When Nordhavn says their boats have global reach, they aren’t just talking about how their vessels are set up to explore the furthest corners of the world. In fact, Nordhavn 86 Pirate Radio takes this statement to a new level. The N86 was sold to her fifth owner earlier this month, an Australian who brings the cycle of multi-national owner representation full circle. For certain, Pirate Radio has had universal appeal: buyers from four different countries have claimed ownership with numbers two and five hailing from Australia.
Her latest owner traveled half-way around the world to purchase her in Florida in early December. But now she’s on a container ship headed back to his native land where she no doubt will be at home. It’ll be an advent 15 years in the making for Pirate Radio who spent a good chunk of her earliest cruising days strutting around the Gold Coast. She is Nordhavn 86, hull # 4, and she’s lived a storied life, having cruised 30,000 miles all over the globe. Built in 2009 by an American, she later sold to her first Australian buyer – who sailed her as Mystic Tide all around Oceania. Her third buyer was a Spaniard who took ownership of 86#4 in Australia but did most of his cruising around the Balearic Islands. He christened her Arquimedes and used her extensively before she was brought back to America a few years ago and sold to her fourth owner, a Canadian. It was this owner who christened her Pirate Radio. He put her on the market earlier this year and Nordhavn salesman Garrett Severen, who had sold her a few times before, had her under contract with what he thought would be the
5th owner. Due to tax reasons, the buyer had to back out. The listing sat stale with another brokerage for most of this year but Severen took it back in November. He needed just a few weeks to sell the boat that he was so familiar with – this time to its second Australian owner.
Despite the many miles under the keel and 4,700 hours on the engine, the boat showed impeccably and surveyed nearly flawlessly. While Pirate Radio passed her seatrial with ease, her international pedigree meant she was in Florida under a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) bond, a complicated process dictated by US tax regulations. Severen was able to work with US Customs to clear the boat out of the FTZ in the Bahamas and get her ready to begin life back on the other side of the globe, where more worldly adventures await.