This is a story about passion, and a labor of love. Don and Linda Nase bought their 47-foot mahogany Pacemaker cruiser in Saugatuck, Michigan, in 1975. It was seven years old, and its twin Detroit diesels had only 100 hours. They live in Phoenix, Arizona, but they spend their summers cruising on the boat, usually on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, going four or five hours a day, usually at about 10 knots. And they named the boat Naco, which Nase says loosely translates into “foolish pleasure” in Spanish.
It’s easy to love cruising on a beautiful, restored wooden boat. The labor of love comes in taking care of it. In this story from the Grand Haven Tribune, Nase says he does most of the work on Naco himself, spending 280 hours, for example, replacing the old cloth headliner on the aft deck to wood. The boat has three staterooms, three heads, one shower, a salon and a galley.
It takes a week to get the single-plank boat ready for the water each spring, lowering it an inch a day while the planks swell, pumping out water that seeps into the bilge. Then Naco sits in the water for three of four days, just to make sure it’s tight enough for another summer of cruising. “You have to be very dedicated,” Nase told the paper. Read more:
https://www.grandhaventribune.com/lifestyle-boating/2018/08/21/Boating-beauty.html?ci=stream
