MY BOAT: Stevens 47, Fluenta

How do professional engineers draft a list of requirements for a family cruising boat to sail the Pacific Northwest, the South Pacific, and various offshore adventures in between? They use a Venn diagram, of course. When Max Shaw and Elizabeth Brown-Shaw began their search for a cruising boat, they did just that, and their diagram was grouped as such: “seaworthiness, habitability for a growing family, and within the budget”. That third criteria made the intersection of the diagram’s three circles more of a singular bullet point that read: Stevens 47.

In 2011, they bought the boat that met their needs for great seaworthiness offshore, tough construction, affordability, and space for a family of five — a 1982 Sparkman & Stephens designed Stevens 47 they named Fluenta.

Homeported in Sidney, British Columbia, Fluenta looked after the Shaws on their 7 year, 36,000-mile adventure around the Pacific with a family of four, and then five. Today, it remains their liveaboard home. They started their adventure in the Pacific Northwest in 2012, worked their way south to Mexico on what they dubbed the “Mechanical Failure Tour of the West Coast.“ They did a refit on the boat and had a baby in Mexico, and then sailed off to the South Pacific in 2014. Fluenta and family ziggaged around the South Pacific and Micronesia for a few years before heading back to Canada from New Zealand via the Marshall and Aleutian islands, returning in December 2019.

Fluenta is Latin for flowing water. In our former professional lives we had rewarding careers but our day-to-day routines were so hectic that we seemed to lack a natural flow. Flowing water seemed like a good mantra as we transitioned from life ashore to full-time cruising.

We bought the boat in the Pacific Northwest where it had been sailing locally for years. While she was fully loaded for offshore cruising, the equipment was 15 years old at best, and either did not work or was on the verge of failure. During our “mechanical failure tour of the West Coast” we learned the hard way that some of the new gear that was installed in a hurry failed, too, and there were some definite lessons learned in working with contractors.

Despite the difficulties, we made it to the start of the Baja Ha Ha in time and began settling into “real cruising” in Mexico. But, due to the increasing number of failures and our discovery that some of the survey items were more serious than we initially thought, we stopped moving and dropped anchor in La Cruz to focus on doing a refit. The budget had already taken quite a hit by that point and we did much of the refit ourselves, which was an excellent learning opportunity. On top of that, we had always wanted a third child and, sure enough, he showed up mid-refit. Benjamin was born with a waterbirth at a local facility in Puerto Vallarta; and soon thereafter, the work on Fluenta continued.

When we found Fluenta, we were less concerned with buying a boat that already had cruising gear than we were with picking the right design and a solid boat. We retained the old watermaker and massive fridge/freezer system but ended up doing a lot of maintenance to both. Fluenta has an oversized windlass, which we love as it does not complain when we use all 330 feet of chain and our big Rocna in 100 feet of water.

A lot of the time in Mexico was spent on less glamorous things like replacing most of the below waterline fittings and hoses, all the sanitation hose, and overhauling the heads and winches. We have an in-boom furler that had its fair share of problems, but with some help, we were finally able to get it tamed.

While cruising, we have continually upgraded the systems on the boat as well as keeping up with the routine maintenance that comes with accumulating lots of offshore miles. We replaced most of the electronics, including adding a second autopilot. There was only one small solar panel on the boat when we bought it, but over time we have added solar to now have 600W, plus our wind generator and an old school watertowed generator. 48° North columnist and owner of a sistership, Jamie Gifford, designed a new genoa for us and it took a few recuts to get the staysail to work right with the overall sail plan.

For the real boat geeks (like me) I have posted annual reports of our maintenance activities on our blog.

The survey did not show how much work we really needed to do. That said, completing the refit mostly ourselves in Mexico meant we really learned about our boat and know her exceedingly well now. We may have been scared off buying the boat if we knew how much work was required. But it was a great developmental process, if at times frustrating and stressful, to have to learn all the systems on our boat. Ideally, we would have done the refit over several years while living in a house, though this approach would have cut down the time we had available to cruise the Pacific.

Our most challenging passage was the 3,700-mile “shortcut” from the Marshall Islands non-stop to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands.

After years of cruising, it was time to head home so the kids could learn a bit about their own country, be closer to family, and participate in some “brick and mortar” schooling, and for me to go back to work. There are various routes back to the Pacific Northwest from New Zealand, none of which are easy or quick. We had already spent a season in the Marshall Islands and were keen to go back, so that was an obvious stepping stone on the long route home.

From the Marshalls to Alaska there are two main routes — through the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, and Japan, and then on to Alaska; or direct from the Marshalls to Alaska. We chose the latter, not just because most people take the former route but because it gave us more time in the Marshall Islands and I liked the idea of crossing at right angles to the northern storm tracks.

Our longest passage prior to that was the normal 3,000-mile Mexico to Marquesas run. The Marshalls to Alaska passage is not just longer and colder than that one, but considerably more complex. It can be viewed in three phases:

In the first phase, we needed to blast through the northeast trade winds for 1,000 miles fairly hard on the wind. The wind averages here are about 15 to 25 knots, so this is a bit tedious, but Fluenta was unconcerned about heading upwind with a staysail and reefed main.

The second was our mid-Pacific holiday as we crossed the very calm 600 miles of doldrums in seven days. When the wind would rise to 6 knots, there would be a cheer from the crew and our $200 0.5oz spinnaker would be put into action. Sadly, on the last day of the doldrums it completed its duty and selfdestructed.

Phase three was interesting. If things were going to go wrong in this portion of the trip, they could go wrong rather badly. The biggest variable we watched on our way to Dutch Harbor was the low pressure systems rocketing out of Japan’s typhoon-season and heading for the Bering Sea or Gulf of Alaska. This was a bit like the old arcade game of Frogger as we tried to pass between the big systems. At one point we actually turned perpendicular to our track for two days — nobody likes a negative VMG — to give ourselves space between a storm-force system.

Needless to say, I downloaded GRIBs from PredictWind twice a day along with the weather fax synoptics. Prior to committing to the passage we studied the weather along the route extensively even running several hundred simulations using historical GRIB data.

We spent a lot of time preparing Fluenta in the year leading up to this passage and had already done several thousand tough upwind miles since leaving New Zealand a few months earlier. We had remarkably few failures over the 27 days: our tired $200 spinnaker split, the boom vang’s gas cylinder died, and a casting shattered on the vang that we jury rigged with Dyneema.

Our crew did not just weather this passage, but made it possible. The older two children, then 15 and 13, have accumulated a lot of miles and have continually progressed to become great crew, both started standing watches years ago. With at least three people standing watch, it is easy to continue on without getting fatigued. That being said, it was a relief to pop into the Bering Sea and get alongside in Dutch Harbor!

Having just finished this seven year, 36,000-mile meandering Pacific loop — from reefs to ice — we feel blessed to have visited so many wonderful places and met so many inspiring people. We still dream of heading back out and, who knows, maybe we will …

We buddy-boated a bit with an Outremer 5X in the South Pacific – one of those would fit us just fine. It really is the best combination of comfort and performance I have ever seen. I also see Steve and Linda Dashew’s Beowulf is back on the market; we could use the extra space for all our toys. I love all the Dashew designs and was delighted to go out with them on their FPB83 Conchise a few years back.

Whether it is a beloved cruising sailboat, powerboat, racing boat, wooden boat, work boat, tug boat or even a kayak or old Laser, we want to share your boat’s story for 48° North’s “My Boat” series. Email andy@48north.com to get started!