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Due to life's vagaries and vicissitudes, I was warned that our test boat, a sporty little San Juan 30 with a super-gorgeous optional "wood package" (teak helm, sea rails, and seat caps), had endured more than a little wear and tear. For starters, she'd been trucked across the country from the Pacific Northwest for display in all of the major East Coast boat shows. And then, in addition to the two to three days of testing that San Juan honchos Don Campbell and/or Randy McCurdy regularly put on every new boat before delivery, she'd racked up a liberal slug of offshore hours traveling between shows, more hours doing demo rides, and, finally, once she'd been trucked back to San Juan's facility in Anacortes, Washington, even more hours at the hands of an enthusiastic new owner.
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"I gotta tell ya, Bill—the boat's not totally new," noted McCurdy with an apologetic grin after scrolling through the Yanmar dashboard readouts until he'd pulled up a reading of about 100 hours on the optional 315-hp 6LPA-STP diesels. He then jumped ashore to release the mooring lines that tethered us to the fingerpier. My wife B.J. settled back into the passenger-side seat; she'd come along to take pictures and enjoy the evergreen islands, snow-capped mountains, and dark-blue waters that make the Anacortes area so darn pretty. Meanwhile I took a moment to energize the Side-Power bow thruster (just in case) and consider my immediate surroundings.
Not totally new? Frankly, the vessel I was about to put the spurs to looked like she'd just been splashed that very morning. Every little detail was fresh and pristine. Clamp-curved, laminated-teak side pieces decorating the resin-infused windshield receiver sparkled with a luster that seemed a mile deep, thanks to the 12 to 16 coats of Sterling linear polyurethane that San Juan applies to all exterior wood trim. Teak dashboard panels and accent strips shone with equal splendor, as did the precisely joined optional table at the rear of the cockpit. Glasswork evinced a primo finish as well, whether I was eyeballing the rugged little foredeck, the creamy corners of the trunk-cabin roof molding, the cushion-covered engine boxes in the cockpit, or the aspects of the interior I could see through the louvered companionway hatch.
The teak decking underfoot had been expertly and elegantly bedded in epoxy (no old-fashioned screws and bungs to sweat and swear about), carefully caulked with TDS (Teak Decking Systems) SIS 440 caulk, and finished with the sort of machine-grade smoothness that characterizes megayachts, not 30-footers. What's more, the stuff was 5/8-inch thick, according to my tape measure. Plenty of beef there to withstand the occasional sandings necessary to keep teak decks looking sweet.
I bumped the starboard main into and out of gear to gauge the result. Our 30 responded with the vivacity of a thoroughbred. "Fairly deep gear ratio?" I theorized aloud. "Yup," McCurdy replied, "two to one. Pretty good-size wheels, too; she moves when you put her in gear." I swung a port turn at the mouth of our slip by forgoing a twin-screw pivot in favor of alternating usage of the mains, i.e. bumping the starboard engine ahead briefly, then bumping the port engine astern. The point, of course, was to keep the turn slow and measured, a pace I favor with unfamiliar vessels especially. Then I proceeded out of Anacortes Marina, again using alternating bumps to keep my speed down as well as steer and corner. In open water I shifted both engines into forward gear, switched to wheel steering, and steadily advanced the ZF/Mathers electronic throttles. Before long we were loping across expansive Guemes Channel at a cruise speed of 30-some mph.
"Wow!" my wife exclaimed as I leaned the boat into a hard-over right-hander that was every bit as graceful as it was thrilling. A guy waved from the bridge of a fair-size tanker pulling her anchors off in the distance. The Cascades swerved crisply across the windshield. And my focus narrowed for a few seconds the way it always does when you've got one hand on the wheel, the other on the throttles, and there's absolutely nothing else going on in the whole world. "Double wow!" I yelled as I brought 'er around for a wide-open dash towards the distant white flanks of Mount Baker.
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