There’s a desk in HAPPY’s guest cabin… It’s a small detail beside the tall bow, flybridge, and stack, but quite useful if your idea of living aboard includes answering emails and checking stock prices rather than permanently abandoning civilisation, as tempting as it may be. You could spend a summer moving between harbours, work when you need to, then clear the desk when friends come to stay.
HAPPY is a 2004 Nordhavn 47, hull number 16, offered by Jeff Merrill Yacht Sales for $849,000 (link to listing below) in Southwest Harbour, Maine. JMYS says her second owners have had her for 12 years, cruising the Atlantic seaboard mainly in summer and keeping her in heated, covered storage in Maine over winter. It’s a pleasingly ordinary use for a boat with such a purposeful appearance: go somewhere, stay a while and enjoy being aboard.
A silhouette that makes sense
Look along her grey hull, and you can see how much of her shape is devoted to shelter. The bow rises well above the aft cockpit, with substantial bulwarks forward. Above it sits that forward-raked pilothouse glazing, followed by another level for the flybridge and its hardtop. She isn’t trying to conceal any of this behind a low, sporty roofline. That is not what Nordhavns are about.
The starboard side-deck profile explains the arrangement particularly well. There’s overhead cover, an overhead handrail, and steps leading forward toward the Portuguese bridge. Aft, the boat deck extends over the cockpit, creating another sheltered place to sit and enjoy the view. The tender lives upstairs on the dedicated boat deck, rather than occupying the outdoor space where you’d like to have lunch.
That height gives her a busy and meaningful profile, especially around the stack and flybridge, but the long dark window band helps tie the white superstructure together. She looks like a boat designed around what actually happens when you spend weeks aboard, not just the view from the quay.
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Where the 47 fits
For those who might be new to the explorer yacht scene, Nordhavn’s story began with Pacific Asian Enterprises moving into displacement motor yachts with the Nordhavn 46 in 1989. The Jeff Leishman-designed 47 followed in the early 2000s. HAPPY’s brochure records her builder as PAE/South Coast Marine in Xiamen, China, with a solid-fibreglass hull.
The 47 is now a retired model. Her hull also provided the basis for the later 52, which developed the layout and gave owners a larger cockpit. That makes the 47 an interesting place to look if you like the family’s raised-pilothouse arrangement without automatically moving up a model.
Two cabins, rather than a floating guesthouse
The accommodation plan gives the owners an island queen berth with access on three sides, while the forward guest cabin combines a double berth with that desk. There are two heads and a separate pilothouse watch berth. For a couple with occasional visitors, it’s an attractive division: somewhere to sleep, somewhere to work and somewhere to keep watch without turning the saloon into a makeshift cabin.
The equipment list is equally domestic. A Miele electric cooker, oven and dishwasher sit alongside Sub-Zero refrigeration, with a separate washer and dryer aboard. Outside, the advertised 14ft Novurania tender has a 60hp Yamaha outboard and its own crane. That’s useful equipment for spending time away from a berth, although the domestic comforts bring electrical demands of their own.
JMYS currently advertises a 7.5-knot cruising speed and a 9-knot maximum. Her main engine is a 174hp Lugger, backed by a separate 40hp Yanmar wing engine. The distinction between having a second means of propulsion and duplicating everything the main engine does is worth exploring before you get carried away with the shopping list.
This article continues below, in “The Wardroom”, because my premium subscribers make it possible to feature boats like this one. You will find no adverts here, and I choose all the boats I feature based on their capabilities rather than advertorials. So if you are a paying subscriber, or you become one, then I would like to say a massive ‘thank you!’
In the premium section, I cover:
- The dry stack and keel cooler: what they change about the main engine installation.
- The wing engine and hydraulics: how the propulsion and hydraulic power arrangements differ.
- Living aboard: the practical jobs before relying on the equipment list.
- Maine ownership costs: seasonal berthing, shore power and local servicing rates.
- My honest assessment of the bigger alternative: what another $526,000 buys through the same broker.
What the machinery buys you
HAPPY’s engine installation deserves a closer look because the useful details go well beyond the 174hp on the spec sheet…[article continues below]
