Thursday, March 28

New 40-foot Aspen Power Cat Reaches L.A. on 10,000-Mile Tour of U.S.

Google+ Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr +

Knot Wafflen’, the 40-foot Aspen Power Catamaran that’s on a 10,000-mile tour of the United States, just reached Los Angeles, having cruised down the West Coast from Anacortes, Washington. After he tied up in Marina del Rey, David Jenkins, the boat’s owner and an entrepreneur from Annapolis, said simply that “the boat is amazing.”

Jenkins and his brother-in-law, Blake Elder, a professional delivery captain from North Carolina, cruised the boat 1,230 nm down the Pacific Coast, taking 16 days from Anacortes to L.A. (Jenkins is left in the picture above; Elder on the right.) They stopped each night, spending an extra night in Crescent City, California, because of weather and then four days in San Francisco for R&R. Generally, the weather was fine, but they had 8-foot waves and a 35-knot wind coming into Crescent City, and the rollers were “big and steep” coming in to San Francisco Bay.

So far, Jenkins has covered 4,390 nm on the boat, starting in Anacortes last May, when he headed north with his wife, Sue Ellen, a retired nurse, and Elder, all the way up to Juneau, Alaska, and Glacier Bay. In an interview in L.A. with Aspen President Larry Graf, Jenkins said he really appreciated the boat, and its single 435-hp Volvo diesel, when they were crossing the Dixon Entrance on trip to Alaska in seven-feet waves.

“We’d power up and get on top of seven-foot waves,” he said. “It was more like riding on Chesapeake Bay on a chop.” At one point, he said, “when the sea was on our stern, I surfed a wave for half an hour at 18 knots. We’d power up and down, 2300 to 2600 rpm, the same wave. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

The other major event was when Sue Ellen broke her arm on a hike in British Columbia, and Jenkins went as fast as he could – 21 or 22 knots – to Bella Bella, the next town. “We were flat out for three hours,” he said. “If we were in an eight-knot boat…”

After a few days in L.A., Knot Wafflen’ will head to San Diego and then down to Mexico and the Sea of Cortez for a while. Then Jenkins will put it on a truck and trailer it to Galveston, Texas, where he’ll relaunch it to cruise around Florida and the Bahamas, eventually ending up back home in Annapolis in time for the power boat show there next October. http://aspenpowercatamarans.com    

http://bristolboatdelivery.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Share.

About Author

Comments are closed.