Northwest Yachts will have Nor’wester on display at the upcoming Trawler Fest in Anacortes, May 14-19. Please plan to attend and stop by to see us. For more information, please visit the Trawler Fest page at the Passagemaker website.
New Voyaging Under Power Edition
Voyaging Under Power (fourth edition) by Denis D. Umstot This book should be on every cruisers night stand, to be read over and over. And my good friend and designer, Steve Seaton has two designs in the book as well as expert commentary. Available at amazon.com. Here are the comments from the back cover: The passagemaking bible updated to help …
Announcing The Trawler Store
We are very excited to announce the launching of our new website thetrawlerstore.com. At this site, you will find new and previously owned boats for sale as well as tips and information on buying and selling a boat in general. Future plans call for a gear and equipment section aimed at the serious cruiser. While we have been focusing on …
Could the Economy Be Improving???
These past 4 years have been pretty bleak for boat builders, brokers, and anyone else involved in the marine industry. The news media is still reporting bleak economic indicators with unemployment remaining high, housing markets depressed and a general lack of confidence in the current direction our country is going in. But…..we are seeing an upturn. Not in orders yet …
More Evidence to Support Steel Hull Structure for Offshore Cruising Boats
Over a year ago, I wrote in another blog that I felt steel was the best construction material for boats that will be cruising offshore. The tsunami had just occurred a couple of months earlier and they were only projecting that there would be a debris field in the future. Well now it’s here. House Floating in the Pacific The …
On the Cost of Fuel and Hybrid Boats
With fuel prices soaring and no relief in site, thoughts turn to how to make boats more efficient. By design is one way. Boats with greater length to beam ratios are more efficient but that efficiency comes at the cost of less living space for a given length. And if you buy a longer boat (with less beam) to get …
What is Your A/B Ratio?……….”heck if I know”
Often, when discussing various specifications for our designs, I will be asked what our A/B ratio is? (we don’t list it in our specifications) I then have to explain (or try to explain) why the A/B ratio is a meaningless number. The problem is many other successful trawler builders tout the A/B ratio of their models and have convinced their …
Northwest……….altering course
Welcome to our new website!!!. If you have reached this page after having looked at the other parts of the site, you know we have “altered course” a bit to add many new models in both semi-displacement, performance trawlers and full displacement expedition yachts. We begin our new line with the “Looper” 44. As we have traveled around the country, …
Hull Structure for Offshore Cruising or a Case for Steel
It was last year that we began to think about offering full displacement hull forms as an option for our Northwest Trawler line. Essentially, keep the basic Northwest Trawlers styling above the waterline but design the hull so that it could be easily built as a semi-displacement or full displacement hull. Our designer, Steve Seaton, was tasked with making the …
Asian Trip
I just returned from 2 weeks in Asia where I visited with several shipyards in order to evaluate their capability to build our steel-hulled Exploration Series trawlers. In my last blog post, I showed the preliminary drawings of the 72′, aft pilothouse model. We are working now on a forward pilothouse version of the 72 plus an 83′ boat. A …