MISS MIRANDA

Boat Type: Nordhavn 50
Owners: Lawrence O’Keefe
Club: Seattle Yacht Club
Built: 2000

OWNER BIO
We (Larry and Gwen) have been together for over 30 years. We’ve been boaters in the Pacific Northwest for the past 10 years after Larry came home from the Ballard Locks soon after we moved to Seattle in 2008 and declared “I have to have a boat”. I told him he could take his heli-skiing fund and buy a boat instead, so that’s what he did. I was skeptical at first but also fell in love with boating.
Larry grew up sailing little boats on Long Island Sound. When we first met in Florida, we often accompanied friends on their boats in the Gulf of Mexico, but after moving to New York and then the Midwest for careers we lost touch with boating until rediscovering it in Seattle.
We quickly progressed through a small Bayliner to a larger one, then to a 50’ Ocean Alexander Mark I and a two month journey to British Columbia’s Broughton Islands, Desolation Sound and Sunshine Coast in 2012 when life declared “go now, you never know how much time you have on this earth”. We have been fortunate to continue boating in some of the best cruising grounds in the world, and are looking forward to exploring Mexico by boat, having been there a number of times on land.
Larry recently completed his USCG 100 ton Master’s License. Gwen has trained in remote and wilderness medicine, but hopes not to have to use that training on this journey. We’ve also done a number of training courses on nuts and bolts topics such as diesel maintenance and ABT stabilizer repair.

FAVORITE BOATING DESTINATION & WHY
Currently our favorite destination experience has been the West Coast of Vancouver Island and Barkley Sound, which we visited in 2018. The landscape is spectacular, it is much less crowded than Desolation Sound and other destinations on the lower Inside Passage, and it gave us our first taste of the ocean.

FAVORITE BOATING EXPERIENCE
This summer as we traveled to Alaska we were favored several times with groups of dolphins cavorting around our bulbous bow, leaping and jumping and keeping time with us, once for at least 30 minutes. It is such a freeing experience to see these joyful animals enjoying our boat!

BOATING STORY
Soon after buying our first boat in Seattle, Larry started reading about where we might go on our little 25 foot cabin cruiser. He somehow came across the book “Voyaging Under Power” and realized that some people based in our own city of Seattle cruised all over the world, indeed, circumnavigated, on their powerboats. An idea began to form. Larry was soon reading anything he could get his hands on about long-distance cruising on a powerboat, including stories on the original FUBAR Rally to Mexico. Gwen was initially, shall we say, skeptical. We started cruising in the Salish Sea, gained more experience, bought progressively larger and more capable boats, and decided that we could and should venture a little further afield.

We started planning a couple of years ago with the goal of rearranging our careers to enable us to spend more time cruising once our daughter Miranda was well-established in college. That plan came to fruition this summer. Miranda has finished her freshman year in college and we arranged to go to Alaska on our boat. Having checked off that PNW boater bucket list item, we are looking forward to joining the CUBAR and exploring Mexico (and perhaps points beyond) over the next couple of years.

ABOUT YOUR CREW
Sean Becker – is Gwen’s brother. He is an experienced naval officer, having spent two years on an ancient US minesweeper so has lots of experience in repairs at sea, old-fashioned navigation, and in general how to get along on a boat in difficult conditions! He did graduate to a destroyer so also has big ship experience. He is looking forward to several weeks away from the kids and being back on the high sea.

WHAT’S IN A NAME
Miss Miranda is named after our much-loved only child and daughter Miranda, who is now in college at the University of Washington. She is looking forward to joining us for school breaks!

REASON TO BUY THIS BOAT
As we read about others doing long distance voyages on boats, we realized that most were aboard full displacement, blue-water capable trawlers. Many of those were aboard Nordhavns. We eventually settled on the N50 as the right model for us and found this boat right in our area in the spring of 2017.

PREVIOUS BOATS OWNED
Ocean Alexander Mark I
Bayliner 3870
Bayliner 2556
AMF Sunfish

INTEREST IN CUBAR
We’ve followed and read about each of the CUBAR rallies since the beginning and have always dreamed of being part of one. We look forward to meeting like-minded cruising boaters and will appreciate the help navigating the paperwork process for bringing the boat into Mexico.