I just completed a six day trip Wednesday with five friends aboard a Nordhavn 57. This is my sixth passage (either up or down) the coast (4 in my own boats) with the mildest weather/seas I've ever encountered. We had a bit of wind going down Juan de Fuca to Neah Bay, and about 25 knots of NW wind one day, however, in general, it was pretty calm with flat seas -- unusual for this trip . I'm sure Mike has had an equally nice trip going North in the Nordhavn 40. We stopped for the night a Neah Bay, Westport, WA and Noyo River (Ft Bragg, CA). I've been over the bar at Westport (Grey's Harbor) three times which, IMO, is one of the worst along the coast, this time it was absolutely flat (high tide Slack). We visited the museum at Neah Bay which is really well done and worth the stop. At Westport I'd recommend visiting "Harbor Marine" a building with two floors of marine hardware, mostly old commercial stuff, that I found fascinating. The owner, an independent sort who loved to chew the rag, also had about 8 cars in various stages of repair/dismantling including a couple of Packard's and Hudson's. In Noyo, we had a great dinner at Carine's Fish Grotto, where "Mama" the proprietor and her son "Dominic" cheered and blew kisses as we exited the river the next day -- guess we made a good impression the previous night. As you can probably tell we had a great trip, with crew and an owner who all had extensive passagemaking experience, and who throughly enjoyed each other's company. This was my first passage aboard a boat of this size and a Nordhavn. In general I agree with Georgs' comment about boat size and currently own a 40' converted salmon troller. I must admit, however, I got used to the amenities aboard the Nordhavn very quickly. It is very pleasant having hot showers daily with no water worries (thanks to a 1000 gal a day Spectra watermaker), plenty of power thanks to a 20 kw Northern Light Generator, little rolling due to the Trac stablizers and the "no hand" steering due to the AP-25 autopilot. The dockside maneuvers assisted by thrusters, bow and stern, powered by the hydraulic pump on the "get-home engine, were pretty easy compared with my troller. While the crew didn't seem to have gourmet experience, the owner did, and thoroughly enjoyed (I think) preparing meals for the crew. The crew of course, disposed of the uneaten food in the disposal or trash compacter as appropriate and cleaned the dishes in the dishwasher. We had three problems on the trip. The gen set broke a fan belt which we repaired in Westport. The generator shut down automatically (overheat) but did not sound an alarm. Not sure if there was no alarm to be sounded or it just didn't work. On the passage from Westport to Noyo, the Nobletec program (ver 7), which was driving the AP, malfunctioned and despite re-booting the system and having three experienced users, we couldn't fix it and switched over to the plotter which was part of the Furuno Navnet system. Interestingly it worked fine on the Noyo to SF leg. Our final problem was a plugged sink drain after three quarts of coleslaw was run through the garbage disposal just before our arrival in San Francisco. The resulting plug-up took the five of us six hours to clear at the dock after arrival. The bronze check valve in the system did not help the matter and the interlocking nature of ground-up coleslaw proved to be a daunting foe despite hours of effort. Finally patience and two "snakes" inserted from each end won the day. The lesson here is just throw the coleslaw overboard. Robby Troller "Dolores E."