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What
first grabbed my attention was the raw size of the Ocean Alexander 640
Classicco—she towered over everything else in the marina, including
the offices of Orange Coast Yachts, Ocean Alexander’s dealership
in Newport Beach, California. The second grabber grabbed me when Jim McLaren,
Orange Coast’s general manager, noted casually, as we approached
the stern of the Classicco, “We’ll take her out by ourselves,
Bill.”
I gave
the ol’ boy a sideways look. Sure, I’ve maneuvered much larger
steel-hulled vessels short-handed, or even empty-handed, with nary a fender
or fender-operator in sight. But usually the venue’s been just a
tad more expansive than the one we were strolling through, and the margin
for error a tad more expansive as well. This place was cramped. But more
to the point, with the tide at low-water slack, the fairway leading off
from the slips toward the harbor wasn’t much wider than what we
call a “crick” in North Florida. It was obvious, as McLaren
and I climbed onboard, that once the stern of the Classicco cleared the
finger piers bracketing it, some fast, major-league pivoting to starboard
was going to have to occur or else the bow was likely to prang the pricey
ranchero across the fairway, if mud didn’t overwhelm the bow thruster
first.
McLaren
flicked the start keys in the wheelhouse. Then, with the 800-hp Caterpillar
3406Es warming up, he stepped through the port-side wing door onto the
Portuguese bridge and disappeared, although I could shortly hear him throwing
off lines. “Need any help?” I yelled. “Nah,” he
replied. I stood in the wheelhouse for an additional moment, wondering
whether I was hanging out with an over-confident maniac or a boathandler
of rare skill and confidence. Then I hit the wing door myself to find
out.
“Hey
Bill, come on back here,” McLaren yelled from the cockpit, holding
up a gizmo the size of a handheld VHF. I soon discovered it was one of
two such devices onboard that offered instant, walkaround control of both
mains and a gutsy 25-hp hydraulic bow thruster. But what really rattled
the lid on my locker was a toggle marked “Stern Thruster.”
“The Classicco’s got a beauty,” McLaren said.
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Ocean Alexander 640 continued > Page 1,
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