Nomad
- Hamburg -
NOMAD noun
a member of a people that travels from place to place to find fresh pasture for its animals and has no permanent home
NOMAD has the typical charter layout with three cabins and three heads. It's great because we have plenty of room for storage and even guests.
We moved our kids to starboard despite more headroom in the port aft cabin where the diesel tank and the main battery switches are located.
We've have converted the starboard head into a storage locker. Two heads are still plenty, and removing the holding tank, toilet etc. practically doubled storage space in the room.
History of the boat
Build in September 2002 by Beneteau USA, NOAMD ran in Bareboat Charter in the BVI's until September 2011. She was then purchased by two Canadian couples as their vacation get-away in the Caribbean. Canada still effected by the aftermath of the financial crisis and one of the owners passing away, Russel and his wife moved on-board full time and ran skippered luxury charter out of Saint Martin. They have made substantial improvements to the boat as part of their ownership. It's been said they've invested about $80k - $90k over time.
We were shopping for a Beneteau 423 - the little sister - when we found NOMAD, formerly known as "Be As You Are", listed for sale at a pretty sweet price; we didn't mind paying less for an additional 5 feet. The boat had been on the market for two years already and the price dropped overtime to match comparable 473s without the improvements. So we put in an offer beginning of March 2017. We had only seen the boat on pictures until then. Benny flew to Saint Martin in the beginning of April to check the boat in person and have it surveyed. This was also the start of our Grow Sailing episodes.
We've spent 13 days in Saint Martin later in April 2017 to prepare Nomad for our journey to New Jersey. Unfortunately, we did not get much done and didn't even take her out for sail at all. So our shake down cruise ended up being the first leg on the trip to New Jersey end of June. What an adventure!
We wanted to get Nomad out of the Caribbean before the hurricane season... which turned out to be a very wise decision, considering that devastating Irma hit Saint Martin as a category 5 hurricane only about 6 weeks after we have left and practically followed our path. 95% of the building in Saint Martin have been damaged or destroyed and so have most of the boats.
Nomad arrived safely in New Jersey in July 2017, after a 17 days journey. She's currently on the hard being refitted and outfitted for world cruising.
