Xquisite Blurb
14 January 2023
Alison Gabel

In 2018, on the front end of our urge to buy a catamaran, Allan and I attended the Miami Boat Show. As all shoppers do at such shows, we climbed on and off a bunch of the catamarans we thought we could actually afford, and just for fun, another 5 in the dream-on category. We oohed and aahed and offered our own whispered critiques based on what little we knew about cats at the time, and although we weren't really actually shopping to buy, we narrowed it down to the Fountaine Pajot 44. It was perfect. We virtually moved aboard in our minds right there at the boat show. I even took a languid nap in the cockpit while Allan fell into a lengthy conversation with the salesman. And then, we took one last lap around the show docks ... and there it was ... the Xquisite X5 - a 50-foot South African-built beauty. With only 4 completed boats at the time, it was new on the market, and proved to be a gorgeous compilation of everything wonderful in a boat/home. It was solid, gracious, creative, sensible, and smart. And we were in love. From the giant galley drawer, to the beautiful wood interior, to the spacious and sensible layout, to the sweeping, curvaceous lines of the boat, topped off with the teak wood cockpit table with an inlaid map of the world, it was just gob-smacking. But, it was dear - and I mean, pricey. Quite out of our range. We allowed ourselves to dream for awhile, even being invited back later in the early evening for an invitation-only wine and cheese gathering aboard the show boat, where we learned so much more about the X5. But we knew it wasn't to be - not then, so we thanked them all for their hospitality, and with a sigh of wistful regret, we moved on. We let the Xquisite rest in that place in your mind where you hold dreams alive, but not necessarily active. A few months later, we almost bought a used Fountaine Pajot from a charter fleet in the Caribbean, but luckily the deal fell through, and that made space, a few years later, for us to find our wonderful Seawind 1160.
We love the Seawind, she's an amazing boat and wears her 38 feet extremely well. But we still found ourselves guiltily ogling the Xquisite whenever she crossed our path. And then, last Wednesday, she crossed it and stopped long enough to let us on. We got a call from our friend Jeff who, with his wife Paula, owns Sea Larks, the third X5 built in about 2017, with a request for crew to help relocate Sea Larks from Ensenada to her home port in Ventura, California. There was a short weather window between storms, and the crew he'd lined up had to back out. We checked the calendar and happily, it was blank, so we packed our bags and headed for the border near San Diego in a rental car.
That wasn't the original plan. The original plan was for Jeff's friend to fly us in his airplane to Brown Field in San Diego. We'd Uber to the border, walk across, catch a bus or hire a car to Ensenada, and be aboard Sea Larks by dinnertime. As the weather forecast in the Los Angeles area deteriorated a bit, the pilot backed out, so Jeff rented a car and we changed the plan to driving to the border and staying in a hotel, which, once we were underway, changed again to the final plan of pushing through to Ensenada that night. We had a 5-hour drive with evening traffic in LA to deal with, plus a quick stop at Whole Foods for dinner and a leg stretch. We got to the border by 9pm, returned the car, Uber'ed with a very nice Ethiopian driver who dropped us at the "back entrance" of the foot path to the Border Crossing. We walked into Mexico with a little help from some savvy travelers who knew the way from this seemingly secret back entrance, met the driver Jeff had arranged at the last minute, had an uneventful drive down the Mexican coast past Rosarito Beach, and were sitting on Sea Larks by 11pm. It was a long, high-energy day, but we were all glad to be aboard rather than in a hotel at the border.
We had a surgy night in the marina, with the boat lurching around in the slip, stretching and yanking the lines, but with all the weather we've had in So Cal lately, Fly Aweigh has been pretty animated as waves and wind slap us from the south and strain our squeaking dock lines, so we were used to the activity.
We got a good nights' sleep, ate breakfast aboard, washed the boat, went to the Port Captain's office (officially, the "Administración del Sistema Portuario Nacional") to check out of the country, did some route and weather planning, got Jeff's thorough briefing on the boat, her safety equipment and procedures, had a late lunch, repositioned the boat in the slip and cleaned up the dock lines, and as the sun neared it's last hour, we pulled out of the slip, down the narrow channel where we squeezed between two mega yachts, and out to sea.
The sunset was lovely and it felt so great to be back on the water, but I was feeling deep fatigue. It had been a pretty high-adrenaline start and a short nap was all I could ponder. I left the boys in the cockpit discussing the route and fell into the luxurious bed for a dead nap. I'm always amazed at what a 20 or 40-minute nap can do for me! Fully restored, I joined Allan and Jeff in the main salon where we put a watch schedule together and posted it on the wall, then tackled the pizza's we ordered at lunch.
Friday was our one full day at sea. I made bacon and scrambled eggs, not something I usually conjure up in a galley and I'm not sure how my eggs measured up, but it helped to have pre-cooked Costco bacon and some amazing bread for toast with Paula's homemade strawberry jam. We took turns at watch throughout the day, napping, writing, Allan catching up on his movies (what am I saying? Nobody ever "catches up" on a perpetually produced product like the movies!) When dinner rolled around I'd planned a combo soup from things we had aboard - we didn't provision for fresh food in Ensenada since it was such a short trip, so I pawed through Paula's freezer and found some leftover chicken and rice soup, and enhanced it with a myriad of canned things - beans, corn, mushroom soup, a sausage of some sort, and served it with some fabulous olive bread. After dinner we nibbled on chocolate, then slid into our longer watch schedules. Things in the salon grew quiet in the darkness, with just the glow of the red solar light on the dining table to save our night vision. Most of the time, we were inside, since Sea Larks has an excellent view on three sides from inside the main salon, and is fully controllable from Jeff's desk - the only reason we need to go out to the helm station is to adjust the throttles or get a second-story view ahead.
As I now write, it's almost 6am on Saturday. After 36 hours, we're hovering just outside Ventura Harbor awaiting the sunrise. The boys are sleeping, I'm sipping coffee and tinkering with the boat's heading and power to minimize forward progress for another half hour. The rain has just started - we're in for a wet day. I can hear it tapping on the rooftop. My instructions from Captain Jeff before he went down for a short nap was to keep offshore in the deeper water until the sun came up and we had all hands on deck. We'd pulled the power way back and were creeping along on one engine in near silence at a mere 3 knots for the previous few hours, but I slowed us even a teeny bit more, as we were still getting there too soon. Can't go too slow, or you lose steerage, so I just took off a smidge. Still, I had to go into a modified holding pattern about an hour out, over the deeper contour lines on the map. The reason for this had to do with the weather - I'm sure a lot of people around the country have watched the news about California's recent deluges, and with this weather came some horrendous waves and surf. With a storm coming in behind us and seas already around 3 meters (9 feet) it seemed wise to stay farther out in deeper water until we could see what things looked like closer to shore.
At 6:30 the guys got up, I made more coffee, the inflatable fenders were inflated, the dock lines distributed, final approach plans were made, headset batteries installed, rain jackets donned, and after a call to the Ventura Harbor Patrol to check the safety of the harbor entrance, in we went. This was the funnest part of the whole trip - surfing down the steep side of the 9 foot waves going straight in toward shore. They were "long period swells" which means they were the fun kind, not the uncomfortable kind, at least while you're out a ways. But we could see they were wreaking havoc on the beach and the rocky breakwater - some serious white foam was splashing high in the air. As it turned out, other than a lot of foam from a recent set of waves near the breakwater, our timing was excellent and we slid right through the entrance in flat water, no drama, easy-peasy. Inside the harbor it was eerily calm. No boats were moving, the sky was gray, the air crisp and wet. I felt like we'd just been I Dream of Jeannie'd to somewhere on the English coast. I'm sort of craving fish and chips ...
We tied her all up with lines and fenders everywhere and then cleaned up aboard, changed sheets, vacuumed, packed up our belongings, took a few pictures, and - it was a wrap! 72 total hours - about 600 miles start to finish. It was a wonderful trip. The 80hp Yanmar engines on the boat are very well insulated, so even though the seas and winds were calm and we had to motor most of the way, it was very comfortable and quiet. The boat rides like a weighty, wide vessel and is comfortable inside. In fact, it's almost too nice - I had to remind myself we were on a boat! A classy, well-made and well-loved boat. I'm happy we had this chance on our dream boat - and Jeff is a great Captain - experienced at the details of passage making, boat handling and excellent in crew communication. I felt like I was back at work on the 747 as First Officer - night passages, crew coordination, on-watch vigilance, short naps - all on a solid, capable craft. And a great landing at the end!
Thanks, Jeff, Paula, and Sea Larks!
(Check out photos in the new photo album in our Gallery.)