George Laycock was sitting on the upper deck of his Nordhavn 68, reading out in the fresh air. It was a few years ago off Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and a guy rode by on, well, something Laycock had never seen. “I got up immediately and watched him go off in the distance,” Laycock says. “About 30 minutes later, he came back. He was riding straight, and he had a six-pack of beer under his arm. I thought, Damn, that’s pretty cool.”
He immediately emailed his friend Roger Moore, the CEO of Nautical Ventures in Florida, and described what he’d seen. “A week later, I had this big package at the marina office,” Laycock says. “I assembled it, and after about an hour of riding and falling—I did that for an hour each of two days—I was able to stand up.”
Fast-forward to this year, and the 67-year-old Laycock just set the unofficial record for riding a Fliteboard across the Straits of Florida. He went from Bimini to Palm Beach in five hours and 21 minutes, clocking an average speed of 17.59 mph over 94.1 statute miles. He also set the record for the longest recorded Fliteboard ride on a single battery, at 30.5 miles, during his four-battery-change trip.
Moore says even he never envisioned such a feat: “I knew he’d be the perfect ‘old guy’ to try it out. I had no idea he’d become addicted to the sport, riding it in all corners of the world and setting world records.”
Laycock, though, is always up for an adventure. He’s on his second Nordhavn 68, Migration, and has done two Atlantic crossings, gotten up to the highest latitude by any privately owned vessel in 2016, gone to Greenland twice, and cruised above the Arctic Circle four times.
The Fliteboard, Laycock says, is a different kind of fun. “In areas like the Bahamas, you have the visual effects of seeing all the boats and people and activity around you, but you can also look down and see what’s happening under the water,” he says. “I rode through the marina at Compass Cay. I looked down, and there were a group of four spotted eagle rays in formation beneath me, just cruising around. I would see rays almost every day riding in the Bahamas. You have that sort of a landscape, both above and below the water.”
He also loves the health benefits of riding 15 to 18 miles a day. “The more I’ve ridden it, it’s become like a wellness machine,” he says. “It’s incredibly helpful with balance, which diminishes with our age. Reaction time, reflexes—it’s very helpful in that regard.”
It’s All About the Great Outdoors
George Laycock says the Fliteboard is better than any gym: “It isn’t that hard. There are a range of models. If you have a love of being outside in a free environment and seeing everything that’s different all the time, it’s a great thing to do.”
Nordhavn 68
The Nordhavn 68 is inspired by the looks of the classic N62, but with a beamier hull and hints of modern styling. It’s a boat built to go places, which is exactly what George and Marcianne Laycock are doing with the model. They put 10,000 miles under the keel their first year. “We didn’t set out to be that person,” George says. “We thought that everybody who has a Nordhavn does that.”
