Reliance, a Nordhavn 76, just completed a two-year circumnavigation, ending up in Fiji and becoming the 10th Nordhavn to circle the globe. What’s particularly remarkable about this voyage is that Dalton DeVos, the owner of Reliance, was 23 years old when he started the circumnavigation, making him by far the youngest Nordhavn owner to complete such a voyage. The other three members of the crew, including the captain, were all in their 20s.
DeVos, the grandson of Amway co-founder Rich DeVos, bought Reliance on the brokerage market in 2014, a year before he started out, and spent that time preparing for the trip. DeVos and his crew left Fiji in September, 2015, and visited 30 countries, spending three weeks in Antarctica, cruising non-stop for 3,500 nm from Costa Rica to the Marquesas, and rounding both Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. They covered 49,477 nm in all and put 5,500 hours on the engine, usually cruising at 8 knots.
Here’s a great story about DeVos and the trip from his hometown newspaper, the Grand Rapids (Michigan) News: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2017/12/rich_devos_grandson_takes_2-ye.html
