Nordic Tug 44

A Winning Platform for adventures near or far.

- Gary Reich

If you visit Maine by boat, you’re apt to tie up somewhere and try a lobster roll. Philadelphia is the place to grab a slip and then a cheese steak at Pat’s or Geno’s. On Chesapeake Bay, the Maryland-style crab cake provides plenty of reason for a day trip. Yes, wise men have always known that the search for great food and boating go hand in hand.

With that theme in mind, Nordic Tugs invited me to the Chesapeake to run its stout and capable 44 Fly bridge, a semi displacement passage maker with long distance voyaging in its DNA. We tossed around ideas such as motoring to St. Michaels, Maryland, for an oyster festival or cruising to Annapolis for hot steamed blue crabs. “Nope, that won’t do,” I piped in, and we set a course to legendary Faidley’s Seafood inside Baltimore’s Lexington Market. “Trust me,” I said. “Those guys know how to do a crab cake right.”

CASTING OFF

Bill Boyer from Wilde Yacht Sales, a Nordic Tugs dealer in Essex, Connecticut, met me at 8:30 AM. at Osprey Point Inn, Restaurant and Marina on Swan Creek in Rock Hall. It was a beautiful, crisp autumn day. The shoreline woods and marsh grasses provided a vibrant yellow and gold backdrop as we tossed the lines, boated the fenders and got underway. Though the Nordic Tug 44 is a heavy, full keel, single-screw boat, maneuvering her out of the slip and into the marina fairway was as easy as I’ve found it to be aboard many joystick-driven boats. The close-quarters handling is thanks to well-placed bow and stern thrusters with progressive controllers that provide increasing amounts of thrust the farther you press the switches. A flock of Canada geese soon escorted us out of the creek before a wading great blue heron saluted our arrival in the open Chesapeake.