The indicator light flashed on the 2017 Pursuit OS 325, Wait ’n Line, somewhere between Southeast Florida and the Bahamas.
It wasn’t Kelly White’s first time being at the helm offshore, but it was her first time as a skipper crossing the Gulf Stream—and the light indicated that one of the boat’s engines was overheating. She pulled back on the throttles with water all around, finding herself in the kind of scenario that unnerves so many boaters, they never attempt a Gulf Stream crossing at all.
But in White’s case, she wasn’t alone. She and her husband, Dale, were cruising with a group as part of Pursuit Boats’ summer rendezvous. Owners of more than three dozen Sport Center Console, Dual Console and Offshore models from 28 to 45 feet long joined three of Pursuit’s company-run boats for the cruise to the islands. Boaters like White set a course from Fort Pierce, Florida, to the Abaco Beach Resort in Marsh Harbour knowing full well they had backup in case anything went wrong.
“I got on the radio and said we had an engine down, we were stopping,” White says. “Somebody behind us who worked for Pursuit came right up.”
The culprit was ocean litter: a plastic bag that previously held about 20 pounds of ice. It was jamming the engine’s intake. “We were able to lift up the engine and get it up and running, and then catch up with the group,” she says. “The Pursuit people are just phenomenal. When it comes to these rendezvous, they’re prepared with extra parts, extra everything. They have the leader in the front, and there’s always somebody in the back. When you’re in the middle of the ocean, a filter can be everything.”
Finding safety in numbers is far from a new concept, but for boaters, a rendezvous can take that feeling of security to a whole new level. Rendezvous events have proliferated in recent years as boatbuilders plan increasingly ambitious itineraries for owners who want to improve their skills and push beyond their local cruising grounds—enhancing the boating experience right alongside brand loyalty, all at the same time.
In White’s case, the Gulf Stream crossing wasn’t even her biggest fear. It was what would happen when the group actually made it to the Bahamas. She regularly cruises in and around her home port of Jacksonville, Florida, where, if she runs aground, the hull bottom only finds sand. “In the Bahamas, you’re dealing with coral that can punch a hole in the boat,” she says. “I was more worried about that than I was about the Atlantic.”
But again, she says, being part of the Pursuit rendezvous allayed her concerns. Once the group made it to the Bahamas, she had everything she needed to navigate with confidence. “The leader of the Pursuit group sent out courses marked for us to get in and out and avoid the reefs,” she says. “I now have them permanently on the boat. That information itself, that local knowledge, was huge.”
Charlie and Pixie Hoffner say they feel the same way. They’ve been boaters their whole lives, first in the Northeast and New England, where they grew up, and more recently on Florida’s Panhandle, where they live about 20 miles east of Destin. They decided to get back into boating a few years ago, after taking a three-decade break to raise a family. They took delivery in February 2021 of a Pursuit DC 326, PixSeas, and decided to give the whole rendezvous concept a try this past summer.
Their first challenge was figuring out how to get PixSeas from the Panhandle over to Fort Pierce on Florida’s East Coast for the rendezvous departure. It would’ve been at least six days of cruising down the Gulf and across Lake Okeechobee, an idea that gave them serious pause.
“We had a doomsday mentality going on about things that could go wrong,” Charlie says. “So, I was talking with the people at Pursuit, and they gave us the name of the company that transports all of their boats from the factory to the dealer.”
That company charged the Hoffners a fee to get the boat to Fort Pierce, Charlie says, “but the cost was very low compared to what our fuel would’ve been. It worked out where it had to be down there for about a week before we departed, so they kept it safe and sound, and Pursuit hooked us up with Safe Harbor Harbortown to put it in the water, and it was great.”
Charlie says they were also worried about crossing the Gulf Stream for the first time. “This was a total first of everything. This whole adventure was a first. We’d never taken a boat across the Gulf Stream. This boat had never been on the Atlantic Ocean. We were thinking about how cool it could be, but also about all the things that could go wrong.”
But they made it across to the Bahamas without any worries—and ended up being even more pleasantly surprised after they got there. The Hoffners were hanging out in the resort pool when one of Pursuit’s engineering staff came by to chat. “Pixie had this sponge in this area where our trashcan is, and they asked why, and she said, ‘Because the water never drains,’” Charlie recalls. Within about 20 minutes, two guys with tools were at the boat. “They got the water to go away, all of it drained, and they spent most of the night taking the entire thing apart,” Charlie says. “They took the air conditioning out, the refrigerator out. They reassembled the entire a/c on the boat. I asked, ‘Who do I pay?’ and they said, ‘Nobody.’ It’s been bone dry ever since.”
A couple days later, Charlie says, PixSeas was anchored off Fiddle Cay, and Pixie was struggling to get the anchor up. “The same guy came over and said, ‘I noticed you’re having trouble,’” Charlie recalls. “While we went to dinner, they took the whole anchor assembly apart and rebuilt it.”
And, as with White, the Pursuit team managed to calm the Hoffners’ biggest fear about cruising in the Bahamas. For them, it was docking.
“On the Gulf of Mexico, there are no fixed docks,” he says. “We had never tied to a fixed dock. Our tide swing is 6 inches. These were 3- or 4-foot tides. That whole docking experience was probably the most traumatic hurdle we got over. But the Pursuit people knew, and they were right there when we pulled in, and it went fine. Thank God for joystick and bow thrusters.”
Brian Flanagan, whose parents took him cruising to the Bahamas throughout his childhood, joined the rendezvous in his 2022 Pursuit 326 Dual Console, Going Coastal. He uses it for fishing about 100 to 120 miles offshore, so the Gulf Stream crossing didn’t faze him. He did the rendezvous with two other friends who own Pursuits. They made up a kind of mini-rendezvous group, with nearly a dozen kids among them: 10 boys and one girl.
Because the rendezvous was organized with so much support, he says, his group had the freedom to relax—a precious luxury for them all.
“There were some restaurants with piers where all the kids could jump in together,” he says. “They had a blast fishing off the docks, snorkeling off the reefs. There was a reef where a turtle came up one day and the kids snorkeled with it for about 30 minutes. It’s a week of them not being on their iPads, computers or any devices. They’re out there having fun on the water. It’s great.”
And, he says, he was pleased to see how Pursuit organized the event in terms of the expense to participants.
“We used to RV and the manufacturer did the same type of thing with trips you could go on, but they made you pay a registration fee and all that,” Flanagan says. “I was very surprised with Pursuit that this was all complimentary. Obviously, you pay for your own lodging and dockage, but they had an opening night with drinks, and then there was a dinner, all at no cost. They flew over a Garmin guy, a
Yamaha guy and Pursuit techs, and they would work on your boat if you had issues at absolutely no cost.”
Flanagan didn’t need anything fixed, but those services came in really handy for White. She told the Pursuit team that her shore power cord had shorted out back at the start of the trip in Fort Pierce. One night in the Bahamas, she says, she and Dale came back from dinner, “and our shore power cord was a different color. I saw our old one rolled up on the dock. Not only had they replaced our shore power, but they also replaced our plug and had it all done and sitting there nice and beautiful. I asked if I could pay for the parts, and they said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
She’s already making plans to head back to the Bahamas next year—plans she says she never would have made if not for the Pursuit Boats rendezvous experience.
“Just having the backup, knowing that if something happens, you have somebody there to help, it gives you the warm and fuzzy,” White says. “It gives you the freedom to try things you otherwise might not do.”
This article was originally published in the December 2023 issue.
