Most of our cruising adventures at sea have been on sailboats, but my wife Cindy and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to take our Axopar 37, “Finnish Touch” from Yarmouth, Maine to the Exumas in the southern Bahamas?’ The Axopar is an amazing, twin outboard boat, but it is not a long-distance cruising boat… until now!

Our boat has great electronics such as Garmin plotters, radar, autopilot, AIS, VHF, a bow thruster along with safety equipment: six man coastal life raft, EPIRB, good inflatable life harness’s and an old 8’ Avon dinghy rolled up in the aft locker. All of these features are not only incredibly helpful for navigating and piloting the boat but they are also things we would highly recommend for general safety and boat handling.

Aside from electronic features and safety gear, for cruising comfort, we have a nice v-berth with a custom mattress (very comfortable), an electric head in the forward cabin and an outdoor shower. No hot water and no galley but a wonderful Magnum propane grill and two great 12 volt refrigerators- one in the aft wet bar, one in the cabin. As someone who is NOT of short stature, I can attest that there is great headroom in the pilothouse cabin, but no standing headroom forward.

Our kids call this glamour camping a.k.a. “glamping” so at 65 we’ve decided to go “glamping” down the east coast running outside, and in the waterway, stopping for a few visits with friends and enjoying places we need to check off our bucket list. We are very excited to be doing this in our Axopar and can’t wait to share our experiences here!

If you have interest, tune in, we’ll post a few photos and notes on a daily basis, but we are doing the trip in three stages due to work and life.

First leg: October 2019

Yarmouth, Maine to Annapolis, Maryland

Second leg: November 2019

Annapolis, Maryland to Del Ray Beach, Florida

Third leg: Late March 2020

Del Ray Beach, Florida to the Exumas

Fourth and final leg: May 2020

Truck Finnish Touch from Florida back to Yarmouth, Maine

If you have any questions about our trip, Axopars or just why, please send an email to: jon@ecys.com

We look forward to sharing this Axopar adventure with you,

Cindy & Jon Knowles