royal
PASSAGEMAKER
{A PARK ISLE MARINE WINNER} 52
Story And Photography By ROBERT M. LANE
David and Linda Haywood eased their inflatable tender from a visitor’s
dock in Friday Harbor—a task made trickier by the small forest of pilings
supporting a large pier overhead—and turned out into the harbor where
their 52-foot trawler, Shamal, lay at anchor. As a guest aboard, I let them do
the work.
Just moments before, I had walked off a Washington State ferry from
Anacortes to keep a date for a tour of a Royal Passagemaker yacht built for
the Haywoods by Park Isle Marine, based in Sooke, British Columbia, on the
south tip of Vancouver Island. PMM writers do a lot of boat tours in a year,
and I think we all agree the best are those that involve owners who have
spent many hours under way and have impressions to share and revealing
stories to tell. I was looking forward to this one.
The Haywoods took delivery of Shamal in 2005, and she won the People’s
Choice Award at her debut at Trawler Fest in Poulsbo, Washington, that
year. They cruised her to Southeast Alaska in 2006. This would be a quality
tour, I thought: a yacht from a highly regarded Canadian builder with her
experienced owners aboard.
This was our first face-to-face meeting, and on one level we were getting
acquainted, linking names and faces after impersonal electronic
communications had arranged my tour of the boat. I also was wondering
silently what Ed Monk would have thought about this contemporary
cruising yacht built on the hull of a stout, ocean-going fishing vessel he had
designed nearly 50 years ago.
