Renown Ocean-Crossing Trawler Reaches Hawaii, Just Not the Way Its Designers Intended

Adrift Due to an 'Almost Impossible' Fuel Fail, 'Eden Bound' Gets Towed Home

Coast Guard crew of the cutter Oliver Berry send the modern equivalent of a monkey fist and messenger line to the Coast Guard rescue team aboard Eden Bound, which had been adrift. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Updated with new information from the boat’s owners.

Their trawler is famous for having been built from the keel up for transoceanic passages, so Eden Bound’s latest Pacific Ocean voyage should not have ended the way it did—towed for more than 200 miles behind a Coast Guard cutter.

The 1995 Cape Horn 58 arrived at the Kewalo Basin Harbor marina at Honolulu at 8 a.m. on Thursday. The Coast Guard said it first found the boat adrift four days earlier 230 nautical miles southwest of Oahu.

Aboard were owners Miriam Schafer and Joseph Nardi, who were bringing Eden Bound back home to Hawaii to sell her. According to the Coast Guard news release, they essentially had run out of diesel. “The rescue and assistance team determined that the vessel had only 40 gallons of fuel left, which the master was saving for the ship’s generator,” the news release said.

If true, that wasn’t a bad decision: Shut her down and wait for the cavalry. Back in 1997, PassageMaker magazine—my old shop—reported that Eden Bound would burn a gallon of diesel to go 1.3 nautical miles at 7 knots. Continuing would have gotten the boat somewhat closer to Hawaii, but she then would have stalled and eventually gone dark.

Judy Waldman is a Florida yacht broker and an advocate for steel trawlers in general and Cape Horn boats in particular. She is the listing broker for Eden Bound. As such, she communicated with the owners, who downplayed the incident and flat-out contradicted the Coast Guard.

“Haha!  That’s so funny,” Schaffer replied to an email inquiry from Waldman. “Yes, we took on some contaminated fuel.  We were 100 percent operational and safe at all times!” She did concede, however, that it had been an “overwhelming journey.”

(Later, she elaborated, and her email message has been included in the footnotes.)

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The first ship to respond to the Eden Bound’s plight was Coast Guard cutter Joseph Gerzcak, which arrived on the scene last Sunday. Ten-foot seas prevented the Gerzcak from putting a crew on board right away.

At this point, unless a sea anchor or drogue were deployed, the Eden Bound would have turned sideways to the seas. Making no way, her active-fin stabilizers would have been useless, so the couple would surely have been miserable in a rolling boat.

On Tuesday, Coast Guard cutter Oliver Berry arrived and relieved the Gerzcak as the “on-scene asset,” and she returned to homeport after a three-week patrol. Soon the seas had diminished to eight feet. Launching a small boat, Berry put a two-man rescue team aboard Eden Bound to assist the owners and implement what would be a 48-hour tow.

Eden Bound under tow at six knots. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

“Passing the vessel close aboard, the crew sent a heaving line to the R&A team onboard, allowing the R&A team to connect the tow bridle to Eden Bound. Oliver Berry established the tow and proceeded northeast towards Honolulu at six knots,” a Coast Guard spokesperson wrote.

When they arrived at Kewalo Basin Harbor, the tow was released. Eden Bound’s owners fired up their twin John Deere engines and proceeded to a slip on their own power. A Coast Guard 45-foot utility boat picked up the Coast Guard team aboard Eden Bound and escorted her into the marina.

Eden Bound was originally built for a guy named Peter Sever, who wanted to cross oceans under power. The tech entrepreneur was to achieve a place in the trawler pantheon alongside Robert Beebe, Steve Dashew, Jim Leishman and Tony Fleming.

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Sever liked the design so much that he built 14 more in collaboration with Bob Johnston, a Canadian naval architect. They built 15 trawlers varying in size from 52 feet to 81 feet, and most of them were brokered by Waldman at one time or another.

Famously, Eden Bound was visiting Phuket, Thailand in 2004 when the region was hit by the worst tsunami in recorded history. Unlike almost every other boat around her Eden Bound rolled over and righted herself, surviving virtually undamaged.

But more to the point, the boat came with what at the time was an innovative fuel system, which was a point of great pride for Sever. And the boat has tankage for 3,500 gallons of diesel, plenty for a 3,300-nautical-mile passage from Guam to Oahu.

Let us assume, then, that Schaffer and Nardi embarked with full tanks. As it turns out, the man is an experienced mariner.

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As Waldman said, “I can’t imagine they would be so budget-conscious not to top off, even with diesel at $7 a gallon.” If so, they had not run out of fuel, as the Coast Guard suggested, they had run out of usable fuel, which, according to Sever, should have been nigh impossible. Here’s what he said in one of his brochures:

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As with all other key safety matters, we go further than any other manufacturer. Our fuel is filtered, at minimum, four times before it reaches the engines – to one micron, meaning neither bacteria nor water can get through.

The principle and execution are simple: Whenever fuel is moved aboard a Cape Horn it must pass through a bank of 3’ high, all stainless steel, twin 1-micron filters which remove literally everything which could be harmful. The filter is a commercial one, used mainly for hospitals, factories and big ships – those who store large quantities of fuel for long periods and cannot afford to take chances.

Whenever fuel is moved on a Cape Horn, all contaminants and water are removed, period.

(About concluding a paragraph with the word “period,” when someone uses this rhetorical technique, not only is he or she attempting to cut off discussion, but they are also tempting the Gods—never a good idea. In this case, the Gods were merciful. No one got hurt. Nothing broke.)

What I take away from this, speaking only about recreational small-craft mariners, is that crossing oceans will always be accomplished better under sail than power. Nevertheless, companies such as Cape Horn (and, of course, Nordhavn) have done a superb job overcoming the difficulties of voyaging under power.

These boatbuilders incorporate expensive and complicated technologies (combined in complicated ways) to achieve what a set of sails and a small auxiliary motor can do simply and inexpensively, at least by comparison. Sails solve the problems of redundancy, stability and distance using a couple of sheets of cloth, repairable with needle and thread. I say this as someone who has straddled both worlds over the past 23 years. (See the About section.)

For those of you with the wherewithal to buy boats costing a couple million dollars or more (and with access to another million for the yearly cruising kitty), the idea of bluewater adventures without the hassle of line-handling can be irresistible. From that perspective, Eden Bound might be a bargain at the $850,000 asking price. Call Judy.

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She’ll talk your ear off.

1. Miriam Schafer said: “I will set the record as straight as it needs to be… word gets around quickly as we were just barely tied to a dock when these comments started rolling in.

“It was an amazing adventure and anyone looking for a blue water cruiser should definitely be looking into a Cape Horn. This Hull #1, a 1995 Cape Horn performed magnificently from the time we departed Thailand in April 2022, cruised from Thailand to Singapore through the South China Sea, entire Borneo / Malaysian Coast across the Sulu Sea to Surigao Philippines, Guam, Truk, Pohnpei, Majuro and finally our home port of Honolulu. We saw more bad sea state than a North Sea pilot and though it was just the two of us, we always felt comfortable, secure and safe.

“Eden Bound performed well and after 7200+ nautical miles, over 9000 gallons of Diesel consumed, it was unfortunate our last tank took on contaminated bio slops. Phenomenal seamanship by the U.S. Coast Guard and their commitment to the safety of the American public.

“We arrived 100 percent functional and under our own power and safe!”

2. Robert Beebe was skipper of Passagemaker, whose 50-footer inspired the eponymous magazine. His 1975 book “Voyaging Under Power” was the foundation of the future recreational trawler market and inspired boatbuilders such as Nordhavn.

Steve Dashew developed the FPB (fast pilot boat) series of long, skinny aluminum powercraft, and entirely different approach to that of Cape Horn. Even though these boats were hugely expensive whether new or used, Dashew would probably rebut the notion that sailboats are a cheaper way to cruise. He and his wife Linda authored “Bluewater Handbook, a Guide to Cruising Seamanship,” “The Circumnavigator’s Handbook” and “Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia.”

Jim Leishman, is vice-president at Nordhavn, whose team has produced more circumnavigators than any other recreational powerboat manufacturer ever. With permission from the estate, Leishman revised Beebe’s “Voyaging Under Power” for a modern audience.

Tony Fleming is as artful a yacht designer as the 20th century has ever produced. He is father to the Fleming line of semi-displacement cruising yachts. He wrote the memoir “Riding the Tide: Art, Engineering and a Thirst for Adventure.”

3. Said Joseph Nardi: "I am a retired merchant mariner, chief engineer, Unlimited Horsepower, Steam Diesel or Gas Turbine. Having sailed professionally for thirty years with over 15 years as chief engineer with companies such as BP Oil, SeaLand, Maersk-Sealand, and many more. Presently I am working as a mechanical engineer, NCSU 1990, with DoD, US Navy, managing maintenance, H. M. & E., on their Surface Combatants in Pearl Harbor. My personal boating experience started as a Sea Scout in San Francisco (hometown) as a young man. Maybe too much info here, however, the majority of my seagoing experience is on large super tankers, container ships and work boats, ( integrated tug-barges, etc.)"

4. Description of the fuel systems from a Cape Horn brochure:

As with all other key safety matters, we go further than any other manufacturer. Our fuel is filtered, at minimum, four times before it reaches the engines—to one micron, meaning neither bacteria nor water can get through.

The principle and execution are simple: Whenever fuel is moved aboard a Cape Horn it must pass through a bank of 3’ high, all stainless steel, twin 1-micron filters which remove literally everything which could be harmful. The filter is a commercial one, used mainly for hospitals, factories and big ships – those who store large quantities of fuel for long periods and cannot afford to take chances.

Whenever fuel is moved on a Cape Horn, all contaminants and water are removed, period. When filling up, it passes through these filters to prevent taking on bad fuel. When fuel is transferred between the bunker tanks for trim, it is filtered. When fuel is transferred from the bunker tanks to the day tank, it is filtered again.

This even serves as an ideal built-in fuel polishing system – you can pump fuel from say, Tank A back into Tank A; Tank B to Tank B; and so on, in order to pass it through the filters – which is strongly advised if the fuel has been there a while. We recommend that you polish your fuel on a regular sched- ule after six months of storage. It is easy to do, does not need to be attended. Just open two clearly labeled ball valves and turn on the transfer pump, let it run for a few hours. Done. Perfectly clean fuel and fuel tanks. The crucial day tank in the engine room will have only the purest of fuel in it—everything is removed before reaching it.

But then we even go further. Between the day tank and engines are two more 20-micron Racor filters. They are duplex, meaning if one plugs up you turn two ball valvesand the second one works while you clean the first one, without shutting down the engine. Vacuum gauges are attached to the filters so you can tell if ever the filters are starting to plug up. There is a water sensor built in, which sounds in the wheelhouse. We cannot imagine how contaminated fuel could reach these filters, after much 1 micron polishing, but they are there just in case.

All fuel plumbing components, including the piping and transfer pumps, are stainless steel, even though with diesel oil we could easily use mild steel or hose. Why? Primarily because it looks better, won’t rust—and we want you to be proud of even your bilges in a Cape Horn.

We include a second all-stainless steel 1,320 GPH fuel transfer pump as a back-up, pre-plumbed. To be without a fuel transfer pump for even a few minutes at the wrong time, could be dangerous. The two pumps can even be used in tandem to double fuel transfer rates to 44 GPM if we also double the filter bank (standard on CH95.)

All these components are contained in the engine room at eye level, including the 2 stainless steel fuel transfer manifolds, stainless steel ball valves to control the “From–To” arrangement, the 2-4 stainless bunker filters, and the 2 large transfer pumps.

In the midships bilges (via quick access Freeman hatches,) you can even turn a tap for each tank and drain any sludge or water which may have settled at the ‘settling basin’ at the bottom of the tank – which is what they do on airplanes as part of every pre-flight check. Sight gauges for each tank are also standard on new models.

We have covered every possible contingency in the all-important fuel integrity issue. We do not see how the fuel system could be any better. A fuel centrifuge like Alfa-Laval’s of comparable physical size to our system, filters fuel at about 7-14 perent the rate, has high-speed moving parts and is three times more costly. No contest. 

5. Judy Waldman, jwyachts@comcast.net (954) 895-8844.