Crewing Henån Sweden to Kiel Germany

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Crewing Henån Sweden to Kiel Germany

After getting the invitation to crew on the Naja 440 that was tied up in the berth next to us, we were pumped to do this and couldn't wait to get going. The original plan was for us to leave on Friday or Saturday but it all was all dependent on when the owner (refered to as D, here on out) would finish all the work he wanted to get done. As with all things in sailing, everything takes at least twice as long as you think it will take.

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Open Yard 2017

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The last weekend of August the boat yard at Ellös Sweden comes alive for 3 days with Scandinavia's largest sail boat show (According to the website :) ). Anna and I were there last year and were introduced to Najad and fell in love with their boats. At the event last year, Öppet Varv August 2016, we were introduced to the Najad 395cc. This is a new design for Najad and at that time it was mostly in the design phase. At that time there were no pictures or any real information available.  The info we received was mostly generalities. Like, the new boat is like this boat over here but a little bigger in the aft cabin, or you will have more room here and this has changed, etc. During the year, we have been in regular contact with Najad. Getting updates on options for the 395cc, receiving renderings and just a few months ago, the official brochure. Najad also informed us that they had more info about the new 395cc so Anna and I could not wait to get up there to talk to them more about the new boat.

Öppet Varv opened on a Friday and since we have to both work, that is until we win the lottery, we decided that we would leave early Saturday morning and then stay the night. This way we could get two full days, Saturday and Sunday, checking out the boats and vendors.

It is about a 4hr drive from Malmö to Ellös, so at zero dark 30 we stated the drive up to Ellös. It is mostly freeway but the last part is on a two lane winding road that can get pretty congested due to everyone going to the boat show. We made good time up to Gothenburg and once we got through Gothenburg and on the North side, are stomachs started telling us it was time for some breakfast. Good old Mickey D's to the rescue. For some reason, it seems like Gothenburg has a McDonald's on every corner so we had no problem in finding one.

Since it had been ages since I had a proper McDonald's breakfast, I was jonesing for a bacon egg cheese biscuit. But since they do not have them here in Sweden, I got the next best thing, Sausage egg McMuffin. Breakfast of Champions.

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We arrived at the boat yard a little after 10:00 and to our surprise, there were not many people there. The weather was overcast, windy with a good chance of rain, so basically a typical Swedish summer day.

As we came in, they had one vendor that looked like it was having a going out of business sale. Clothes hanging on make shift rails and in piles on the tables they set up. In order to find something you had to fight your way in, dig through piles of clothes hoping to find something that would fit you. Since we would rather not have to fight to the death in order to find some clothes, we keep on walking by. We had more important things on our mind, the Najad boats.

Once you past some vendors, there it was, the Najad customer tent.

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We headed straight there since it was not that crowded. We meet up with Frida, the Najad PR rep and talked to her for a while. It is always good to see friends that you have not seen in a while. After talking with her we went onto the 410 and talked to some Najad salesmen regarding the 395cc. Since there was hardly anyone on the boat at that time, we could really look at the boat. Lift up the deck hatches, look into the bilge and engine room, look behind electrical panels, really give it the once over. The craftsmanship is impeccable. Just have a look at the wiring.

Wiring
Wiring

After spending a few hours talking with Najad and looking at the boats they had on show, we wandered around looking at the other boats. Even though we pretty much have decided on getting a Najad, we like to look at other boats just to see what they have and compare. Sometimes you see something that is on another boat and say to yourself, "That is really smart how they did this" or "That is really cool, and I want it".

Around early afternoon, the sun decided to show itself and Anna received a call from her big sister. Anna's sister and her husband were also at the boat show. We meet up with them and spent some time catching up. At the boat show, Hallberg Rassy allow you to take a tour of their workshop so you can see how some things are made. We all decided to go on this tour. It gave us a chance to hang out and look at some of the boats that were being built. Especially the 64' boat they build. It is a monster.

Once done with the tour, it was getting close to closing time for the day. So we headed over to the local pub to get some dinner. After eating a very expensive hamburger and fries,(not worth the price) we drove to our hotel. It was in a town about 10km away. The rooms are standard but they do have a nice courtyard.

Unfortunately, there was a family next door to us that had a kid that would not stop screaming. At least that is what Anna told me. I slept all night but Anna said the kid was crying all night and needless to say, Anna was a little tired come the morning.

We seen some older Najad boats online and have liked what we saw and most of them were up in Henån, just the next town over from Ellös. We thought it could be cool to go and have a look at them. Well to our surprise, they were at the boat show. We got to go on them, look them over real good and ask question about them. What a difference in seeing them in person vs seeing the pics on the net. One boat we were really interested in seeing was on the hard at the Najad office. We had an appointment at 09:00 to see the boat so we had to get up at 07:30. Besides the kid screaming all night, this was the other reason Anna was tired. The condition of the boat was great but there were some things we were not quite happy with. We will have to see if we come back to this one or not.

Once we were finished with looking at the boat, we drove back to the boat show. Since we seen the boats the day before, we went to all the venders booths. We took our time and talked with the venders and looked at what they had to offer. We had a really good talk with  UK sails, the ones that supply the sails for Najad. Got to talk about the type of sailing we are going to do and what type of sail setup would be good for us. It was very informative. Once we place our order for the boat, we plan on going on a tour of the sail loft to see how everything is done.

With Anna not getting much sleep the night before and us having a long drive home, we bailed out of there around 15:00. The drive home was pretty uneventful except the for the one or two crazy drivers that you always encounter out on the road.

Status update:

We have sold our car and are trying to sell our apartment now. Hopefully we can sell it in the next month or two. Once we get the apartment sold, we can start some serious negotiations with Najad and put an order in for our boat.

Najad Visit

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On 17-05-05, we visited Najad in Henån Sweden to talk with them about the different options we can get on the boat. We arrived at 10:00 and it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and at that time in the morning is was already 18º C. After about an hour of talking with them, going through an exciting excel sheet of options, we got to have some real fun. We got have a look around at the boats they were working on both in and out of the water. In the factory, we got to climbed aboard some of the boats under construction. Here are a few pics

After we had a look around the factory, we drove down to the marina where they had some nice boats in the water. By this time it was about 20º C and no wind.

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We went aboard a 570 CC to just have a look around.It was outrageous. Carbon fiber mast, refrigerator for wine, in boom furling and even a beer tap.

After that we decided to have an ice cream and discuss the options and what we saw. Can't wait until we get our boat!

Boat 2017

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Tomorrow 17-01-21, Anna and I will be flying down to Dusseldorf Germany to attend Boot 2017. We got information from Jörgen (CEO of Najad) that Najad will have their new design bureau – FARR Yacht Design – along with their Interior styling team – Ken Freivokh there at Boot 2017. Plus they will have the Najad 450 CC on display. Even though this boat is a little bigger than what we are looking for, it is always nice to what they put into the boats. It gives us a good idea of how our boat will look like :)

After hearing about what Najad is bringing to Boot 2017, plus reading up on everything else that is going to be there, we decided that this was defiantly worth going to.

We will land in Dusseldorf around 12:15, then straight to the hotel to check in and then to Boot2017. So we will have about 5 hrs on Sat and then about 6 hrs on Sun before we need to fly back home. Hopefully it will be enough time to see everything we want to see.

We have a gopro now so we will try to make a video worth watching once we get back.

Najad Production Hall

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This is a little late but as they say, "Better late then never". Anyway, Najad invited us up to Uddevalla to see their new production hall and on the 23rd September 2016, we drove there. This is where they are going to produce their new Najad 395 AC/CC.

The production hall should be ready in about 1.5 months. Thats when the first boats should start arriving and being worked on. They make the hull somewhere else along with the upper deck. Then they will ship it here where they will put the hull and top deck together. They will also start installing everything else.

Here is a list of the options that we received. Now we need to decide what options we want. There is a lot to read up on.

Najad-395-ac_cc-preliminary-list.xlsx

Finding a port to live year round in

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I am not sure how it is in other parts of the world, but here in Sweden, it seems like they do not want anyone living on their boat year round. I live Malmö and have contacted almost all the ports within a resonable distance to Malmö. All of them say basically the same thing.

No we do not allow year round living. The season is from April to October. You can have you boat in the water year round or pull it out for winter.

That seems a little strange to allow you to have your boat in the water year round, but not be allowed to live on it during the winter.

Without be able to live year round on the boat, creates a big problem with us wanting to sell everything and live on one. There's got to be a port that allows this somewhere here in the southern part of Sweden.

Öppna Varv

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This past weekend we attended Öppnna Varv. It is an in water boat show at the Hallberg-Rassy boat yard in Ellös Sweden. Hallberg-Rassy invites other boat manufactures there as well. So there were boats from Bavaria, Hanse, Jeanneau and many others.

Hallberg-Rassy also had the production shop open so that you could walk around and see the boats being constructed.

We have been debating about if we wanted an aft cockpit or a center cockpit. After looking at them we have decided that a center cockpit is what we want. We get a bigger aft cabin and to us, it feels like we are more protected and secure having the cockpit in the center.

Saturday was a nice sunny day and there were a lot of people there. I guess that is because it was suppose to rain on Sunday. But this worked out to our advantage. After we went around on Saturday looking at all the boats, gathering information, we had a some questions that we wanted to get answered and planned to talk more details with HR and Najad on Sunday.

To our relief, it did not rain like the new predicted and the crowds disappeared. There was only a light drizzle early in the morning and then nothing the rest of the day :-) After talking to the sales person on the HR 40 MK II, we went over to look more at the Najad 411cc. Unbeknownst to us, the VD of Najad was there showing the boat to people. We went below to look at the interior and he started asking us what we were looking for. After explaining what it is that we are wanting to do, he offered to take us to the Najad workshop to show us a Najad boat that was under construction.

This was great. We got to see how well the Najad boats are built and Anna and I were impressed with how well Jörgen Ottosson answered all of our questions. Jörgen also told us about a new design that is coming out soon, 395cc. After hearing about this model, it sounds like this will be a perfect fit for us. Needless to say, we can say that we are sold on Najad and we will be getting a Najad.