"Egret" N4674 - Scott and Mary Flanders

Ed. note: On February 10, 2011, Scott and Mary Flanders, on board their Nordhavn 46, Egret, arrived in the Canary Islands. In doing so, Egret became the eighth Nordhavn to circumnavigate the globe. It had been four years, five months since the couple departed Gran Canaria, intent on seeing as much of the earth as possible, although not necessarily with an end goal to circle the globe. Voyage of Egret documents the Flanders’ entire trip, an endless adventure that has put them in touch with the most fabulous places and interesting people. Much route planning and forecasting was required in order to get to some of their ports of call. But the days of detailed planning are over…for now. “Egret” is now back in Fort Lauderdale, the place the couple called home for so many years, and, ironically, the starting point of their world wide cruising escapade that began with the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally in 2004. They currently travel hither and yon, sometimes by boat, sometimes not. Here, the latest update from the Flanders as they keep us continually apprised.  

December 30, 2008
Location: Opua, New Zealand

Crikey dix/G'day mis amigos. We have details on the Egret Welcome to New Zealand get together. Thanks to the efforts of Peter Devers from Nordhavn Australasia and Barry Thompson from Pacific Motor Yacht Magazine we have a super venue planned. The event has grown from a simple Egret meet 'n' greet to a three-boat affair and welcome party at the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

The details are: Saturday, January 17th
1400 to 1800 hours
New Zealand Maritime Museum
Auckland Harbour
RSVP: peter@nordhavn.com.au or barry@pacificmotoryacht.com

The three Nordhavns in adjacent berths are: N46 Egret
N47 Southern Star (for sale and a super boat)
N55 New Paige

Peter will be arriving from Oz with three couples so far and Barry has a larger New Zealand group. This small group of enthusiasts will have a chance to personally meet and ask questions from we three N owners. The event is an informal affair and will be great fun.

Those of you living elsewhere who want to make the loooong hike to Auckland are welcome as well. (What a great way to kick off a NZ vacation)

We will have regular edition VofE after the first of the year. In a nutshell, our family is here with us and we are land touring NZ. I will say this is one beautiful country.

Happy 2009, Scott and Mary

December 18, 2008
Position: Opua Marina, Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Crikey dix mis amigos, The holidays are fast approaching, our two boys will be here shortly and we have tings to do. This past week we tended to boat yard chores including painting the bottom and a few upgrades. We hauled in a light rain at Ashby's Boat Yard here in Opua. The yard crew did a super job pressure washing the bottom getting rid of the barnacles we didn't manage to scrape off in Tonga. American Samoa's Pago Pago harbor did us in along with anyone else who spent any time there. Mary stood in the rain scrubbing the Puerto Montt, Chile tar off the waterline using a heavy scotch brite pad and Simple Green. It ruined the bootstripe but there was no other way to get the stuff off. Previously we tried everything from pressure washing (we have our own) to chemicals. In the end it didn't matter because we raised the bootstripe anyway.

Our big job was to remove the generator exhaust outlet, fill the hole, raise it 4" and replace the fitting with one with a snug fit flap to help keep wave slap from driving water up and over the top of the vented loop. Normally I wouldn't go into detail about something like this but there is a lesson to be learned here that applies to N46s particularly (other Ns don't have this issue) but to other makes of boats as well, power or sail. Egret is a particularly heavy N46 having a flybridge, paravanes and is usually very heavily loaded with provisions. All N46s are heavy on the port side with full fuel, around 140 gallons worth, about 1000lbs (455 kilos), or roughly 3 days under way at sea. The under settee storage is also on the port side so when we fill that storage to the top with can goods we really list to port. This submerges the wing engine and generator stainless steel exhaust ports as well as the four bronze thru hulls with seacocks aft of the two engine exhausts. The four bronze thru hulls and seacocks are bonded, the wing and gen exhausts are not AND don't have a seacocks. We lost the wing engine during Argentine coast storms having to remove the wing from the boat and totally rebuild the head while in Ushuaia, Argentina. To keep this from happening again (hopefully we'll never see weather like that again) we installed a 2" PVC ball valve before the muffler so water can't overpower the muffler and get into the engine. We were not going to change the wing exhaust fitting.

Ashby's Boat Yard has a super fiberglass man (Mark) who filled the hole where we removed the exhaust. I drilled the higher hole and mounted the new exhaust fitting. (I'll let it go at that. I could whine for hours about the job from hell's hell. Let's just say in this down market Advil is still doing well.) Before we launched Mary was going to paint the inside of the wing exhaust. I took a screwdriver to pop a couple small barnacles from inside when I saw HOLES in the exhaust fitting hose barb. BIG holes (over 1/4" - 6.25mm). YIKES!!! What saved the day was the solid fiberglass hull is almost exactly 1" (25.5mm) thick at that point. The exhaust fitting hose barb was bedded with a tough black sealant that didn't leak. On closer examination we could see where the hose barb to flange weld was rotten as well. THEN I checked the generator exhaust fitting we removed and found the same degradation. In my best guesstimate what happened is a combination of super corrosive hot salt water exhaust as well as being submerged from time to time with no bonding over a period of 7 years. So now we wait for #1 son to bring a second fitting from Ft Lauderdale. We'll haul again after the holidays and go thru the #@%$^&(^ job again. We are using a heavier 316L stainless fitting available from lewismarine.com, figure number 2136, 2" (or figure 2154, number 5215). To keep from replacing all of the exhaust hose (in good condition except the ends that have to be cut off) we're using a 6" piece of 2" fiberglass pipe (figure 3276, 2") as a splice then a short piece of fresh 2" hose to the new exhaust fitting.

After the yard episode we returned to our berth to find a beautiful N64 parked directly in front of Egret. A delivery crew had just arrived after a 45 day trip from Dana Point (southern), California to Opua. The delivery crew took the fast track. First to Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji then on to Opua, NZ. Delivery took 52 days. Mary met one of the delivery crew briefly but they were anxious to get home and were gone the next day. We met the owners, Jeff and Diane, from Isobel Jean (named after Diane's mother) on the dock. Like any new owners they are putzing and getting their home to sparkle.

Today was getting the new inflatable dink ready for our number 2 son and his family to use when they arrive in a few days. You would think it would take just an hour or two to mount the little engine and fabricate the lifting harness and so on. It took ALL afternoon getting tings just so. Now we have a new lifting harness, dolfin* installed, gas tank tie down, towing bridle (trick), anchor set up with a 5kg Manson Supreme anchor, 3 1/2' of 3/8" chain and 60' of anchor rode, all in a nylon mesh bag. The 8hp Yamaha 2 stroke started on the first pull (love those Yamadog 2 strokes) and the 3hp is mounted on a flybridge rail waiting to do its share as well. We'll use the 3hp in island type cruising where we travel short distances and drag the dink up on the beach. *if you don't know about Dolfin's let us give you a little head's up. On any small engine from 6hp up to 40hp, installing a Dolfin (a plastic wing) on the cavitation plate makes an enormous difference in getting on plane and running slow on plane. It's like you have gone in engine size from 8hp to 15hp on the same dink. Ever since buying our first inflatable over 20 years ago we have put one on every small engine since. The CIB (catamaran ice breaker - 30hp) has one as well. Dolfins are available at West Marine and other retailers. We bought ours here in Opua but it came from the States.

Days later. #2 son, wife and Bangkok's cutest kid* are in. We picked them up at the Auckland airport and went on a 2 day vacation to a secluded beach B&B. We are now back aboard. The 3-year-old little rice picker (LRP) LOVES dinghy riding AND going fast. So every day we take a swing thru the anchorage in the dink getting him ready to go cruising with us in a few years. Can't wait for that. Perhaps some day he and his sweetie can run the boat while Mary and I todder about the salon and revisit a few places we have been, reminisce about what we saw and the fun we had with other cruisers. NOT what we own or owned. That part won't matter much. Will it? OK, I have to admit. If you stay and work and work and work, etc, perhaps you'll have enough for a POLISHED stainless steel bed pan, not the generic - run of the mill unpolished stainless steel pan we paupers will have. You get the picture.

*#2 son, wife and the little guy (LRP) live in a suburb of Bangkok, Thailand. AND, yeah-yeah I know, we all have beautiful grandchildren but its writer's privilege you know. Picture 1.

After installing the new 100 amp Victron 50/60 cycle battery charger something wasn't right. The charger seemed to be charging properly but it always showed a deficit charge on the Xantrex Link 10 battery meter even if it was charging 75 amps or so (measured with a clamp multimeter). So I sent an e-mail in great detail to fellow NAR participant, Scott Strickland on N47, Strickly For Fun, describing the installation and any insight he may have. In the past he helped with electrical thises and thats and again he solved this problem. I used the external inverter case ground for the negative ground. "Not good", said Scott. "Move the ground to the shunt for the Link 10". I did and it works perfectly. Not that many of you will install your own charger but the lesson is we all take care of each other. In Barcelona and again in Turkey we helped Scott with a few things we knew a bit about. It all works out AND its a thread to previous good times.

The Victron charger we installed is good up to 1000 battery amps at 12 volts (we have 1050)(24V it is good to 600amps). When the batteries need amps it really POUNDS the amps before backing off. Even though it is a smaller amperage charger than our Trace inverter/charger is seems at this early stage to be more effective. We'll try it down the road using the generator keeping the Trace charger switched off. If this is the case we should have bought the 160 amp Victron that is good from 640-1600 amp battery bank (320-800 @ 24V) We'll see here and will report what we find during our summer cruise south.

Our new Isotherm refrigerator and freezer arrive later today (Sub Zero replacements). We'll have to scramble to get them up and running before we start our summer cruise. After the first of the year we'll do a VofE write up on the installation and whatever practical experience we have. Our goal is to be generator free except on rainy or overcast days while at anchor. By turning off our malfunctioning freezer while on the hard in the boatyard we maintained our fridge and overall amperage using just the solar panels (for 3 days)(we have 600 watts of solar panels - 4 X 150amps). We didn't plug in to shore power at all and the batteries were down just 5%. This includes two days of buffing using the inverter to power the 115V buffer. So we're on our way to being as 'green' as our little powerboat can be.

So mis amigos, we are winding up VofE for the year. Tomorrow (Fri) we drive into Wangarei, about an hour south, to pick up our re-galvanized chain. Avon Industries does a super job sand blasting then replating the chain. Avon puts on 200 mils of galvanizing, more than we had new. Before we leave NZ we'll have TK (our bad boy anchor) re-galvanized as well. After the first of the year we'll have a report on a first class custom builder fabricating 'extreme powerboats' for Steve Dashew. We'll also have a report on the replacement of our Sub Zero fridge and freezer as well as other tings. Our boys and family will be with us until Jan 8th. We haul on Jan 9th to replace the wing exhaust fitting so both the wing and gen will be up and running. Soon after we start our summer cruise south down the east coast of North Island then on to South Island for the remainder of the season.

Local NZ folks should keep checking VofE for our announcement of an Egret "Welcome to New Zealand' get together in Auckland on January 17th. We'll post the details as soon as we get the information. If everything works out we will have a mini Nord boat show as well.

Happy holidays to you all. May 2009 be your best year yet. If Santa brings a little white fiberglass ship it will be. If not, you'll have to wait for Your Time.

Date: December 2, 2008
Position: Opua Marina, Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Welcome home

Paddle To The Sea

Crikey dix mis amigos, the Egret crew is back home aboard our little white fiberglass ship. The Ft Lauderdale trip and boat show was a lot of fun. We saw family and friends plus had the bonus of meeting two Nordhavn Atlantic Rally couples we haven't seen for a while along with one of Egret's two super crewman for the NAR, Cecil Newsome. Braun and Tina Jones from N62 Grey Pearl were in town along with Dennis and Julie Fox from Krogen 58, Sea Fox. After arriving back we received an e-mail from Dennis and Julie saying they will fly in and visit Egret in NZ's South Island in March. That will be great fun. Additionally we had dinner at Milt and Judy Baker's house (N47 Buewater) along with Tut and Eddie Tuttle from Tothill (46 Grand Banks currently in Panama) who we met in the Bahamas during our first year cruising. Small world mis amigos.

So, back to boat stuff. Our new Lancer aluminum bottom RIB is in and its better than we expected. Its a very large 9' dink and light as well. It's been a social whirl since we got back and haven't gotten any boat work done. N55 New Paige leaves tomorrow for Auckland and their rounds of family visits. Since we left for the States, Opua Marina had become filled with yachties escaping typhoon season to the north. The anchorage outside the marina is chock a block full as well. Over 450 boats made their way south this year. A few late arrivals got murdered by weather a couple days before we arrived back. The wind blew nearly 60 knots in the marina and I'm sure offshore as well. Thank goodness we doubled our dock lines and have a solid wall of inflatable fenders along the floating dock. Egret was just as we left her 4 weeks earlier.

We don't have any boat stories to pass along so let's visit a subject that unless you have cruised you probably don't know much about...Boat Kids. If you haven't noticed, there is a new forum on the nordhavn.com website called Boat Kid Chatter. BKC is hosted by two active Boat Kids: Kimberly Allard, 10, is here in Opua, New Zealand aboard N55 New Paige and Ayla Besemer, 11, is currently cruising south down the Intracoastal Waterway toward Florida aboard N43 Three@Sea with plans to slowly circumnavigate. BKC is a forum where other Boat Kids (BK's) or future Boat Kids can write in with their questions and both Kimberly and Ayla will write their replies. BKC is a great way for BK's to communicate as well as let future Boat Kids know what it is really like to cruise away from their friends and routine. We see more and more Boat Kids on the water with their parents. Their stories are as varied as their boats and nationalities but they all have certain things in common like home schooling, making friends quickly here and there along their route, having the disappointment of splitting up then likewise having the joy of getting together again.

Along with Boat Kids cruising full time with their parents there is a second group of Boat Kids we should look at. This past summer we had two teenage boys aboard Egret for 5 weeks traveling from Tahiti to American Samoa. From our experience we feel safe to say we gave the guys a lifetime experience they will never forget. Watching them mature as boaters AND as young men along the way was one of the highlights of our summer. When it is Your Time any chance you get to help young people will become a cruise highlight for yourselves as well.

We have a heartwarming Kid story to pass along as well. This story is about a 7 year boy (Leith) and his boat, 'Paddle to The Sea'. In 1941 a book, Paddle To The Sea, was written and illustrated by Clancy Holling about an Indian boy who carved a man and a canoe to be set on a journey down a river to the sea. In 1995 the book was made into a video by Bill Mason. Leith, his mother Deborah and father Bruce watched the film. Leith decided to duplicate the little Indian boy's "Paddle' and send it down a river to the sea. To condense the story, Leith and family (Nova Scotian's) made a duplicate Paddle then gave the boat (complete with a ballasted keel and carved man figure) to a lock master in Peterbourough, Nova Scotia to send down to the sea. Instead, the lock master queried passing boaters who would be a candidate to take Paddle far afield. Ultimately he chose a newlywed couple aboard a powerboat, Gulfstream V. On February 5th, 2004 (just before the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally) Paddle was passed to Egret by Ingrid and Allen Coleby of Gulfstream V. Previously, Paddle visited the Nova Scotian coast, US East Coast, Bahamas and Cuba. Egret gave Paddle a bit of a spin crossing three oceans, rounding Cape Horn, visiting 21 countries and numerous islands. Mary has been religious in keeping Paddle's log current even though our e-mails to Leith were returned. Just a few weeks ago we received an e-mail from Leith's mother who found us using Google. What a super surprise!! We intend to pass Paddle along to N55 New Paige Kimberly (Canadian) who's long term goal is to visit the Med. If that is the case it would be proper a Canadian boat finishes Paddle To The Sea's circumnavigation in Marmaris, Turkey (Egret's farthest point east). Ultimately wouldn't it be great if Paddle were returned to Leith sometime in the future? Now THAT would be a video worth making. Leith is now 15.

While visiting friends in Ft Lauderdale we got some constructive criticism about VofE. Lubricated by a bit o' grape they let us know CLEARLY they don't follow all VofE's Egretisims. I write this drivel then fire it off into space working in my own little world of thoughts. In addition, I was asked by an editor for an upcoming magazine article to explain certain details in even more detail. I argued back that this was so basic to cruising why even mention it. She said new folks just don't know what we now take for granted. Ya know, she and our friends are right. While in Ft Lauderdale we walked the docks at a large marina while waiting to meet friends for lunch. These are the same docks we walked while live aboards 7 years previously trying desperately to gather all the information we could from other yachties. What a difference 7 years and sea miles make. We made changes in the article as well as trying in VofE to explain things in more detail for the newbies. So for our graped up friends we'll list the Egretisims we use often.

Occasionally when describing people or places multiple times during a paragraph we'll abbreviate to save time. An example is New Paige Roger, Joan and Kimberly = NPR, NPJ, NPK or Boat Kid = BK. You get the picture.

So there you have it but lets think about this for a minute. The reason you are reading this drivel chances are along the way someone gave you the gift of water by taking you boating. This lifestyle simply described as water is truly the gift that keeps on giving. If you have young children at home (or grandchildren) have them first read the existing BKC forum's then get in touch with Kimberly and Alya on Boat Kid Chatter with their own questions. You never know, your own children (or grandchildren) may become Boat Kids someday when its Your Time. Ciao.

Ed. Note - The glossary of Egretism terms will be posted on the Captain's Log home page for easy reference.