By Milt Baker

ed. note: Milt and Judy Baker have just taken delivery of their new Nordhavn 47#32 Bluewater.

We are proud to show off our saucy new Nordhavn 47, Bluewater, shown here at the completion of sea trial # 2 at Stuart, FL. While there remain a handful of loose ends on the punch list to attend to, we still expect to sail her away from Stuart on schedule on or before Aug. 31.

The sea trial today went really well. PAE Vice President Jim Leishman kindly flew in from California to provide what we needed most: a short course in Paravane Stabilization 101. Jim, probably the world’s most foremost expert on paravane stabilization (“he wrote the book”), oversaw the rigging of Bluewater’s paravanes yesterday, then shephered us through final rigging and hands-on lessons on deploying and retrieving the paravanes at sea in the great Atlantic Ocean a few miles off the sea buoy at St. Lucie Inlet — in flat-as-a-pancake seas. Now that we’re no longer paravane virgins, the deep-diving paravanes seem much more approachable and workable than we had supposed. A successful offshore sea trial in our wake, on our way into Stuart we proceeded to run smack aground in mid-channel in uncharted soupy mud, right between the red and green markers–no damage done, save a bruised ego or two. Our new six-foot draft will definitely take some getting used to!

See you out there soon!