LOA: 88 feet • BEAM: 21 feet • POWER: twin 750-hp John Deere 6135 diesels • SPEED: 8.5 to 13 knots cruise • RANGE: 2,600 nautical miles at 8.5 knots • TANKAGE: 3,000 gallons fuel, 500 gallons water • CONTACT: Outer Reef Yachts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (954) 767-8305. outerreefyachts.com
What was your introduction to boating, and what is your boating history? I started boating in college when a friend and I purchased an 18-foot Mako and moored the boat in Port Jefferson, New York. She was a boat that was essentially ignored and had an engine that had its own personality and proclivities. I enjoyed rebuilding and trying to put her personality back into the boat. I relocated to San Diego in 1993 to begin a new career as a biotech entrepreneur, and one day I took my son, who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, to a local pier for a day of fishing. I was amazed that he was so focused on just watching his line and the sheer happiness on his face — even when he didn’t catch a thing (neither did I). Based on that day, I purchased a 60-foot Hatteras, which like my first boat was in need of a lot of TLC. Following the Hatteras, I commissioned an 82-foot Westbay, a 94-foot Westbay and, finally, an 88-foot Outer Reef.
What was your scariest moment at sea? I was leaving Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and my weather routers told me the seas heading to Costa Rica were good but to expect some squalls. Just north of Acapulco, I noticed a number of squalls forming around me. As I got in the middle of the outlying squalls, they all joined together, forming a storm that was certainly not expected. The winds came up to about 50 knots, and the seas — well, I’m not sure what they were, but I know there was blue water flying over the flybridge hardtop. And, of course, Rex Neptune decided to give me a little added twist by killing my hydraulic systems, making my stabilizers useless and steering difficult.
“Voyaging past the dry deserts of Chile to the green forests of northern Patagonia to the wind-ravaged islands of south Patagonia puts everything in proper perspective. We are merely insignificant visitors in a vast and beautiful world.”
— Paul Hawran
Where have you traveled under power? Argo has cruised from Victoria, British Columbia, to Alaska and then all the way south to San Diego and to La Paz, Puerto Vallarta and many other Mexican cities. From there we navigated to Costa Rica, then to Peru, Chile and Cape Horn. On the return trip, we stopped in Peru and are now back to Costa Rica. We have seen Patagonia, stood on Robinson Crusoe Island, visited Easter Island and the phenomenal northern deserts of Chile, as well as Machu Picchu and a list of places that will always be engraved in my brain. After this vacation from a vacation we start all over, going through the Panama Canal and to the Caribbean, where we will spend about 270 days and 5,000 miles checking out all the islands.
This article originally appeared in the April 2018 issue.
