’s boat and mine were made from the same mold, but have major differences. For instance, David’s main salon is a good three feet wider than mine. I wanted full walkways on boat sides of the boat, so that I could park the boat on either side, and so that in Europe, when med mooring, I can walk the mooring line down the side of the boat more easily. This said, I was very jealous of all his extra space.

Most of the differences in our two boats are in the small details. As I wandered around David’s boat I was snapping pictures, and ultimately came away with 12 megabytes of pictures which I put into a email to my mechanic, with ideas for possible upgrades to my boat this winter. One thing which I thought David did exceptionally well was to clearly label EVERYTHING on the boat. For instance, here’s a picture of the bottom inside of the hatch cover that opens to the equipment room beneath the master head:

Theoretically, there is no need to do this, in that I should know where all the equipment is on my boat – but, it isn’t always me who does work on the boat, and it is easy to forget from one cruising season to the next where everything is.

David also took the time to label each breaker in the electric panels, and put a transparent door on the electric panel in the lazarette, so at a glance he could see if a breaker has tripped:

The biggest item for me to look at was his setup for the sea chest. After my boat, Nordhavn increased the size of the hoses leading to the sea chest from 2 inches to 3 inches. I will be doing the same upgrade this winter. His hoses and strainers seemed huge in comparison to mine:

And, here’s a quick picture of David’s boat, showing the hard top that he added. The hard top was not yet an option when we purchased our boat:

As I mentioned, we are now in the south of France. We’re being lazy for a few days, but soon I want to start visiting marinas.

-Ken W