Bump's World - March 2008 March 5, 2008 MOODY Last Thursday Doug Brophy and I boarded Atlantic Virgin flight 11 to Heathrow airport outside of London. We flew all night and after a bus ride, 2 trains, and a taxi arrived in Swanwick and check into our old English Inn. Directly across the street is Premier Yachts the local Moody dealer and where the introduction of the new Moody 45 Deck Saloon was about to happen. Moodys have been built in England for the past 30 years. They are known as a high quality sturdy traditional offshore capable yacht. Three years ago Moody closed it's manufacturing facility. The rights to the Moody Brand have been since purchased by Hanse Yachts of Germany. New Wave Yachts relationship continues to grow stronger with Hanse, so naturally they asked us if we had interest in selling Moodys here in North America. All of the old tooling and designs have been abandoned, and new Bill Dixon designs and all new tooling are being built in Germany at a brand new facility right next to the main Hanse factory. The first new Moody is the 45 Deck Salon. The new Moody line will be building other deck saloon models and traditional aft cockpit sailing yachts. The Moody name will live on with high quality, offshore capable yachts. Doug and I viewed the Moody 45 DS at a dock in front of the Royal Southern Yacht Club. After a couple of hours crawling around the yacht we headed into the club where a media reception was just starting. Champagne and appetizers were served and the room filled with media and yacht industry people. Bill Dixon, the designer, and Michael Schmidt (the President of Hanse Yachts), gave an excellent slide presentation of the new yacht and the new direction of Moody. Doug ate all the appetizers and I drank all the champagne, so we headed back to the dock. Michael announced we were now going sailing so those of you who do not want to get sea sick please exit the boat. I had been noticing a weather front moving through. The skies were dark and spitting rain, the temperature was 45, and the wind was building. In spite of these conditions, I saw several boats headed out to go sailing, I mean its still February. We cast off, tied the 2nd reef in, and rolled out the self-tacking jib. We quickly sailed out of the Hamble River in the Solent. The wind was now steadily over 25 knots and gusting to 36. The boat handled beautifully, I was amazed that nothing broke on our maiden sail. Doug headed down below to have a nap and I sat at the navigation station in the deckhouse where I could sail the boat indoors. The British are certainly a hardy group as we passed several others out enjoying the weather. It was now raining hard. After 2 hours of this we headed home. Doug and I left the others at the Royal Southern Yacht Club and took the boat to Swanwick about another 2 miles up the river. Thanks to a bow and stern thruster Doug easily placed the boat on the dock in a 30 knot cross wind. We then retired to the pub after a very full day and no sleep since Thursday. Saturday we spent crawling around the boat again and taking in the English landscape. The more time we spent on the boat the more attention to quality and detail was evident. This truly is a high quality offshore capable yacht. Sunday morning we headed home via a taxi, train, bus and Virgin Atlantic. 3 movies later we landed in good old Boston. Please check out the Moody 45 DS at www.Moodyboats.com. You can see a virtual tour of the boat at www.premiermarinas.com. Please mail comments to me at Bump@newwaveyachts.com Bump Wilcox