BUILT FOR ADVENTURE

IT'S ONE THING TO DREAM ABOUT CRUISING OFFSHORE; IT'S ANOTHER THING TO BUILD A BOAT THAT CAN MAKE THAT DREAM COME TRUE.

- KIM KAVIN

If Mother Nature had been less obstinate, Miles Cherkasky might have continued to sail. ¶ "I've been sailing since I was probably 14 years old, almost half a century of sailing," he says, now in his 60s. "One day, I was doing a delivery from Baltimore down to Miami Beach where we have a slip, and there was no wind, and I was sitting there listening to my engine run, and I couldn't go anywhere, and I thought, 'This is stupid. Time to get a trawler.'" But what kind of trawler? He and his wife, Laureen, knew they liked longer-distance, offshore cruising-after Miles retired back in 2007, they bought a 47-foot high-performance sailboat and cruised it from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas a few times-but they weren't quite sure how to achieve a good cruising experience in a powerboat. That is, until the day Miles helped with the delivery of an Outer Reef.

¶ "When they came out of the inlet, Miles was putting away his cup of coffee, getting ready, thinking there were going to be all these waves and it would be sloppy, but nobody around him was moving or getting prepared for these big seas," Laureen recalls. "The ride was like glass. When he came home that day, he said, We have to get an Outer Reef." ¶ Just like that, the Cherkaskys became members of a club that has grown almost exponentially in recent years, as an increasing number of boaters realize they can live their long-distance cruising dreams with the kinds of creature comforts that used to be limited to land. Today's offshore-capable power yachts for cruising couples and families, built by companies such as Outer Reef, Nordhavn and Kadey-Krogen, are being built for go-anywhere adventure.