High latitude cruising: "Wind Horse" aluminium motor boat

[Telo]

While anchored at Dunvegan recently we were joined by a very striking looking aluminium motor boat called "Wind Horse", which we saw again at Tobermory last week.

Didn't take a photograph, but this is from the "Wind Horse" website;



Rather resembling the shape of a WW1 pocket battleship at first glance, it is rather distinctive don't you think? We'd said hello as we passed them leaving Dunvegan for Loch Gairloch. Seems she's undertaken some pretty impressive passages all over the world. Would have liked to have spoken with them, but they'd left Tobermory before we surfaced.

More here, at the Rocna website - incidentally the huge bow anchor looked like a Manson, and not a Rocna as stated in the article.

The "Wind Horse" website has a most interesting video.

Also, some video from the YBW MoBo site.

[Silkie]

I dare say anchor manufacturers are falling over each other to give anchors to the Dashews. I wonder what size Raya would be appropriate?

[Ocklepoint]

I saw the boat in Lerwick last month and here is the anchor
and found a picture of my boat , Hyskeir, on the great man's website http://setsail.com/lerwick-shetland-islands/
I spoke to him in the pub: very friendly, very knowledgeable, seems to be on first name terms with all the greats of american sailing, the Pardys, Ferenc Mate and John Rousemaniere. He was passage planning for his trip down the west coast and asking about where the supermarkets were.

[claymore]

Sorry for being a bit picky but isn't his anchor chain a little on the light side and is that polyprop baler twine he has tied up with?

[Ocklepoint]

Similarly at the stern

[tcm]

Quite something, i understand the owner is advancing in years and felt that his previous boat (massive yahoo 80ish foot yacht) was getting a bit much much for him and wifey to handle alone, glub.

[Telo]

Hi Matt, that seems to be the gist of it. While digging out the pic and looking at the Wind Horse website I came across some brilliant video footage of their old sailboat Beowulf. It's pretty heavyweight stuff and they are obviously hardcore sailors. This is from their website;

• We're going to a form of cruising at which we've looked down our noses (well, at least Steve has) for half a century. A stinkpot, motor cruiser, power yacht, fizz boat, f***ing power boat, the dark side? And we're coming from a family of sailboats which power faster, and farther than any trawler, that will overhaul and pass small freighters in the trades, and make passages more comfortably and quickly than any other form of transport operable across oceans by a couple, until now. Are we spoiled? You bet!
  
  And did we mention the pure, unmitigated rush of adrenaline which comes when you have a sailboat like Beowulf lit up on a full plane, averaging 16 to 18 knots, surfing at speeds in the high 20s, with just the two of us aboard?
  
  But we are past the point where we are comfortable handling this much sail by ourselves, and we do not want to take crew.

[Telo]

Found the Dashew's Beowulf video of a passage from the Marquesas to San Diego - it's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfjVa7hIj0o.

Impressive speeds for a monohull crewed by a couple - an average of 257 per day for 12 days, although I gather the engine was used quite often.

[Telo]

More Beowulf at http://dashewoffshore.smugmug.com/Boats ... 3675_95J5T

Unfortunately, slightly out of my league though....