Silver Spray

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The great Canadian author George Fetherling compares running away on a tramp freighter to a religious pilgrimage, without the sacred destination. The author of Running Away to Sea writes that life aboard ship is “as much an escape from one place as a deliberate attempt to reach another.” One of the three great American fantasies, a freighter voyage lacks that soul-sucking downside, which, Fetherling says, dooms to failure those enthusiastic amateurs who engage in the other two — starting restaurants or bookstores. Quite the opposite, going to sea is liberating.

The builders of Nordhavn yachts get that. The vessels conceived on the drafting tables of Pacific Asian Enterprises have long been known for a gray, industrial look evocative of working trawlers. One model in particular, however, has addressed our freighter fantasies directly: the Nordhavn 62, with its aft superstructure and long foredeck. PAE has sold 38 N62s to ocean-roaming owners since the model’s first launch in 1993.

An adventurous Scotsman named Nigel McLeod, whose grandfather had been a sea captain, was ready to trade up from his Nordhavn 47 and hankered for an N62. “It was the freighter look with that big sweep of the bow. I liked the aft pilothouse, and I really liked the layout when you walked on the boat,” McLeod says. “My son was turning 17, and he and I wanted to go down to the Caribbean. If we got fed up with that, we’d go through the Panama Canal to the Pacific.”

Only one problem: The next boat had to fit through a canal that leads to McLeod’s “hurricane hole” of a berth at Hilton Head. The canal lock measures 20 feet wide, but is actually narrower because of its rubber fendering. The N62 has a beam of 19 feet, 10 inches. The Nordhavn 60, a more recent forward pilothouse design, was narrow enough to transit the lock, but McLeod was determined to have his freighter.

The design team of PAE partners Jim and Jeff Leishman brainstormed to find a solution, and the result offers us excellent insight into how the company develops new models. “We were doing all sorts of design gyrations to try to figure how we could get the 62 narrower, and it just got ridiculous,” Jeff Leishman says. “The 60 would fit, but he didn’t like the forward wheelhouse on the 60, so I thought, why don’t we just design an aft wheelhouse on that hull? He was interested so we drew something up, and that’s how it came about.” (The Nordhavn 60 was itself a customer-driven design. A buyer considering a Nordhavn 55 wanted more deck space, which meant stretching the hull.)


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McLeod graciously allowed Yachting on board for a sea trial of the new N63 with Nordhavn commissioning manager John Hoffman. Of course I’d seen the renderings before arriving at the company’s base in Stuart, Florida, but when I saw Silver Spray for the first time I was nonetheless taken aback. She shared basics with the 62 — aft house, sweeping foredeck — but Silver Spray was much less the gray lady, positively stylish by comparison. And stepping through a watertight ship’s door into the salon makes for a dramatic transition to airy, cherry-wood elegance.