We took delivery of our new Seawind 1600 Passagemaker in Seattle in the spring of 2024. The boat is named “BumBle” as that’s where my partner and i met and, given her initials are “BB”, both the “B”s are capitalized… I’m a romantic at heart!
Shortly after finishing our commissioning process we set off from Seattle to make our way up the inside passage to glacier bay Alaska. No short “shakedown” for us… we were jumping in feet first. Whilst I’ve been sailing all my life, this was new for my partner and I’d sold my previous boat (a high end monohull) to get BumBle as we saw this as a much better platform for our ambitions – so catamaran sailing/cruising was new for me.
Making our way north provided many moments of pure visual delight even if not much actual sailing. The inside passage you see has you headed almost the entire way dead into the wind! We’d planned our season around a series of stepping stones that would afford our close friends the chance to fly in and join us for a week or so at a time. This meant that we were on a bit of a schedule, but also gaining a mix of remote anchorages mixed with stops at marinas in locations that had airports.
A short list of our most memorable moments:
- Desolation Sound – a destination for many northwest sailors and it’s as good as it’s reputation. Beautiful anchorages, warm water to play in, and cruisers connecting over drinks in view of magical mountain sunsets in full effect.
- Seymour Narrows – done at ebb tide this was the biggest non issue… we’d lived in fear of this given the reported 15knot current…but hit it at slack tide and it was really like hitting midnight on y2k and realizing it’s wasn’t actually an issue.
- DawsonS Landing – perhaps the most unexpected magic spot of our trip… this is like the place that time forgot… go here. You’ll love everything about it.
- Shearwater – lovely Native American outpost with whales surfacing all around the boat!
- Ketchikan – love this blue collar town and we got to watch (and cheer!) the winners of the race to Alaska.
- Petersburgh – this little town is such a gem… the people, the vibe.. perfection.
- Fords Terror – absolutely terrifying to get in, but absolutely the most magical anchorage of our trip!
- Sawyer inlet – beautiful glacier, bald eagles on bergy bits and whales all around
- Juneau – Bald eagle heaven and a great safe harbor to affect our repairs.. stay away from the downtown as it’s cruise ship hell. The northern harbor feels much more blue collar and our speed.
Glacier Bay – nothing like being in the middle of a glacier field and sipping a cocktail with glacier ice. This place still feels very untouched and absolutely grand in it’s scale.
So… on our way out of Sawyer inlet en route to Juneau it was a clear blue day motoring along at 8 knots.. almost back to the main waterway, i was at the helm with the crew preparing lunch when WHAM!!
Absolutely gobsmacked and confused – had i run aground somehow? Nope… deep water. Had I hit log that I somehow didn’t see? Nope… A Whale? Nope… ah… I learned a new term.. we had struck a “Growler”. This is the ice that comes off the bottom of a berg… has no air in it so it’s pure ice and floats at or just below the surface (read: it’s invisible).
This piece of ice was 12 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 3 feet thick… it struck the starboard bow, swung up and slammed the bottom of the bridge deck, and then swung back under… just missing the sail drive to strike the bottom edge of the starboard rudder peeling it back through the cassette…
The crew was amazing as nobody panicked or freaked out… i took the throttles to neutral and we all proceeded to check the boat for any water ingress or larger issues. Finding nothing of imminent concern, we picked up the shattered dishes and glasses, put a lookout on the bow, and proceeded to make (slow!) way again, forgoing the closer anchorage and deciding to make the 50 miles to Juneau directly so we could better attend to the boat and assess damage.
The starboard bow had been split open…about 11 inches up and 8 inches back. The line tunnel under the bridge deck had taken a fairly hard hit, and the starboard rudder blade and cassette were toast. I was able to procure some splash zone which allowed me to affect a temporary repair to the starboard bow. I removed the starboard rudder blade, but left the cassette as it still provided some minimal control surface. Our friends flew home and with new ones arriving we still had a week planned to go to glacier bay… why not!
So we took our injured lady north for a week from Juneau to glacier bay and back (getting a permit to enter must be done months in advance and is only for a very specific time window). Needless to say we were very ginger with BumBle, but aside from having a less responsive helm with only one rudder, she was fully sea worthy.
Glacier bay was amazing and I’m forever grateful that we were able to explore this magical place in the world – and with 3 webasto heaters on board (thank you seawind.. i know you didn’t love that installation!) we were toasty warm!
Back in Juneau our friends left and I brought in a seasoned captain and an additional crew mate and we made preparations for a direct offshore passage back to San Francisco. Sadly we would have to skip Sitka and the west side of Vancouver island. With our crew and a weather window in hand we headed 150 miles offshore making a 10 day passage directly to San Francisco. Although the autopilot definitely had to work harder and we had to pay closer attention to tuning our sail trim to reduce the load given we only had one rudder, the passage was otherwise without incident leaving us even more grateful for how seaworthy, redundant, and safe BumBle’s design is!
After a few months at home affecting repairs and connecting to friends, we took off for another 3.5 months going down to the sea of Cortez and back. At the one year mark from when we left Seattle we’d put over 7,000 NM into Bumble. She’s been forgiving, patient, steady, seaworthy, and truly our second home… and she turns heads and garners compliments wherever we go! “Performance” catamarans seem all the rage these days, but the Seawind was early into this category with the 1600 Passagemaker – and she still stands out amongst the pack for value, performance, and overall design. Thanks for making our second home one we love!
About the Owner
1. Why did you choose Seawind?
The Seawind 1600 Passagemaker is an ideal liveaboard blue water cruiser. Spacious, comfortable, very easily managed by 2, performant, good looking (many catamarans are UGLY in my opinion), and well built.
2. What’s your favorite feature on the boat and why?
This is tough as I think it’s really 2 things…
1) the helm positions… they’re very comfortable, safe, covered and protected when you want that, or open and free when you want that and you’re still connected to the crew and the cockpit / saloon.
2) the rudders… pure genius… we have gotten into very creative anchorages that were exceptional and very special because with the daggerboards up and the rudders up she can simply go where others can’t.. Also… given our experience with an ice berg as you’ll read in the article, on any other boat we would definitely have had water ingress and a much more serious issue… instead we were safe, able to affect repairs, and get home… that’s pure gold.
3. What’s the best item you’ve added or upgraded since owning the boat and why?
1) added and additional 1300 watts of solar on the davits which has been a game changer as we don’t have (or need) a generator
2) full enclosure which made cruising in the cold, wet, sometimes fly ridden areas of Alaska luxuriously comfortable.
3) we added another refrigerator where the wine rack was on the back side of the kitchen island significantly improving our food storage.
4) we added load cell pins for the cap shrouds as this provides a much more accurate representation of the loads on your rig to aid in making sail plan choices vs. pure wind speed.
4. What’s your favorite cruising destination so far?
What made it memorable? Alaska… we’ve now gone from Glacier Bay Alaska to the sea of Cortez and have had many memorable moments, but Alaska stands out completely for its raw beauty, hidden anchorages, small fishing villages, hidden outposts, and nature experiences (humpback whales, blue whales, bald eagles, bears, dolphins, seals, and all manner of crabs and fish to be caught)… the mountains, waterfalls, glaciers, forests… everyone always speaks of the tropics, but you could honestly spend a lifetime cruising around northern British Columbia and Alaska and never tire of it (in the summer months that is!).
5. Anything else you’d like to share – favorite moments, challenges, lessons learned, or future plans?
Always carry splash zone on board.. probably my biggest lesson… otherwise, there are too many to list! Sailing and cruising is all about having a learning mindset… the moment you think you don’t need to learn, the world will bite you! This coming January we will head back down to Mexico and plan to make our way down the mainland side hitting Mazatlan, PV, Acapulco and Puerto Escondido before returning back home to San Francisco.