Everett boat builders test craft around Vancouver Island

Another crew took up the challenge to race around Vancouver Island burning as little fuel as possible.

Rob Harty and Kim Stebbens, who own Everett’s ArrowCat Marine, made the 643-mile voyage in 28 hours, 59 minutes. They were joined by John Lundin, an experienced sailor who owns Bluewater Organic Distilling on the Everett waterfront.

“It was probably a little more extreme than we thought going in,” Harty said.

The trio made the trip Aug. 22-23. The hardest part of the voyage — the part that got their adrenaline going — came when they rounded the top of the island and headed into the wide open ocean.

Their boat — a 30-foot-long ArrowCat 30RS power catamaran called Waya — bounced up and down 6- to 8-foot-tall swells going as fast as 30 mph coming down the waves.

What made it worse was that they got to the area about 10 o’clock at night in pitch dark and headed through a heavy blanket of fog. They turned on a light, but couldn’t see much farther than the front of the boat.

In fact, the light just attracted a birds. They relied on radar and GPS.

“You kind of have to have faith in your navigation instruments,” Stebbens said.

It’s the second time this summer that a boat manufacturer took the challenge to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. The owners of Aspen Power Catamarans, a Burlington-based company that operated in Snohomish for years, made the first trip in June.

Pacific Yachting Magazine put out a call in April for boaters, boat builders and engine manufacturers to make the run to get people excited about pushing the boundaries of what can be done in a powerboat.

So far, the two boat builders are the only ones to take on the challenge, said Dale Miller, editor of the magazine, in an email.

“Our hope is that now that these two crews have proven that the challenge can be done, others … will give it some more thought over the winter and plan out a bid for next summer,” Miller wrote.

ArrowCat Marine has been in operation since 2007 and the company is approaching building its 70th boat. The company is headquartered in Everett, but also has operations in China.

Harty has worked for the company the entire time. Stebbens, who is retired from Microsoft, had bought a boat from the company in 2009. He liked it so much that he along with Harty bought the company two years later.

Stebbens met the previous owner, an expatriate living in China, at an exit on the M-1 freeway near Brisbane, Australia. They discussed the deal over a bottle of booze.

“He was leaving the country and he had to get rid of the bottle of Jack Daniels,” Stebbens said. “I wasn’t driving by the way.”

They decided to make the run around Vancouver Island this summer. Harty used to work for Larry Graf of Aspen. He heard about Graf’s trip through boating circles.

They’ve known Lundin for years. Stebbens and Harty signed their leases at the Port of Everett on the same day that Lundin signed his for the distillery.

“Rob and Kim and I share the business owner fraternity, but we’re also really passionate boaters,” Lundin said.

When Pacific Yachting made its challenge, they asked boaters with different size boats to make the run. Harty, Stebbens and Lundin decided to take on the challenge to travel around the island in a 30-foot boat with one fuel stop. Waya, the Cherokee name for wolf, is Stebbens’ personal boat. They added an expedition bladder tank for extra fuel for the trip.

They arrived in Victoria, B.C., on Aug. 21 and had a problem with the motor on their boat. But Sherwood Marine in Victoria was able to help them that night.

They left at 10:18 a.m. on Aug. 22 and traveled up the inside passage.

“Running up the inside of the island was just incredible,” Harty said. “The scenery was so dramatic and it was just flying by.”

When they rounded the top of the island, their GPS unit failed just as they face the steepest waves of the night. Stebbens was able to rig a back up.

Stebbens, who has made several trips through the open ocean in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and Lundin spent most of the time steering the boat.

“Boating is just an experession of all the skills you learn in lifetime: map reading, interpreting compasses, assessing weather,” Stebbens said.

They were hoping to make the trip with only the fuel they had on board. But they assessed their fuel on the back end of the trip and realized for safety sake they needed to stop in Ucluelet, a small community on the southwestern side of the island.

They only used 494 gallons of fuel and only two gallons from their refueling stop. That’s more than the 267 gallons used by the Aspen crew, but the ArrowCat crew made the trip 20 hours quicker.

They think they’ll take the challenge with a larger boat in the future. And will likely go around island on another trip to enjoy the travel.

“We don’t know how, but we decided half way around we were going to try it again,” Harty said. “And have more fun.”