La Nostra will be our home on our upcoming voyage. The name La Nostra is Italian for "she's ours". Here's some detail about her; for the nautically-challenged, I'll keep it simple.
La Nostra is a 2004 Grand Banks Heritage 46CL Trawler. She's 52 feet long overall and 15 feet wide. With full fuel and water tanks she weights in at just about 50,000lbs. She's powered by twin 450hp Caterpillar diesels and has a top speed of 21kts (25mph) and at reasonable power settings of about 10kts she has a range well in excess of 1000mi. Most of the voyage will be covered at speeds of 10kts or less. A few stretches of open ocean will be encountered while crossing the Gulf of Mexico and along the upper East Coast (Atlantic Ocean) so the added speed potential will be comforting.She's very well equipped for comfortable long distance cruising…..with emphasis on COMFORT. She has two full bedrooms, each equipped with their own showers and heads (boater-talk for bathrooms). And I might emphasize they are quite roomy. She has a full galley (kitchen) including two refrigerators, deep freezer, microwave convection oven, 3 burner stove, ice maker, and twin stainless steel sinks. Directly above the galley is a convenient 2 seat dining area. The main cabin has a large "L" shaped couch, twin barrel chairs, pilates workout chair (Ronda will cover that one), large fold-out dining table, wine rack (of course), and a retractable flat screen TV. She has her own self-contained satellite dish for TV, cell phone and internet connection so we should never be intentionally out of touch. Note the emphasis on "intentional". If you don't hear from us for extended periods, there's good reason!!!! She's also equipped with both heat and air conditioning plus her own diesel powered generator so we can generate our own electricity to keep the air conditioning (or heat) on, hot water flowing, lights and TV, etc. while underway of away from shore and at anchor. She even has her own washer and dryer. Lots of storage space. So much so that I'm still looking for thinks I stored aboard her last year. She has a full compliment of Ray Marine electronics including: G.P.S. (Global positioning system) radar, chart plotter (electronic display that shows buoys, navigation channels, etc.) sonar (depth gauge and bottom contour display), autopilot, VHF radio, and digital fuel management display. She has both upper and lower control stations, which mean in warm sunny weather we can be driving her from the upper station on the open fly bridge and if the conditions turn lousy we can go down below and drive her from the comfort of the main cabin.
Stored atop of the aft cabin is a 10 foot inflatable zodiac-type dinghy with a 15 hp outboard motor. This can be deployed by an electric crave system and is used as our "taxi" to get to shore when we're anchored out.
The big difference between a trawler and a conventional "motor yacht" is that trawlers are really designed to be lived on over extended periods. Where the typical motor yacht is designed for flash, speed, etc. they lack the rugged build, living accommodations, stability and range/endurance for long distances. People have actually crossed oceans on trawlers and many voyages choose a trawler as their primary home.