Latest Posts
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Singapore
Jennifer is a big fireworks fan who has long wanted to visit Singapore, so we achieved both ...
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Bunaken National Marine Park
Indonesian’s Bunaken National Marine Park is a world-class scuba diving destination known ...
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Coronado Island
Coronado Island in San Diego boasts one of the best beaches in the US, and has been a beach ...
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NASCAR Race the Base
This year NASCAR held their first race ever at an active military base. “Race the ...
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Amangiri
After a crowded and hectic week at re:Invent we were getting ready to head to the airport and ...
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Friday Harbor
Friday Harbor, in Washington’s San Juan Islands, is another easy weekend getaway for us. ...
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An International Fall
This past fall we visited eight counties on three continents, starting and ending with ocean ...
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Caribbean Cruise on the Celebrity Ascent
We’ve taken several trips with Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), and really enjoy the ...
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Point Ruston
Point Ruston, near Tacoma, is an easy weekend getaway for us at only a 60- to 90-minute drive ...
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Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada has played a big part in our lives. James lived in Canada’s capital for ...
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Peats Bite
We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary and Jennifer’s 60th birthday in style with a ...
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Trans-Arctic Cruise Across the Top of the Planet
The first cruise ship transit of the Northwest Passage took place in 1984 when the ...
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James from the Early Days
James and I met way back in 1982 at the University of Victoria. Their alumni magazine, the UVic ...
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Zoox Hayward Start Of Production
Celebrating the Zoox Hayward plant entering its start of production phase. This ...
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Seattle World Cup
Seattle made its FIFA World Cup debut this month, cementing its status as a premier soccer ...
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Longyearbyen
Longyearbyen has a real off-the-edge of civilization feel to it. The capital of Svalbard, a ...
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Oslo
Despite living in Norway for many months aboard Dirona, we never reached Oslo. The farthest ...
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Summer Music
An unusually large number of bands we like were touring this summer, and we attended live ...
Hello from Katy and Chad Norris. We have been using your book since the end of June traveling the Secret Coast. As I’m writing this message we are in Finnis Nook. We have enjoyed so many of your wonderful anchorages. Alison sound, Ahclakerho island, Pruth bay, and so much more. We just want to say thank you for writing this fantastic book. We are having a spectacular summer staying in your awesome anchorages.
Thanks for taking the time to let us know. It’s great to hear that folks like you and Chad are actively enjoying it. Thanks for passing that along and we hope your trip continues to be rewarding.
The civilization museum is world class in Ottawa as are the Liquor stores, great wines from the world in somewhat competitive nature, which benefits the local people and travelers, like you both! I love Canada and had 3 wonderful years in Ottawa..sorry to hear about the Nordhavn corporate issues..been out of this loop a while but following since Spitfire days….i plan to get there to skate the canal this winter!!
Like you, we just love Ottawa. When we lived in Toronto, we used to return to Ottawa at least once a winter to skate on the canal. Hope you are able to head north for a skate this winter.
Ciao James !
Four years ago I asked in these comments whether your 2008 post email principles still held, and you answered that not much had changed. I just looked at yr recent trip photo — the laptop with a clean desktop and just four folders — prompts a follow-up, this time on to-dos rather than emails.
In this post you wrote that longer-lived items leave the inbox and go to your todo list. My question is: what is that todo list, concretely, today?
We all have corporate ticketing and project tools, but they share one trait: they are invisible until you deliberately open them, and for small activities the overhead of navigating their UX often exceeds the activity itself.
So I run a kind of middleware between those tools and my actual work: one plain folder per project and a simple txt file — cloud-synced and accessible anywhere, but deliberately simple and always visible. Very much in the spirit of your own advice against complicated folder hierarchies.
Do you also keep some lightweight layer of your own between the corporate tools and your daily work, or have the corporate tools become good enough that you rely on them directly?
I recently wrote about this on LinkedIn (apologies — it’s in Italian), building on an Economist article arguing that we don’t really know how to prioritize: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/santopaolo_un-articolo-delleconomist-link-in-commento-activity-7480712651464175616-19cU
Greetings from Napoli,
Raffaele
I translated and read your linkedin article. Looks like a simple but effective approach.
Grazie for translating it — that means a lot.
And the todo list itself? I suspect the answer is “a short flat list, nothing fancy” as the 2008 post implied. Am I close?
James, stepping back from the todo-list specifics — what I’m actually curious about is the bigger question underneath it.
You run infrastructure at a scale of complexity I can barely imagine. And for years you also carried Dirona on top of it: engines, systems, weather, trips.
So genuinely: how do you keep that load from becoming overwhelming? Is it still mostly about ruthless simplicity in the tools — short lists, (clean folders :-D), a boat maintenance log as the one you shared — or has something changed in how you decide what even deserves your attention, now that the complexity is higher?
I ask partly out of self-interest — I run an ISP/Telco, and complexity keeps climbing. I don’t think AI is making it simpler either, if anything it feels like another layer rather than one less. So I’m always genuinely curious how people running an order of magnitude above me – as you certainly do – survive !.
Saluti da Napoli, and thanks again for the exchange.
That’s a great question Rafaele. Don’t fall behind is my primary “go to” tactic. We try to be connected 100% of the time. Even going so far as to bring satelite equipment on our trip to the South Pole. The two advantages to staying connected all the time are 1) I never return to 3,000 messages and stay current, and 2) if I always have work waiting for me I can still 60 min and 20 min there and it’s amazing what you can get done if you stay focused and don’t waste time. Some love to get disconnected during vacations but, for me, I’m 100% the opposite. I find it way better to stay connected and to stay caught up. A little bit all the time is way more efficient and it helps those I work with be more efficient as well. I don’t want them waiting days for my perspective. The faster I can act on a request or offer a perspective, the faster the entire team as a whole can move.
I know it doesn’t work for everyone but staying current and always connected is, by far, the best approach for me and the roles I find myself in.
Staying current is best for those around me as well
Thank you James
that approach really resonates with mine.
I also find that disconnecting creates more anxiety than staying on top of things.
Even a weekend can be enough—not necessarily because something important happens Monday morning, but because, in the background, my mind keeps returning to all the open loops.
My very simple solution is a plain .txt file where every open loop is written dwn.
I’ve tried more sophisticated tools—even Excel, rather unsuccessfully—but the important part seems to be having one trusted place and not leaving things on your mind, or in your inbox. That alone provides reassurance and peace of mind.
I also agree about stealing 20 or 60 minutes here and there and stay current when travelling, although I’m much better with 60 than with 20. Task switching has a real cost for me, and I often need some time before reaching full focus. I’d love to develop your ability to make a 20-minute window genuinely productive.
In our company, I prefer to export actionable work and todos from emails into our (internally written ASP.NET) erp/ticketing system. That way, mails becomes tickets rather than getting lost in an always-crowded inbox. I’m curious whether email itself still plays that central role for you and do you still aim for inbox zero as 20 yers ago?
Thank you again for such a thoughtful answer.
I like your “it’s all in one place” approach where tasks not done are super clear and easy to see. It looks like a really good system.
Just noticed (last “office” pic) that Jennifer has also moved off ThinkPads — that’s a non-trivial decision.
I’d struggle to make that switch myself.
After a few years on HP, how would you evaluate the platform in terms of reliability and overall experience? Is Jennifer’s also the same HP model?
You’re right. I was a ThinkPad fan back in the early 90s at IBM. I’ve loved them for years and always made that choice. A few years ago, work really would prefer to see me running on one of their IT supported systems. I ended up deciding to give it a try and went with an HP Dragonfly (Currently a G4) and I ended up really liking the system. It’s super small with only a 14″ screen and it’s very thin. The battery life is impressive. I just came to like the system so much that I encouraged Jennifer to try one and she like it as well. We both like thin, light, and good battery life and neither of us need massive screens so the Dragonfly has been a good fit.
On the downsides of this design, every two to three months the USB type C charging port will get hung require a system reboot to charge. Rare and nothing permanent but a minor hassle.
Congratulations on being elected to the National Academy of Engineering! What an honor!
Were you able to obtain the publishing rights to your book Cruising the Secret Coast? We have been searching high and low for your book!
We enjoy reading your blog.
Thanks for the feedback on the blog and thanks for the feedback on the NAE. Much appreciated.
On your Secret Coast Question, we were not able to get the publishing rights for our book. Mark Bunzel owns Fine Edge Publishing and the rights to publish “The Secret Coast.” We have been unable to get publishing rights for our book. I think that is perfectly fine as long as the publisher wants to keep it in print. But it feels counter productive to not be willing to keep a book in print but also not be willing to release rights to allow someone else to print it. I’m disappointed by his decision.
Thank you for your fast reply! It is truly disappointing that Mark Bunzel will not release the rights to publish your book, “The Secret Coast”, yet at the same time choses to not keep it in print. There is an obvious demand for your book when you find that used copies are being sold on Amazon between $175 and $775. Amazon.ca has your book listed for $1.2K CAD! We found out about your book from seasoned cruisers we met while heading north on Inside Passage and have been searching for it! The cruisers who had your book knew about anchorages that were not even listed in the other Fine Edge Publishing books! Many will be disappointed by Mark’s decision!
Thank you again for your reply!
We agree with you. Mark runs a business so, if enough people ask for the book to be returned to print or released to the authors to print, he may chose to respond.
Rumor is Mr Bunzel is looking to sell the business-i/e everything Fine Edge prints.
Thanks for letting us know Al. We’ll keep an eye on the situation.
Did you create an Excell SS for maintenance reminders? If so could you share with me and with the NOG too?
Jim Frantz
ALBEDOS N52-74
Hey Jim. Its good to hear from you. Yes, feel free to use and/or share with the Nordhavn Owners Group: https://mvdirona.com/2018/11/updating-the-maintenance-log/
James, still enjoying the voyages. Are you able to send me a copy of your excellent maintenance tracking spreadsheet. It certainly beats anything I have seen. Thanks & Safe Passage Greg.
Thanks Greg. This posting has the maintenance spreadsheet and explains it’s use: https://mvdirona.com/2018/11/updating-the-maintenance-log/.
Jennifer and James
Buon Natale ! 🎄
All the best in 2026!
thank you for all the updates the past years Merry Christmas Jennifer and James
Thanks for participating in the discussion and all the best in 2026!
your welcome and thank you
The big tech news in the media is “AI” What are your thoughts on how that, if at all it will be applied to pleasure boating. And if it is coming, what are we looking at time wise for possible application by boat builders/electronics designers.
I expect that, over time, AI will impact just about every field. Some much faster than others. I don’t expect marine to be highly impacted by AI in the short term or at least not as quickly as drug discovery and materials science breakthroughs. But, the contribution will be there. Hull form efficiency and propellor design look to be areas where AI can speed innovation. Cargo handling, scheduling, and route planning is another. Weather, current routing, and transit speed tuning will likely have some opportunity as well. Machine learning will also play a big role in battery chemistry breakthroughs for all domains that use batteries including marine.
Do you see AI being capable of, say a foggy day using information from radar and plotter providing an image on a screen that shows the path ahead as clear-ie what you’d see on a clear day?
Yes, over time that certainly will be possible. Sensor fusion is a technique used in autonomous driving to bring together optical, RADAR, and LIDAR sensing. I could see using that approach to synthesize images of the area surrounding a boat even at night or in fog. So, technically yes, this will become possible but I don’t expect it to be safe and affordable anytime in the next 10 years.
Jennifer, James
I recently stumbled upon a second-hand book from the 1990s that I’d love to mention to James—although it’s very likely he already owns a copy.
It was written by a professional racer and engineer, Carroll Smith, who is sadly no longer with us (jist found out). The title is Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing Handbook, and it’s a true work of art before being a practical manual.
The level of detail is extraordinary—so meticulous that even the usually dull preface disclaimer (“it’s your responsibility…”) its a piece of art itself.
Ciao !
Wow, an entire book on fastners and plumbing! There are details to be learned in even fields that look simple from a distance. Thanks.
Happy Birthday Jennifer
Tanti Auguri !
Thanks Raffaele!
Jennifer
In reference to Prof. David Parnas, I completely agree: if you’re lucky enough to meet a true mentor during school or university — regardless of the subject they teach — you’re blessed for life. Their way of reasoning stays with you forever.
I had a similar experience with my Linear Algebra professor in the first year of Engineering. Of course, I remember almost nothing about the subject itself now, but I still carry his way of thinking with me.
I’ll never forget what he told us when we, as “kids,” asked what Linear Algebra was actually useful for. He said:
“we don’t study this for the rules of algebra, we study this to learn how to think.”
Couldn’t agree with you more. These early influences can be very powerful and long lasting.
Hello from Belgium, if you go back to boating, what kind of boat and brand will you choose ? Back to a trawler, steel like bering or polyster ? Will you go back to nordhavn or try maybe a krogen, a fleming, or a converted explorer yacht ? Will you go back to 8 knots cruising or plane at 20 hnots ? You had a bayliner or meridian i dont remember but will you go back to this kind of boat and brand ?
Smaller than 52 or bigger ?
Thanks a lot and take care
Hello! As you outlined, there are a wide variety of possible boat choices out there. The direction we take would be related to the kind of exploring we ended up deciding to do. If we were back to crossing oceans or doing the North West Passage or other high latitude work we would go with a Nordhavn or something similar. Probably would go a bit larger than 52′ for that mission. If we decided to cruise European canals we would probably go with a 40 to 50 footer. Speed isn’t an asset for this mission since canal speed limits are typically quite low. If we decided to do the US Great Loop, we would likely go a bit bigger — perhaps 60′ — and would like to have a boat that can cover the distances at a bit higher speed when called on. Say 20 knots when we we have distance to cover but we would want it to still be efficient at displacement speeds.
If it were possible to build a ice breaker down in the 60 to 70 foot range, it would be super interesting but it’s difficult to get capable ice breakers at sub-100 foot lengths.
For many missions that interest us a slightly larger Nordhavn would fit us very well.
If you dont cross oceans anymore and do great loop or europe inland waters will you stay with a main and a wing ? I dont really understand why cross oceans trawler run mainly on a main and a wing and coastals or inlands run on 2… i think it should be the opposite… coastal youre close to an harbour to get safe and repair instead in the middle of the ocean with your small wing with 2 meters swell in the nose..
Have you ever tryed your wing in uncomfortable sea ? Thanks for share
Ocean crossers need redundancy. You can go with a wing or twin engines. A single is always more efficient but the differences aren’t massive. I personally would prefer twins as a redundancy solution on larger boats but, on small boats, the space required for twins negatively impacts the fuel load that can be carried and make a wing a better choice.
I have run the wing in rough conditions. It can make way but it’s slow at around 3 1/2 kts.
Hope for you, youre gonna be again on sea for new adventures. For us next season is the last one, we sell the boat, my father will be 82 and its time for him to move on… he bought his 3988 in 1997 new.. times fly… take care and i ll follow your next adventures !
Thanks and all the best looking forward.
Hi James, would love to hear from you, your thoughts on Trac Network. A P2P, Blockless, AND ClOUDLESS network, for apps and services.
https://trac.network/
Would love to hear your insights.
The utility of communications networks is directly related to the number of entities using that network. In the case of Trac, usage is on the light site so I’m not that excited by it at this point. But for those not wanting to depend upon central authorities, using TAP on Trac for networking looks like an option.
Welcome to Australia – just caught up on your latest moves. Hope you get to Melbourne, finest food in Australia. Many wonderful restaurants.
Have you replaced Spitfire as yet? My new cat is almost a clone of my last who passed away with a stroke.
Have a wonderful stay in Australia and I hope Sydney does us proud.
Hey Tim. It was great to be back in Australia. This trip was a bit of an unusual one where we’re only going to be in the country for two days. It’s Jen’s birthday and she wanted to go back to Peats Bite for lunch/dinner. I couldn’t afford time off work right now so we did one of the longest trips ever for a restaurant visit :-). We’re already looking forward to a return visit!
Hi James! Thank you for all the great posts. I’m the current owner of 6229 and have built out my NMEA2000 network with great success and have used many of your posts to get great recommendations and N2KView layouts. One thing I haven’t figured out is how you have created “user” or “calculated fields” like NM/G which is showing volts. I was hoping to be able to store values in a VDR100, calculate new fields and present them in N2KView, but alas, no such luck. You have figured this out. Do you have the decoder ring? Many thanks!
Our system has evolved over the years and is specific to this boat electrical and electronics architectures but the good news is Kees Verruijt has written a wonderful interface to the NMEA2000 systems called CANboat. It is on Github (https://github.com/canboat/canboat) and that is what we are using. Kees has written a nice clean system that is very reliable.
Canboat works great for input operations and it’s super easy to use. On output operations, it’s more complex and bounded by idiosyncrasies in the PGNs you want to write, the hardware you are writing it, and how much you intend to write. So it’s a bit messy but with some trial and error, it can be done. The NMEA2000 spec costs something silly like $10k and, without that, you are stuck reverse engineering some of the PGNs you might want to write.
Overall, Canboat is a really nice system and it makes it all as easy as can be when working with resource constrained interfaces on a protocol where the spec isn’t reasonably priced.
Thank you! I just started reading the spec. So, you read values from the NMEA PGNs, do some calculations on your host PC and send the results out on a PGN (like battery voltage) for a certain instance such that it can be displayed in N2Kview?
Yes, exactly. Some synthesized PGNs were sourced external to NMEA2000. For example, satellite connection status. And, as you said, some data was received from NMEA2000 in one form and pushed back onto the network in another. An example of this use case is taking the Deere ECU computed fuel burn rate, correct it to my calibrated values, and push it back onto the network.
You got me started on this project. Is there a way to get data from Maretron, like total fuel remaining or consumption, out or do you have to intercept all the PGNs and calculate them externally? I think I understand how to generate new PGNs at a surface level.
Assuming you have an electronically controlled engine, the Maretron J2k100 (J1939 to Canbus converter) will get engine fuel consumption data. If you have a mechanically controlled engine, this data is unavailable. Note that fuel consumption data is bang on at rated RPM but, on our Deere 6068AFM75, it’s off by as much as 13% at low engine speeds so we read the data, compute the calibrated correction, and then put the data back on the bus. For total fuel, you need to read all the CANBUS fuel levels, sum them, and re-emit the total fuel back onto the bus. For devices where there is no data on the bus like our KVH satellite system, we would programmatically scrape the data from the KVH reporting page (e.g. signal strength) and then push that data on the bus. I believe I used temperatures for these computed values.
Hi from Greece on a sailboat, great site and a ton of info. I am looking at a 52 again after i toured her in 2015 and we are ready to change but honestly there are still some doubts. I still have the feeling that the hull, even if beeing quite tall and the design is superb, but the installation, plumbing can make life complicated. I know from dutch boats that they put all technical equipment from engine to aircon, heater, inverter water maker in one big engine room.,Looks overwhelming but you see problems easily. In the 52 it seems its placed all over the boat, in cabinets, under beds etc which make things not easier. Additional when boats get older parts have to be exchanged or some material like brass in aircon manifold or wrong gasket in tanks or cooler will show up after 10 years only and out of guarantee. So how to you see NH ageing over time and how often did you yell f****** why its so difficult to reach things…..,In the end the small bits can make it difficult. I have a oneoff with 90 pct superb installation but the last 10 pct drives you crazy…,,.Carsten
Many Nordhavns including the 52 look high and I’ve heard many observers concerned about the stability of the vessel but, what you don’t see, is the 6’7″ (on Dirona) of below-the-waterline weight. Dirona has over 6,000 lbs of ballast, up to 1,750 gallons (more 10,000 lbs) of fuel,as much as 400 gallons (3,200 lbs) of water, and an incredibly thick and heavy hull. There are downsides of all this mass including slightly lower fuel economy but it allows the boat to be incredibly stable in even very rough seas and to carry a lot of above the waterline space. The N52 is designed to pass Class A Ocean (highest rating). More data here: https://mvdirona.com/2019/03/deck-fuel-and-vessel-stability/
The short form is these boats are built tough and crazy heavy but, the more difficult the weather, the happier we were in that boat.
On service space, just about no boast is as big as you might like when servicing but Nordhavn’s are all serviceable. I did just about all service on our N5263 over the 10 years and more than 12,000 hours we owned the boat and I know it very well. I’ve also helped other Nordhavn owners over the years and I’ll admit that a N68 is much easier to work on than a N52. Smaller boats are almost always more challenging to service than large boats but the work can be done.
There were numerous times when more service space would have been really nice but Nordhavns of all sizes have been designed to be services and, in my opinion, the brand is above average by that measure. If you flip through the blog, you can get a rough perspective on how much service is required when a boat is used heavily with high annual hours and it’ll also give you good read on how accessible components are on the 52.
Dear James and Jennifer. Funny coincidence — I’ve been scouting for a good travel charger, and I just noticed in your photo (at the Granville Island Hotel) you’ve got one that looks like it could charge two laptops at once. What model is that? Looks like exactly what I need.
It’s a great charger and it can run two laptops at once if they are modern and fairly efficient. The max power delivery from this unit is 100W. It works perfectly for our two 13″ HP Dragonfly G4s. This is the Anker Prime 100W: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ6LXL8R.
Wow, I actually bought that one just last week—but I was a bit worried it might only offer slightly more power than my 65W ThinkPad charger.
By the way, do you usually rely on having power sockets available when you travel, or do you also carry a power bank for your laptop?
I was looking into this Anker model (A1340, ASIN B0BYP2F3SG) for that reason:
https://a.co/d/aMlud75
We also use this power bank that can drive a full 65W on demand: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBHC9F8B.
I have liked your website for a long time. The content, layout, and especially the live and interactive map is fantastic. Can you give a bit of insight on how difficult this was to create and manage? Could a mid-level-technical (no computer programming) person manage/update this site? I am interested to have something similar but I am quite intimidated. Thanks ahead for any insights or recomendations.
A simple WordPress site is easy to setup and maintain. Other than the interactive map, that’s all our site is. You could easily do it. The map is a lot of custom code and would take time but the rest is easy for non-programmers. My recommendation is to dive in and chose a WordPress theme and bring up a site. Try changing themes as you learn more. Have book on WordPress to consult when you are stuck. It’s all easy and no programming expereince is needed.
Thanks for your quick response. It does seem like a basic site based on one of their templates shouldn’t be too hard. That is about my technical level. I was hoping you had an easy secret…. Thanks for sharing your adventures. I am super impressed that you have been to both poles. Happy travels.
When are you heading to outer space?? I am sure you have looked into it. It is about the only place left!
Yes, your right. If we could afford it, we would definitely do an orbit of earth.
Have you shared any details about your custom raspberry pi watch commander replacement anywhere? I searched the site and did not find anything beyond the initial mention. Thanks!
The details on what the watch commander does and how it behaves are described here: https://mvdirona.com/2022/03/watchkeeping-revisited/.
The software is fairly simple. It’s just a timer driving a set of 5v digital outputs each of which drives a relay and the relays control power to warning lights and/or alarms. It also has one digital input that senses when the user presses the switch confirming the operator is alert and another digital input that is used to activate/deactivate the device.
A recent post in the Puget sound boating Facebook group says that Cruising the Secret Coast is sold out everywhere and is in demand.
It’s true, The Secret Coast is no longer in print. We would prefer to see it in market and easily available to those that want it but the publisher didn’t see sufficient demand to justify an additional print run. For us, we’ve never cared about revenue from the book — we just want it widely available to those cruising the area.
We’ll follow up with the current publishing rights holder that doesn’t plan to further monetize the book and request republishing rights.
Just checking on you two, I recently viewed several video’s , I was always impressed with your skills, and confidence in motoring around the world. Hope you two are healthy and enjoying life.
All good on our end. I’ve been in a role at work where being in Seattle is much more effective so I’ve been working in that model for the last three years. We’re still adventuring though having been to the North Pole, the South Pole, other parts of Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Switzerland, Italy, and others.
Hello there!
Today I have discovered your blog by pure luck and I am litteraly impressed of how good you are in balacing hyper techincal work and enjoying life. Right now, I am spending hours reading around your blog. And I truly admire you.
I have spent the last 17 years pushing hard my limits… Improving both technical and soft skills… Reaching whatever I set as career goal… (e.g. now I am Director of a Cybersecurity Lab. I do exactly what I wanted to do. Hacking, Researching, etc.) But at the cost that my wife cannot withstand me anymore… and soon will leave with together with the kids.
Logically speaking, I can’t blame her. Job was always my first priority.
As a person that reached that level of expertize at work… but in the meantime still enjoying family and life… what advice would you give?
Shall I keep push further my limits to reach yet another career goal?
Shall I slow-down and enojy more life, knowing that the rest of the world won’t wait for me and will keep going & advancing… meanwhile… me… if I slow down I will just be left behind (form a technical skillset POV)?!
P.S. Apologies for this rant. I have not even close friend left to talk with.
Dear Jennifer and James,
Given your extensive experience with cruising, even if not specifically with sailing yachts, I wanted to get your thoughts on the tragic sinking of the Bayesian in Italy on August 13th at 4:30 AM.
How could a 56-meter (183 ft) sailing yacht collapse in under a minute while anchored just half a mile off the coast of Porticello, Palermo (Sicily, southern Italy)? (I’ve included a video that appears to capture the sinking.)
The Bayesian had a 75-meter (246 ft) mast—making it 34% taller than the yacht is long. Could this have been a balance issue, or is that too simplistic an explanation?
Investigations have revealed that the mast remained intact; it didn’t snap. Is it possible that wind alone caused the sinking? Gusts in the area were estimated to be around 50 knots, possibly reaching 70 knots at the incident site.
I’ve often heard the saying, “the sea knows everything you did wrong,” and I greatly value your analytical approach to incidents like these, especially in identifying potential causes to avoid similar tragedies in the future.
The captain, James Cutfield, was reportedly very experienced—a 51-year-old from New Zealand.
It’s a heartbreaking loss for the families involved.
complete analysis by BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0nwe4d7k5o
video of sinking: https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/naufragio-palermo-riprese-ricerche-dispersi-speleosub-nuovo-azione-AFjQ9UTD
Its definitely a tragic situation. Small to medium sized recreational craft generally don’t have water tight compartments and, for those boats that do have them, they only help if closed. Without watertight compartments, bulk water ingress if it occurs will sink a boat amazingly quickly.
The mast is tall but relatively low mass relative to the keel, hull, and machinery in a well designed sail boat. Where the mast will certainly have contributed to the problem is the wind pressure on the mast will blow the boat over unusually far and higher winds will blow over to greater angles. If the boat had open toy garages, windows, or doors, as the boat inclines over unusually far, it can take on water quickly. Even if the boat was sealed up, there is an inclined beyond which the boat will suffer water ingress as engine room intakes and other openings allow water to rush in. In our boat, this angle was 61 degrees. Beyond this angle, the boat would take on water.
I expect we’ll learn that the boat was blown over unusually far for at anchor conditions and suffered rapid water ingress and this sunk the boat.
A question I have is that in all of your cruising did you ever encounter any unusually wild weather conditions or hear other cruisers mention something like this?
We have never in weather that would be classified as wild but we have been in sustained 40 knot winds with well developed seas (around 20′) 3 or 4 times and don’t love it but the good news is it didn’t feel unsafe. We have never seen roque waves or truly dangerous weather. We know that our boat and us are fairly comfortable in 20′ seas but we don’t really know the limit having never seen worse. But, I suspect that double what we have seen, which definitely does happen, would be high risk and fairly uncomfortable.
Another question I’m curious about is that in all of your cruising, and land travels outside the US how accurate did you find the forecasts issued by local weather offices?? Were there countries more accurate than others?
When we are offshore we show the ECMWF, PWG, PWE, Spire, WWW3, and GFS models through PredictWind. The ECMWF model is our primary go to model but, when we see great variation with the others, we dig deeper and use more caution. We’re generally impressed with both PredictWind and the accuracy of these weather models when off shore. Near shore, we find local weather forecasting from the host country more accurate and more detailed than the models. There are definite differences in the accuracy of the local forecasts depending upon how much the host country invests in weather forecasting and whether the prevailing wind patterns were over land where there is lots of information or over water where there is less.
Good-morning James and Jennifer,
My husband and I are currently anchored in “the Wizard” after two nights in Echo Bay off Stryker Island. Both of these anchorages we chose because of your book “Cruising the Secret Coast” and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We have had our boat “Slow Dance” (a Kadey Korean Whaleback) for four years now but this is our first season North of Cape Caution. We are so grateful for your book and that you so generously shared these beautiful anchorages with other boaters. Thank you. Best regards and good luck with your ongoing travels and adventures. Edan and Andrea Oestreich
That’s kind of you to take the time to pass on the feedback on “Cruising the Secret Coast”. Thanks and happy cruising.
Hi James and Jennifer
Fist of thank you for this great blog. It has certainly inspired me to remember to be adventurous with my travels and get better at documenting where I go and what I see.
On that note, I very much like how you display all your GPS tracks and photos on google earth, make me want to do the same thing. What do you tend to use for GPS tracking for your flights, hikes and trips.
A small Garmin perhaps? I’d be curious to know, I have trip to multiple destinations in Asia coming up and would like to collect GPS tracks while flying, sailing, driving and walking :)
On another note I hope you enjoyed your trip to Greenland via Iceland.
I’m actually from Iceland although I live in London and spend a lot of time in the US for work, in Jersey City at the moment. So anyway if you ever go to Iceland again and want to explore perhaps more off the beaten path I can give some pointers and ideas.
All the best
Arni,
Thanks for the feedback on the blog, and for the offer of Iceland tips. We’ll certainly return so will take you up on that when we plan our next trip.
For most tracks we use the Android Geo Tracker app (https://play.google.com/store/search?q=geo%20tracker&c=apps) on our phones. This works well except on ships, planes, and rail where the signal is often blocked. To handle the ships case we hang a Garmin inReach Mini 2 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PSSSFPF) outside on a balcony rail so it gets a clear signal. For planes and rail, where putting the tracker outside isn’t practical, we just use the InReach inside since it has a better antenna than the phone and it does somewhat better.
Jennifer
Thanks for the information on how you do GPS tracking, the Garmin inReach Mini 2 sounds like a good option, I had been looking at it and the way you use it make sense, I’ll get one for my next trip.
Yeah feel free to drop me an email any time you might be thinking about planning a trip to Iceland, I can certainly share some ideas for interesting places to see there, etc.
There are plenty of places that are well off the beaten track that are interesting to visit.
Perhaps your next trip there might be to see the 2026 total solar eclipse that will be best visible from the tip of the Vestfjords.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_12,_2026
Arni
Hello James and Jennifer,
We are planning a trip down the Columbia River. I know you did this back in 2012 and I have a couple of questions about the trip.
1. Do you have a recommended guide for the extended Columbia/Snake Rivers?
2. Why didn’t you travel farther up the Columbia River to Wenatchee, the Grand Coulee Dam, or beyond? Does the river get too shallow?
3. Any tips or warnings for the trip? Favorite moorages or restaurants?
I guess I should say UP the Columbia River…
Griff,
1. The two guides we used were “Umbrella Guide to Exploring the Columbia-Snake River Inland Waterway” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0945397585/) and “Boating Guide to the Lower Columbia and Willammette Rivers” (https://columbiariversailing.org/boating-guide-to-the-lower-columbia-and-willamette-rivers/). The first isn’t specific to boating, but gave lots of good information on what to see and do.
2. Beyond Hanford, our charts didn’t have any soundings. We stopped at the confluence with the Snake and ran the tender up the Columbia to check out Hanford
3. Our best tip is to go outside the summer locking schedule for recreational craft to give you more flexibility on when to lock through. See https://mvdirona.com/category/destinations/north-america-pacific-coast/columbia-river for a detailed description of where we went, what we did, and our impressions.
Enjoy your time on the river system—it’s a fabulous adventure!
Jennifer
Hello, james:
I’ve been following your blog for a long time and I love it.
Thank you very much for your continued sharing about the data center.
For the frequent power and cooling failures of Google and Azure in the past two years, AWS has not happened for a long time. What is the secret or improvement?
The sad reality of really focusing on operational excellence is that outages are always noticed but avoiding them seldom is. Thanks for the feedback.
Our approach is to go with simple approaches to design redundancy and then years of honing operational practices where every event where systems or the team performed short of perfect gets analyzed deeply. It’s amazing what can be learned from even very minor operational or system glitches.
Dear James,
Thank you so much for continuing to share such important content.
As you say, “Outages are always noticed but avoiding them seldom is.”
Power and cooling failures in data centers have been the source of Scale failures.
Reducing or even eliminating these Scale failures through design redundancy of infrastructure or design redundancy of services is certainly good news for the data center.
I sincerely hope that an innovative architecture can be found to support this goal.
We have good sized teams on both the hardware infrastructure side and the systems software and applications side focused on resilience and availability. We constantly tune operational processes and design choices to deliver stable systems that just about never skip a beat. We all appreciate your feedback.
In you picture of Langley Harbor – what classic old cruiser is it passing south to north in the upper right?
Good to hear from you John. Unfortunately don’t have a good enough resolution photo to determine the name of that vessel. We had a great weekend in Langley–it’s been ages since we visited and staying on shore rather than anchored off as we used to gave us a different perspective.
— Jennifer
Thanks for continuing to take us on your journeys. Thought of you today when N92 Warbird pulled into our anchorage at Cambridge Cay, Exuma, Bahamas. Do you still have plans to do the loop someday?
Thanks for the feedback on the blog. Yes, we would like to do the Great Loop sometime but don’t have immediate plans.
Dear James,
I’ve noticed that no matter where you go, you always have your trusty Sonos Roam with you. I remember you wrote a thorough review about it a while back. You mention that it can also function as an Echo/Alexa speaker, even without the physical Echo device. I assume it works as a Bluetooth speaker for your Alexa phone app but I’m a bit confused because you mentioned not using the Bluetooth feature. Does that mean it connects directly to the Alexa service on the internet itself?
By the way, do you have a Spotify playlist? What kind of music do you usually listen to while traveling, just background tunes, or do you have specific songs or artists you prefer?
Ciao !
Raffaele,
The Sonos Roam supports the Alexa service and can operate just like an Echo device. For music, we listen to the same thing at home or away, mostly modern rock. Some of the bands we like now are The Fumes, The Brew and Henry’s Funeral Shoe. We’re listening to The Fumes right now over the Sonos Roam while in Belgrade, Serbia on a Danube River cruise.
Jennifer
Hi James and Jennifer,
Long time follower, and love your blog. Thank you so much for continuing to share such interesting and consistent content!
I think the boat you posted in your recent Puget Sound crossing is actually a Wellcraft 355, not an Axopar. They look very similar although the Wellcraft is a bit beamier and slightly higher freeboard.
See here: https://www.wellcraft.com/us/boat/wellcraft-355
Cheers, and thanks again for providing such an interesting blog of your adventures!
Jake,
Thanks for pointing that out—we’ve updated the text. The Wellcraft looks like an interesting boat—we’ve not come across it before.
Jennifer
In reference to the Aldebrook resort.
Say hello to Bill !
You might be next to where Bill Gates famously spent his notable “think weeks” and I believe I spotted this spot featured of the Netflix documentary “Inside Bill’s Brain” at S1:E2 min 02:45. You should take a look ! (By the way, fantastic documentary!)
Alderbrook has had many big visits and special visitors over the years and it’s perfectly believable that Bill Gates would have done a Think Week or two there. They definitely have a relaxing environment ideal for detailed thought.
Hi, I was hoping you could cast some light on traveling with a pet:)
My family and our dog will sail to French Polynesia on a very similar route to yours on a pleasure boat leaving our homeport San Francisco mid July.
1. We will depart from California – Hawaii with all the necessary International health certificates.
2. Sail via Kiribati: I battle to get information regarding what is required to disembark and where we could do so; I read that you did it but have failed to make contact with anyone.
3. I believe I must complete the 211 A form to enter the French Polynesia 4. Our first port of arrival will be The Marquesas Islands; if we were to first go to Tahiti, which seems to be required for the vet check, we would miss the Marquesas and be out at sea much, much longer:(
5. Do you know of any way around this? Any DBS on the Marquesas Islands or veterinarians that can stamp our dog’s health certificate? I appreciate your taking the time to assist me in these matters and make our family visit successful. Yours Sincerely, Karin Hoole
Karin,
You’ve got a fabulous adventure ahead of you!
Cats are a little easier than dogs as they don’t need to go ashore, so can be confined on board and thus not formally imported. We didn’t import our cat into Kiribati or French Polynesia.
For information on Kiribati, I started with the Kiribati Tourism Office: https://www.kiribatitourism.gov.ki/.
For French Polynesia, we used Kevin Ellis of Yacht Services Nuku Hiva and recommend him for clearing through. He should be able to provide more information on the current formalities for pets: https://www.yachtservicesnukuhiva.com
Noonsite.com also might have some helpful information on both these topics.
Have a safe and wonderful trip!
Jennifer
Thank you, Jennifer, we are excited!
Hello James & Jennifer;
I was doing a bit of family history research, which included a quick google search for one of the location of a resettled community on the south coast of Newfoundland, namely “Sam Hitches” when I stumbled across part of your log showing your voyage to this area of the world.
It is certainly a rugged coast and your pictures and comments captured it very nicely. I was intrigued and so I followed your trail along the coast which included your stop in Hr. Breton where you landed not more than a 50 meters from my home in the inner harbour. I also followed your trek across the ocean and dropped in to visit a few of the other locations that you have visited.
This contact is only intended to comment on my sense of envy/joy/awe about your journeys and I want to wish both of you safe travels for the future. I have added your site on my bookmark list & look forward to taking another trip with you.
Cliff
You definitely grew up in a beautiful part of the world. We really enjoyed our time there. Thanks for the blog feedback.
Hello James and Jennifer
This is Stuart from N6052, currently located at Fairlie Quay in Scotland hauled out .
First of all, when I looked at your site for the first time in moths, I was so sorry to hear about the loss of your lovely Spitfire. Liz and I also lost our 14 year old Golden Retriever Sadie just after we flew the dogs back to Canada in October. We can all take some solace in the fact that Spitfire and Sadie BOTH lived very long happy lives BUT losing them is still so heartbreaking. We have added a new puppy to the clan as we and our older male Golden were all feeling like there was a large hole in our lives and our daughter agreed to take on the puppy should she outlive us.
Otherwise, we hope that you are enjoying life ashore and wonder if you have any plans for another boat in the future.
I wanted to ask for some advice on managing our double stacked Fernstrum keel cooler as I am planning to paint mine as you did yours.
Sitting in the water, primarily at Kip Marina, for the past two years, the cooler had acquired a lot of hard white worm casts and mussels on the tubes as well as worms and barnacles on the box ends. Pressure washing and a hard plastic Lee Valley scraper have removed the bulk of the growth but the cooler is not yet suitable for painting. Dropping it for cleaning or salt blasting in situ seem to be the current options. Our coolant system is due for a flushing and coolant change in either case .
We are having our hull blasted with a material that is harder than soda and more like a salt according to Marineblast. We are doing this as the antifouling placed in Spain or the Bahamas by the former owner was likely incompatible with a red Pettit undercoat according to Steve D, who surveyed the boat for us. Delamination of the antifouling was evident but minor at survey in 2019 and although it has progressed somewhat since then, growth on the antifouling was remarkably minor.
I was thinking that I need to drop the cooler to allow full cleaning and painting of the cooler and to allow blasting and painting of the hull behind the cooler. Spraying paint is not allowed in Scottish marinas as you likely know from your time in Stornoway.
Did you routinely drop the keel cooler for cleaning and painting? I noticed that in one photo from Stornoway that the painters were cleaning the cooler in situ. How did they do that? Another photo from your stay at Saxon Wharf shows an extremely clean keel cooler and it would help to know how that was accomplished.
Although I was thinking of gently salt blasting the cooler, wedo have the option of taking it to Serck, which is a commercial facility in Glasgow, for chemical cleaning. Our mechanic also works at the defunct Hunterston nuclear power facility and has a lot of experience of sending larger cooler grids to Serck for cleaning
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
All the best
Stuart
Thanks kind words on Spitfire and, yes, there are days when we would love to be back boating. But, in my current work role, it’s really not efficient to be away for weeks at a time so boating doesn’t really fit very well right now. The good news is I’m having fun with work and we’re still managing to squeeze in enough travel to be enjoying ourselves. But, we fully expect to return to boating — it’s hard to match the personal freedom that comes with exploring by boat.
For keel cooler maintenance, it’s a lot of work to get the cooler down. Doing so forces you to remove the engine coolant, take off both cooler hoses (heavy difficult to remove hoses), and the remove the four fasteners holding the cooler in place. It’s fairly heavy and, each time it goes back on, care needs to be taken to avoid coolant or seawater leaks. Done properly it’s rarely a problem but we generally never drop the cooler unless it needs to be replaced or serviced.
We clean the cooler with a metal scraper followed by rotary drill powered wire brush and/or sandpaper. If you paint the cooler, cleaning it is far easier. The only downside is nearly everyone that sees it will warn you that “keel coolers should not be painted” and “paint will prevent proper cooling.” Both are technically true but the negative impact of paint isn’t huge and, at least in our limited tests, a painted cooler is more effective than an cooler covered in growth. We would do it again.
We have never sand blasted a keel cooler but abrasives are fine as long as they aren’t too aggressive.
Are you friendly with Nathan Myhrvold? I would love to be a fly on the wall if you two were having lunch.
I won’t say I know Nathan super well but I’ve been in many meetings with him and have at least one patent where he and I are co-authors. Nathan is wicked smart.
Waiting for your cold hard facts on Antarctica…. Between your cruise there and your land trip do you feel like you’ve seen all you’d like to have seen there or were there places there you’d didn’t see but would like to on a return trip.
No, we are nowhere close to “all done” with Antarctica Al. We have done two very different trips but we’ll be back at least one more time. For example, we want to do the loop from Argentina to the Falkland’s and South Georgia Islands, down to Antarctica, and then back to Argentina. The life on the Islands is incredible in all descriptions we have seen. We’re also super interested in a cruise that several operators run from Argentina, to antarctica, and then to New Zealand or Australia.
My quick summary: we love Antarctica but have lots more yet to see.
Dear sir, we learned from OCP Summit 2023 that the AWS GH200 cabinet is configured with six PSUs instead of BBUs. Is this because the power of the server is too high and the BBU is too large and cannot be installed in the cabinet? Are the ups power supply and batteries of the cabinet placed in the power distribution room? This is a change from the original lithium battery design concept in the cabinet?
If batteries are placed outside the cabinet, how to cope with the current overload fluctuation of the AI chip depends on the configuration of more PSUs?
Nope, that doesn’t sound right for a large variety of reasons. Point me to what was shown in OCP Summit 2023 and I’ll dig into the details.
Hi James, the NVL32 cabinet has three PSUs but no BBU. Why is there no BBU?
Sorry, the NVL32 cabinet has six groups of PSUs but no BBU. Why is there no BBU?
As I said before, point me to the data you are looking at and I’ll dig into it. Looking forward, please post work related questions to https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/.
Dear Jennifer and James
Buon Anno !
Happy New Year from James and Jennifer in Antarctica. New Years at the South Pole is hard to beat even if the crowds were a bit thin compared with Times Square!
haha, certainly the coolest party ever !
Hi James. I noticed it looks like you use Maretron n2kview to monitor your John Deere engine. Does that work well? Is there a different product you would recommend? Do you use it in addition to the standard John Deere gauges? Anything i should know? Im in the midst of repowering to John Deere and want to go with a glass bridge rather than the standard John Deere gauges.
We do use Maretron for everything and it is the primary display for the engines. We also have the Deere display as a backup but we never used it in over 12,000 hours relying exclusively on N2kview. The Deere is connected to NMEA2000 using the Maretron j2k100 interface. It requires no configuration or tuning and is strictly plug and play. Less than 30 min to install.
Merry Christmas James and Jennifer
Thanks and Merry Christmas to you as well.
your welcome and Thank you
Hello James,
It’s always great to message you. He’s an incredible person. In your answers you write in detail, with time and attention. I don’t even know how I would have these minutes from someone as busy as you. Thank you and congratulations.
I’m in Brazil, in São Paulo. At that moment without a boat, I sold it to buy ASIC machines, a temporary phase without a boat, waiting to start assembly from scratch. With my needs. Maybe use the Bruce Roberts TY785 project. I want to do the poles, Europe and also spend weekends nearby on islands, day use. So it needs to be a boat that does well in almost everything.
I’m very excited about the arrival of Kuiper, technology is what motivates me. I made a really big change in my life and now I’m working with cryptocurrencies mining, a data center, I believe I’ll get the time I need to travel, exploring. If you can, recommend me to Kuiper for tests in South America if needed.
Best Regards.
We too are temporarily without a boat and using that time to visit places we couldn’t get to with our boat. So far we’re enjoying it but will almost certainly return to boating.
Once you return to boating what are the top 3 places you would like to go back to and what are the top 3 places you’d like to see and explore.
Great question Al. In thinking through the top three places where we would like to return and further experience, Norway, New Zealand, and Alaska topped our list. Looking at the top three places where haven’t yet been by boat: Greenland, Patagonia, and South East Asia would be right up there.
You mention getting bug resistant clothes. How is the bug situation there on the ground?
There were bugs in the area and we do advise bug protection but, overall, it wasn’t bad. Dawn and dusk is when you’ll see the most bugs but, even during heavy times, it wasn’t bad at all. The biggest reason to protect against bugs are Mosquito born diseases like Yellow Fever. We were vaccinated but avoiding bug bites is the best protection.
We were in the Peruvian Amazon at the end of the dry season. During the wet season, the bug problem is far heavier but we would protect against it during all times of the year in the Amazon area.
Very fascinating trip !
Out of curiosity I landed on Street View in Nauta (yes, there is !) and the scenery brings to mind the landscapes of a West African country. Interestingly, your journey seems like a lighter version of the renowned Congo River expedition undertaken by Telegraph journalist Tim Butcher, as detailed in his compelling book “Blood River” (which I highly recommend to you!). I genuinely hope your adventure is smoother and more tourist-friendly.
Safe travels!
Ciao
Thanks for the “Blood River” book recommendation Raffaele. So far, our adventure has been a good one. We’ve seen freshwater Dolphins, Parakeets, an Anaconda, Sloths, Tarantula, and lots more. It’s been a fun adventure.
I’ve been working on a 52 auto pilot system with Little success. Do you think I might be able to ask you a few questions about your boat?
Happy to help if I can Ryan. You can find me at jrh@mvdirona.com.
Now I’m curious. Who/what is Willmott’s ghost.
It’s a great little downtown Seattle restaurant (https://www.google.com/maps/place//@47.6154466,-122.3421875,17z?entry=ttu) nestled inside a corner of the iconic Amazon Spheres (https://www.seattlespheres.com/). I work in the building beside the Spheres on the same block.
Was wondering who Willmott was to rate a ghost.
Ghost identity checks aren’t rigorously enforced so we can all have personal ghosts!
Hello James, how are you?
I have been following your journey for a few years, you helped me by indicating some technologies to connect my mechanical engine to NMEA2000, and you also helped me with INMARSAT plans.
I would like to know if you know how the Kuiper project is going, if it is already testing it and if in the meantime you have used Starlink, even though it is from a rival company. I installed Starlink on my trawler over a year ago and I’m using it. Before it, INMARSAT costs were surreal, I myself don’t know what will happen to these companies in the face of these new technologies.
When do you plan to go on a long trip and when will it be?
A big hug.
Hi Rinato. I too am an Starlink customer and, like you, I’ve used the previous satellite communication generations as well: KVH, Iridium, and Inmarsat. It’s wonderful how bandwidth costs have declined over the last couple generations. Starlink is remarkably affordable when compared to these previous generation services.
Last week Kuiper launched the first two satellites and they are doing well in early testing. The full constellation will be 3236 satellites and the production scale launches will begin next year in 2024 and go into customer testing once the minimum number of satellites are launched and active.
On your question on when our net “long trip” will be, we’re on a different sort of plan right now. What happening is I’m super busy at work so rather than long trips, we’re doing a couple small trips each year. As an example, we just got back from taking an ice breaker to the Geographic North Pole with stops in Svalbard, Iceland, and Greenland. It’s only 2 weeks but, even then, without Starlink, I wouldn’t have even been able to do it. The world being more economically connected is a truly wonderful thing.
We are exploring a N 55, vintage 2009 with John Deere 6081 main engine. She has nearly 7,000 hours on Hobbs meter. Broker says no maintenance records or engine log. Can an engine guy glean enough in a day to provide some reasonable assurance of condition/reliability/lifespan? Your insight would be helpful and much appreciated.
Generally, engines that have been used are better than engines that have sat for years gathering rust. Our Deere had zero parts failures at 7,000 hours, we replace the injectors at 8,000 hours, and then ran to 12,400 hours without any other parts problems. We would it with 12,400 hours and the most likely results is it’ll run for many thousand of hours yet before needing service and the mostly likely first service would be a vale job.
There are two types of engine failures: 1) wear issues, and 2) mis-use or catastrophic failures. Generally, under-stressed, well manufactured engines like John Deer’s will never wear out in common-case recreational use. Catastrophic damage does happen. Wet exhaust engines can suffer from water injection and, if it’s not correctly handled, this can lead to sever engine damage and much shortened life. There are super rare failure modes like a bottom end failure, timing gear failures, or valve failures that can destroy engines but they are so rare, they aren’t worth worrying about. Improper value adjustment could damage the valves but, again, rare. Valves are easy to adjust properly and mistakes aren’t common. A very common cause of engine faults is to over-prop a diesel. Boats get heavy over time and, if an engine can’t reach full rated RPM underway, it will be suffering from greater thermal stress. This can range from not great for an engine to destroying it. Fortunately, it’s easy to check for. It’s possible that the boat just had the prop repitched and it spent it’s life with excess pitch but the common case is, on boats that are mis-propped. Nobody every addresses it so your engine specialist will detect this quickly. If the oil hasn’t been changed for a while, a oil analysis can tell you a lot about rust in the engine or excess wear of some components. An oil analysis can lead to false alarms but if there are no service records it’s a good data point. If the oil was recently changed, you will get less data but it’s still worth sampling the oil after the sea trial to get some data.
If the boat really has no service records, it’s a very bad sign. Just about every responsible owner does keep track of maintenance and, if they don’t, a Nordhavn is a complex boat and it’s highly likely that no records implies there will have been some misses.
The short answer is your engine tech can find many failures but not all. There is some risk left over. 7,000 hours is fine and the engines can take a bunch of abuse so your risks are comparatively low if you take the precautions I outlines above. And, if you are very unlucky, an engine is a right around a $100,000 installed.
There are lots of well maintained boats out there with good maintenance records. I would favor them but I wouldn’t walk away with a boat with some warning signs but I would discount what I was willing to pay as warning signs mount and, if there are serious issues, negotiate on getting them corrected prior to you taking possessions and make sure the service company is both trustworthy and specified in the contract and the work to be done is as well.
Generally, 7,000 hours isn’t a concern, no maintenance records is a concern, and a quality engine tech can find most serious problems but 100% assurance isn’t possible.
I very much appreciate your time and advice.