Category: Uncategorized

If you follow our updates, you saw that we recently made a change and did a serious step up in Vessels. While both previous vessels were wonderful (2011 Californian LRC 55, and 1989 Tollycraft 53), they each had their downsides. Mostly for me it was about the systems on board and capabilities. While our current cruising grounds don’t require an ocean capable vessel, having the extra weight and stabilizers along sure make those days crossing the straights with less than ideal conditions much more palatable.

That brings us to our newest (and hopefully last for a LONG while) vessel. Dubbed Watermark at its launch, Jade Panama’ is a custom designed and built Rayburn that was built not too far from here in British Columbia.

WATERMARK was built for an experienced yachting couple who wanted to explore the world. Extensive planning was done for this yacht and the owner was on site daily throughout the construction. The architect designed a sea kindly hull intended for extensive offshore cruising by a retired couple, neither of whom are mechanics or technicians, so they could operate the vessel without crew. To help meet these requirements, labor saving mechanical systems and equipment were incorporated and redundancy was built into all critical systems. Systems crucial to basic vessel operation were kept simple to increase reliability and reduce maintenance.

Since the owners anticipated extended passages in the open sea, safety and seaworthiness were critical. Their intention to cruise in remote parts of the world dictated the selection of equipment, and all mechanical, electrical and plumbing components are readily available and serviceable worldwide. Maintenance of watertight integrity was important, as was the minimizing of motion in rough water.
Routine stability checks by the architect confirmed that the vessel was designed with an abundant margin of safety. Comparison with the USCG weather criteria for ocean going vessels in fully exposed water conditions (a conservative measurement for ships that entails 100 knot winds) indicates that by the most conservative calculations this vessel exceeds the criteria by an impressive 14% margin. Other sea keeping considerations include: a motion-dampened hull form augmented by active stabilization: freeboard and bow sections that offer resistance to pitch and vertical acceleration. The fine bow with narrow chine forward keeps running resistance low in all sea conditions and ensures that very little water is taken over the bow.

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The hull laminate schedule from exterior to internal includes 4 x CDM 3408 fiberglass reinforcing, 1″ Corecell A550 core, 4 x CDM 3408. The entire exterior hull laminate is impregnated with vinylester resin. Keel laminate is 1.5″ solid CDM 3408. Two runs of 12oz. to 19 oz. Kevlar was added to outer shell laminate in strategic areas. Hull bottom framing is Nida-Core encapsulated with 4 runs if 1708 in engine room and 3 runs forward of the engine room. Longitudinal reinforcement is 3 x 1708 encapsulated H55 PVC foam.

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Engine / Mechanical / Electrical Equipment

Main Engines: 2 x Caterpillar 3406E rated output is 800 h.p. each @ 2300 RPM with flange mounted Twin Disc MG 5114 2.5:1 reduction gears, wet exhausts, and freshwater heat exchanged.

Controls: Twin Disc Electronic (4 stations)

Engine room ventilation: Delta T

Fuel Filters: Dual Racor 75/1000 – fuel polishing capability though transfer system.

Prop shafts: Strut mounted with Cutlass bearings, 3.5″ Aquamet 22 HS with Tides Marine seals.

Props: 37×32 5 blade Nibral

Steering: Jastram hydraulic with power assist via pumps on mains. Dual rudder actuators and full follow-up jog lever controls at port and starboard wing controls. Passive helm pumps at pilothouse and flybridge helms. Rudders are semi-balanced foil type constructed of stainless steel plate.

Hydraulics: Naiad fully integrated system, dual pumps off of main engine gears.

Windlass: 2 x Maxwell 4500 hydraulic with controls a t the fore deck, pilothouse and flybridge.

Ground tackle: Two 50Kg Bruce anchors, stem mounted over and under on centerline with 400′ each 1/2″ Grade 60 HDG chain per side. One 40 lb. Fortress with 30′ of 3/8″ HDG chain and 300′ nylon rode.

Stabilizers: Naiad 254 w/ 9 sq.ft. fins

Bow thruster: Naiad Model 10 LHT

Stern thruster: Naiad Model 10 LHT

Davit: Steelhead 2000, 24vDC/hydraulic

Mast: hinged and hydraulically powered by davit power pack.

HVAC: Marine Air Systems 9 ton, hydronic, chilled water with heating and individual thermostat controls in each compartment.

Two Trace 4000 Inverters, boost transformers.

Shore Power 240V/100 amp.

Power converter – Ocean Electro system (50Hz to 60 Hz)

Generators: 1 x Northern Lights 32kW and 1 x Northern Lights16kW generator 120/240VAC 60 Hz. 1800 rpm.

Corrosion control: Electro-Guard active corrosion monitoring

Watermaker: Sea Recovery Aqua Whisper SRC AWM 1800-2

Water System: Headhunter dual 24vDC pumps, UV protected shore water.

Fire Extinguishing: FireBoy FM-200 fixed system for engine room with automatic and remote triggers. Portable units throughout vessel.

Vessel Alarm System: multiple sensors to include tank levels. nav light function, AC and DC systems voltage, bilge high water, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, low freezer temp., engine room high temp., door and port light sensors.

Other: Glendenning CM-8 Shore Power Cord Retractors, Kahlenburg dual trumpet horns, 115VAC compressor with 5 gal. receiver tank, Pin Craft hydraulic passarelle, Reverso lube oil change system, Oberdorfer fuel transfer pump w/ GPI FM-100 flow meter, Headhunter Marine Sanitation Device – Royal Fox RF 50B, Panasonic KX-TA624, engine room stereo system, fuel fill indicators.

As you can see, she is complex… much more complex than the previous vessels, but I am quickly getting up to speed on all her systems.

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With a proper Wheelhouse, a fabulous Flybridge, along with Wing Stations on Port and Starboard she is so easy to operate. It also has a wired remote on the stern that was used when stern tying in the Med.

Lastly, my wife’s favorite parts, the Galley and Staterooms. Beautiful Honduran Mahogany throughout, large staterooms with private heads, a main level day head, and even a walk in freezer for those long passages in a full size laundry room.

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We truly are blessed to enjoy such an amazing vessel. For some older walk through videos, you can see a couple done by previous listing agents on YouTube.

She was originally built as Watermark – you can see it in closer to original form on this old YouTube link.

She was then refit/updated around 2015 and you can see some of the changes here on this YouTube link.

Well, about 1 year exactly after purchasing Jade Panama’ 3.0 (The Californian 55 LRC), we have already made a change! You see, there has been this boat that has been on our list of our ideal dream boat for about 4 years. It was owned by friends of ours and we had always told them… if you ever decide to sell it, to please let us know.

When we bought the Californian, we did talk with them and they were not ready… figured it would be another 3-4 years. So we thought perfect, we can buy the Californian, use it for 3-4 years, and then take the plunge. Well, if these times have showed us anything its that we need to be prepared for change and the unexpected. It all started with an innocent text, … “Were you serious about wanting to buy Chillin’?” When I got this I ran to my beautiful wife and first mate to show her the text. Did it mean that they wanted to sell???

I eagerly replied that we absolutely were interested. This set off 4+ months of talks, discussions, plans etc, and eventually, we ended up with a vessel we truly know we will be calling our own for MANY years to come.

Let me introduce the next Jade Panama’… the 76′ Rayburn Custom originally built as Watermark in 2001. This vessel has seen the world. It was originally designed and built by a couple with many requirements, but they essentially rolled up into 3 primary items. 1- It needed to be able to be ran by a couple without crew. 2 – It needed the ability to cruise anywhere in the world. 3- It demanded the utmost from its build quality and seakeeping abilities.

All of these were accomplished in breathtaking fashion. The vessel is loaded with binder upon binder with every build detail documented to the nth degree. All the way down to a binder that does nothing but document every piece of wood trim on the entire boat, its dimensions, fit, finish etc. Same said for every other system that can be found on the vessel. For a guy like me, this is a dream come true. Rayburn also is/was well known for the absolutely top build quality, and is on par with Delta in this respect. That’s no small feat.

Once the boat was commissioned in British Columbia at the Rayburn factory, it set sail and ventured up to Alaska, then back down south all the way down the coast past Panama’ and down the Western Coast of South America. She came back North, through the Canal, South again along the coast of South America and on to the Caribbean where she eventually crossed the Atlantic on her own bottom to Europe where she spent 4 years on the Mediterranean sea. She worked her way back to the US via the northern route, back down the East Coast of the US to Florida where the next Owners took possession. Ultimately our friends purchased her and shipped her back to the PNW where they enjoyed her for 5 years around the PNW Puget Sound Waters.

She was originally built as Watermark – you can see it in closer to original form on this old YouTube link.

She was then refit/updated around 2015 and you can see some of the changes here on this YouTube link.

and Now… she is Jade Panama’

Isn’t she lovely :)… ok, I am biased. But, ultimately her build quality is stunning. All interior is Honduran Mohagany and she is stunning. Even better, the previous owner was meticulous about maintenance and records, and upgraded all the electronics etc as well.

More to come as we get comfortable with her, but needless to say… we feel blessed and excited!

As you may have read in a previous post – Need More Power – we added a pretty cool system to simplify our power usage on Jade Panama’ and give us some pretty nice benefits. However, there was one area that still needed to be addressed. Our boat has only a 50a / 240v plug in / input. So, we either are on a dock with 50a/240v service, or even potentially two 30a of opposite phase, or run our gen.

Frequently in the PNW when we get to a dock without 50a/240v power, they will have multiple 30 120v plugs which when on the opposite phase can be combined with a smart combiner to create a 30a/240v power supply. This works well with our system as we can just tell the Victron Quattro that we only have a 30a supply and it will limit power draw to that and supplement any addition power need by the Assist mode and pull from the batteries.

However… and this is the gotcha, there are three other scenarios that are unfortunately more common that we would like. They are docks where there is only a single 30a feed, docks where there are multiple 30a feeds but are fed from a 3 phase supply which results in a large voltage drop when combined, and lately the new ELCI power where you cant use the smart combiner to simulate a 240v supply as they will just trip the breakers.

So, what do we do to account for the above?? Well, what I did is we added a 30 power input plug to Jade Panama. We run this 30a/120v input into a Victron Autotransformer which has the ability to step up the voltage from 120v to 240v. When you do this your amperage is obviously cut in half so now a 30a 120v input becomes a 15a 240v supply, but because of capabilities of our Quattro, this works quite well. Remember from the previous article, the Quattro can do current limiting, and when additional current is needed above and beyond the supply, it will assist from the battery bank. We just set the current limit to 15a, and while 15a/240v is not a huge supply, on average it tends to do just fine. When the AC or Heat is not on, the draw is less and it will be recharging the bank… when those systems are turned on, it goes into assist mode.

We tested this a few weeks ago in Poulsbo which has the ELCI power, and ran for 3 days using a good amount of Heat (reverse AC), and we were able to function quite normally with the Quattro charging and assisting as necessary on a single 30a/120v circuit. It worked flawlessly.

To complete the install, I put another AC selector switch by this new AutoTransformer which selects between the 30a/120v input and the 240v input, and sends that power up to the panel and ultimately to the Quattro. This ended up being a very simple yet elegant solution to our need.

One additional note – the dock crew at Poulsbo mentioned that if we had a non smart Y combiner (take 2 – 30a/120v leads and combined them to a 30a/240v of opposite phases) that this will allow you to use both legs without tripping the breakers. Its the smart functionality in the combiners that causes issues. I have not tried this yet but may test it out in a future visit. Note – you would want to take care to be sure you were on opposite phases for true 240v applications.

Well, what can I say, we love our new vessel. When we purchased there was of course a punch list of things that needed addressed (see So It Begins), but overall they were very minor. Some of it was just getting things organized, investigating and documenting how things worked. We needed an Ice maker, and addl freezer room etc. You know.. those Big Things! lol. For those of you who have purchased a cruising vessel, you know these are all trivial. We have been blessed.

There are a few items that were a little more involved that needed addressed. First, the generator has issues starting from cold. needs several crank cycles to start up forcing an OC error on the Kohler. This one is currently being addressed. Second, we also have no easy heat options for the winter. By easy, I mean things that don’t require constant power. There are 4 reverse AC units on the vessel, which provide good heat, but only if you have short power, or run the Gen 24/7 which we hate doing. This led me to investigating several solutions. A popular option is adding a diesel hydronic furnace. Our previous vessel had this and we loved it. However, quotes were coming in around $30K-$40K to add this. ouch. But, I didn’t have an option… until…I thought about the issue a little differently.

Not too long ago a fellow Navigator / Seattle owner installed a system on his Navigator to address this very problem. (Ellie Yacht) At first, it didn’t click for me. I had envied his system, but to me it was more about hanging out all summer and barely having to run the Gen. Then one day the light bulb went off…that same system could also supply POWER for the reverse AC units while not plugged in. What is this system??? LiFEPO4 and some beautiful Victron equipment.

So, before going into my solution, here is a not so brief outline of batteries and how I came to selecting the LiFePO4 solution.

For those of you who have ever looked into batteries and suppling power to inverters, you know there are many options. Flooded Lead Acid Deep Cycle (FLA), AGM, Carbon Foam AGM, and more recently LiFEPO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate). They all have their pros and cons for different uses. The traditional FLA are plentiful, and cheap, but they are heavy, life span is relatively short, and usable stored energy is small. To put it in perspective, a FLA battery (Group 27) may have 100 Ah (amp hours) available to it, but due to the construction of the battery, its only really usable from 100-60% charge w/o causing long term damage to the life of the battery, resulting in only 40Ah of available power. They are also sensitive to storing them at charge states less than 100%. Finally, they have a limited life span, typically 200-300 cycles. AGMs help in this space, and are less sensitive to storage charges. They also increase the available usage capacity beyond the Lead Acid, giving about 50% usable capacity for repeated use (now giving us maybe 50-60 Ah of usable power per battery). They also offer around double the charge cycles over the FLA counterpart. This helps to offset the additional cost of an AGM over FLA. There are also niceties like not having to deal with the dangers of the liquid acid portion of a FLA.

In recent years, alternatives have come up which improve on the AGM design including options like FireFly’s Carbon Foam AGM. The different chemistry allows for a larger discharge capacity (up to 80%), and removes the issue of sulfation which is what kills an AGM. This is caused by repeated storage at partial state of charge. This is a great improvement especially over the FLA deep discharge counterparts. This now could give us closer to 70-80 Ah of available power on a similar Gp27 battery. They also improve cycles to a reported 800-1000 cycles. The downfall is they are still very expensive, heavy and fairly large groups are needed for the power demanded.

And last but not least, LiFEPO4. While not “new”, they are just recently being used in more DIY systems. These batteries have been around now in transportation commonly for at least 20 years. Electric trucks and cars have been using them for at least that period with remarkable results. LiFePO4 have the ability to provide a large discharge capacity (80%), high density of power in a small package (group 27 of 138 Ah), and half the weight of the FLA counterpart. (110Ah of available power per battery… compared to the 40 of the FLA) Best of all, their longevity can provide for upward of 4000 charge cycles. This comes at a cost… They are pricey at 6-10 times the cost of a FLA. They also require great care in how they are charged and maintained. They are also sensitive to over and under charging, as well as the temperatures of where they are stored and used. A big positive is they can accept a HIGH rate of charge. They can accept 10x the amperage you could push into a FLA, allowing you to draw them low and then fill them back up in very quick fashion. Ultimately, the large capacity, longevity, small footprint, and ability to charge quickly won me over.

So… Back to my solution. I chose to go with a system of 12 – Valence U27-12xp batteries. These are 138 ah batteries that were originally used in electric truck and delivery vans in the early 2000’s. They can be found through various second hand markets for a fraction of what similar batteries go for new. Even at 15 years old, they are still around $500/ea, but this sure beats the $2000-$2500 for a similar new battery available today. The best part is, the chemistry of these could care less how old they are. Its all about how many cycles were on them, and were they stored properly over that time. The good news is, they all have little ecu’s on them which store and log their entire use history.. including how many cycles they have had and any time they were improperly stored or charged. I was able to source 12 of these that ranged from 25 cycles to 150 cycles all with a good history. This means worst case, I have 3800 cycles left! If I were to completely discharge and recharge them 100 times per year, I still have 38 years of life left on them! I keep all the batteries balanced and operating within safe limits through the use of a BMS (Battery Management System). I went with one from Muller Industries. I am still debugging a few little issues, but overall it seems to be a good solution. I am told they have a new internet configurable BMS coming out next year which would really make me happy as I hate the black box approach where I cant see and control things as i wish.

To maximize the ability to quickly charge and provide a high output of power to the inverter, I chose to configure these in a 48V system of 3 parallel groups of 4 batteries wired in series. This gives me 414 amp hours @ 48V (nearly 20KWh). When you think about usable range of 80%, this results in 330 Ah of usable energy. (nearly 16 kWh) Or, enough to supply an average 1600 watts output for 10 hours! On our vessel, we consume around 700 W minimum by just operating base systems. 2 of our AC units draw 1200W/ea (salon and Pilot House), and the two stateroom systems draw around 500W/ea. The water heater under full load draws 1500W.

Over the winter, the demands are higher. We are constantly running heat (cycling on and off), and are able to run about 5 hours during the day when everything is running, and a full 10 over the night with just the cycling of heaters in the staterooms. This is phenomenal in my eyes. In the summer, we don’t need Air Conditioning often in the salon etc, and just moderate usage in the Master stateroom as we don’t have port holes for ventilation. This will allow us to easily go an entire night / 12 hours with AC running and no Gen. The best part of this all is once the Gen fires up, the entire bank will be recharged in under 3 hours. We have the bank configured to accept up to 140a charge and the batteries love it. (I’ll get to it later, but the system is always monitoring the batteries and will Auto Start the Gen should they drop too low)

Now, to the design. Our boat is relatively new (2011), and has modern systems and batteries to start. it has 6 of the FireFly Carbon foam AGMs wired to a MagnaSign PSW inverter and that supplies power the 12V house loads as well as to most cabin outlets, refrigerators’ and freezers. There is the main galley refrigerator, 2 beverage refrigerators and a deep freeze. It is sized to handle those loads fairly well for an overnight draw. The main 110/220 panel is looking for 2 110v feeds that supplies 2 load banks with 110v of power from either Shore or Gen.

What I did is insert a 3 way power supply switch that allows me to feed the panel from either Shore directly, Gen, or through the inverter. This allows me to bypass the inverter system should there ever been an issue. This allowed me to allow the inverter to essentially power the entire boat, and effectively replaces the shore or gen with really no rewiring.

I chose Victron gear to do the inverting. They have high quality gear, that is designed for the technically inclined, and at price points that are tough to match. I first feed the inverter/charger which is a Quattro 48v 10KW inverter. Two real nice features for me is first it acts like a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) so when I plug/unplug from shore, or fire up the gen, the entire boat power never goes down during the switch overs. Second, it has the ability to assist when loads are high. For instance, lets say I am at a marina with only 30a /220v power service (I use a smart combiner to allow me to combine two 30a/110v opposite phase feeds which is all that is available at many marinas in the PNW). If I really want to run a lot of systems, it will over power that, and I will blow the breaker. However, the Quattro is smart enough to know when I am drawing more than 30a, and will pull power from the batteries to supplement the shore power as long as its needed. Once the load goes down, it will use leftover shore capacity to recharge the batteries. Both of these scenarios were things that drove me nuts with our previous vessel.

To simplify the power output into my panel to provide true split phase power, I run the power out of the Quattro and into Victron’s Autotransformer (100a). This device essentially creates the neutral leg, as well as compensates for unbalanced legs. Back to that 30a scenario. Normally that means I have 30a of power on each of my two 110v legs. Lets say however that my power demands 40a of power on 1 leg, and only 15a of power on the other. This usage would trip a breaker of one leg at shore under normal conditions… but the AutoTransformer actually takes the two input legs and combines them, and allows the total amperage to be shared as needed. In this scenario, it sends 40a and 15a to the respective legs. Super cool!

The Quattro is highly configurable as well, and allows me to setup custom charge patterns to protect my LiFePO4 batteries. For those with larger demands, these can be combined to provide 20/30/40 + KW of power.

Lastly, I added the Cerbo GX as well as the new color display to give a nice management interface to it all. This connects to all Victron equipment and allows me to view into it. It logs all the data, and gives me the ability to see and control items via the internet from anywhere in the world. It also is able to watch the battery bank, and Auto Start the generator when it see the bank getting too low, and shut it down once charged. This takes a big burden off of me to be sure I don’t accidentally drain my batteries too low. It also provides protection should I lose shore power when not at the boat. It will keep everything running should we experience an unexpected loss of power.

Here are the schematics I created for my system. The install turned out real nice. I have a nice lazarette under our galley which provided the perfect place to install all this equipment, without really sacrificing the valuable storage space needed.

Below are the install pics of the equipment and batteries. I built a custom aluminum frame to mount the Victron gear above a box that encloses one of the AC units. I mounted the monitoring gear above, and use the ability to remotely control these over the network to simplify the amount of wire running that was needed. On the opposite side of the lazarette I installed the batteries. I did my best to balance weight port to starboard and kept things pretty level. Note, since these are not a “wet” battery, they do not need to be enclosed in a box. All connections are properly protected and secured. The batteries are industrial level batteries with internal equalization, with fire resistance cases and are UL Certified and IP65 waterproof rated. I still have a little clean up to make my wiring a little more neat on the batteries, but overall its done and functioning.

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Well, we officially navigated our new Jade Panama’ home from Anacortes to Seattle through dense fog the whole trip. She ran and cruised with such grace. A very different feel from our previous vessel, which was much more raw. We spent the next week moving all of our personal belongings back onto the vessel, and making it our our own.

So, what do you do once you have it all settled??? Well, you start projects of course 🙂 Most of this is pretty simple stuff, but here is the list of things we want/need to tackle this off season.

• Install an additional upright freezer in the Galley lazarette
• Install an Ice Maker in the lazaratte as well (previous one was removed for the wine fridge… cant complain about that 🙂 )
• The dry exhaust pipe was reported as having a crack in survey. Upon inspection, its all good, but suspect the issue was decaying insulation… so new insulation is being installed
• New air filter (plugged with old insulation from exhaust)
• Fix the OC error on Gen Start. Will check filter and needs oil change as well
• There are a bunch of little things as well like checking and documenting all the systems, fluids, etc. Not much is known on the state of things
• I also ordered some cool little labeled rocker switches to replace on the helms to simplify the identification of items
• Install a Grill on rear deck. The previous owner has a nice mount ready and I am going to go with a Blaze Grill that should fit nicely
• I would like to replace the monitor screen that displays the cameras with another MFD. Ideally either a duplicate of whats on there, or a new Axiom that supports the eventual addition of a FLIR
• and the grand daddy project: Install a LiFEPO4 battery bank with a 10KW inverter and auto transformer to allow for AC and Heat to be used year round without extended use of a generator. More to come on this install in future posts, but to say I am excited about this one is an understatement. (-updated – See Need More Power)

As you can see, most of what is above is very minimal. Its so nice having a newer vessel. The only downside we can see so far with this vessel is the limited size of the black tank. 70 gal. Our previous vessel had 150 gal so making the adjustment to frequent pump outs will need to be top of mind. Our electric heads also seems to dump a lot more water than the previous vacu flush systems which just compounds the issue. But, this is honestly a pretty small item given all the positives that come from the “upgrade”

Until next time…

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As discussed in earlier posts, we had the yearning for something newer. While we greatly enjoyed our Tollycraft, it was 31 years old and with that comes the never ending little frustrations that come with an older vessel. So, naturally it was time to move on 🙂

After much searching, we ended up deciding to sacrifice size for age. As with all Yachts, its always a slew of trade offs. Lucky for us, we found one that really checked most all the boxes… our new to us 2011 Californian LRC 55. The Californian brand which was started by Jule Marshall in the 1970’s has produced yachts throughout the last 4 decades, although it has changed hands several times, with it ultimately ending back up in the hands of Marshall who owned Navigator Yachts as well in 1991. The LRC is a popular design from the early days of Californian Yachts… the idea of an efficient long range design. The new 55 LRC doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Powered by a reliable, single Volve Penta D9 575, she can cruise comfortably at 12-13 knots or stretch out at up to 17 knots. When cruising at 10 knots she gets an astounding 2 MPG of Diesel. Bumping it up to 12.5 knots, she settles in more around 1 MPG which is still respectable.

I loved the hard top, new enclosure, fantastic tender, recent electrical / navigation systems, full hydraulic/elect rotating Nik Jackson Davit, Portuguese bridge, PermaTeak decking throughout, and a very functional interior space. The fuel efficiency is a bonus.

We got the vessel in Oct 2020, and are looking forward to racking up the hours over the next couple years.

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Well, just as we were finally getting Jade Panama’ just the way we liked it…that itch happened. The desire for more space. The desire for something new. My desire for something even more salty. Damn YachtWorld. I blame them. Seriously, we have decided to step up to our next boat. We thought Jade Panama’ was gonna be our next 10 year boat…but that doesn’t look like its gonna happen. You see, I became obsessed with Nordhavn, as well as a few others of similar regard and sea worthiness. So, that means we must first part with our darling Jade Panama’. Jalel is struggling with it. She LOVES our boat. We all love it. But the timing just seems right. Now that everything has been addressed that we wanted addressed. Isn’t that the way it goes?

— UPDATE —

Our beloved Jade Panama’ – the 53 Tollycraft has been sold…

…. and my desire for something much more grand almost happened…

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Unfortunately, a bog down of yacht financing and a Greedy sheister of a Boat Broker in Florida killed this deal. I had everything set, did the survey, sea trial, had shipping arranged, but when we asked for an additional week for financing, the greedy broker figured he could weasel his way out of the deal and take a deal where he represented both sides. Cost us a lot of money because of the broken contract killed the Tax Savings of the trade in of our vessel.

So, back to the drawing board. We opened up our minds and searched a bit more broadly. This time focused on the PNW area where we have a bit more control. We ended up looking smaller and newer (my wife loves newer 🙂 )

Much to our surprise, we found a vessel we both liked. Its a far stretch from my original goal of Big and Salty, but its a lot of bang for buck and has most every gadget/ option I could wish for! Its actually a little smaller than what we were coming from, but the newness of all the systems etc make this attractive.

So… what did we end up with????

a Californian LRC 55!

For more details on the next Jade Panama’, take a look at our latest posts.

Welcome to our second home. A 1989 Tollycraft 53 Coastal Pilot Motor Yacht. We purchased Jade Panama’ in 2018, upgrading from our previous Chaparral 350 Express Cruiser.

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After spending the summer aboard our first boat, we knew that we wanted to spend even more time out exploring the PNW waters. However, it just wasn’t large enough for us to live comfortably for longer stays… and more importantly to Jalel, large enough for our water kitties to join us. It all started when we took the Chaparral up to Friday Harbor for our first San Juan visit. We rafted up next to MBYC club members and their beautiful 57′ Ocean Alexander. I couldn’t take my eye off it the whole weekend. When we departed we faced some rough waters in the Strait of Juan De Fuca which tossed us around horribly. This was the push I needed. We of course needed a bigger boat!!

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a bit obsessive when it comes research. We knew we wanted a 3 cabin CPMY, and our budget was going to force something more than 20 years old. As the search began I dove into the various manufacturers. You had the likes of the Navigators, Californians, Bayliner, Ocean Alexanders etc. We looked closely at a 2000 Navigator 5300 which we liked. Jalel really liked it and loved the newness of it. However, as I kept digging, I learned more about Tollycraft, and the almost cult like obsession their owners. The more I learned, the more I was impressed by their build quality and sea worthiness. We ran across an ad for a 1989 Tollycraft 53. Jalel was not interested. The age turned her off. I have always been one who would rather have the 15 year old BMW/Mercedes/Audi than the 5 year old Ford/Chevy. This is how I looked at the Tollycrafts. Their build quality and sea worthiness was on par with Hatteras, and clearly regarded as one of the best around.

After much pressuring, I finally got Jalel to come visit the Tollycraft. Once she walked in, it was all over. She saw the wide beamy Saloon, beautiful wood floors, and impressive Galley. I was impressed by the engineering, systems, engine room, and the awesome Fly Bridge. We made the offer, and the rest is history.

We sold our Tollycraft in Sep 2020, replacing her with our next Vessel, the Californian LRC 55.

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