About the Boat
Wind River is a Hallberg Rassy 43 MK I (Mark 1), built in 2005 at the eponymous shipyard’s Ellös, Sweden facility. She is a sailboat designed for ocean crossing with a high degree of safety and comfort, with 9000+ boats built to date. This particular yacht is a triple spreader, masthead rigged sloop with an in-mast furling mainsail, a furling 110% Genoa, and a furling staysail. She features the rarer hard dodger option which provides for additional safety, quiet and comfort in the cockpit. As with all Hallberg Rassy’s of this period, the decks are teak, although this deck is vacuum-bagged which means no screws through the deck.
Below decks, the boat is powered by a Volvo Penta D2-75 engine with a shaft driven folding propeller. An 8kW Fischer Panda generator provides electrical power when at anchorage, supplemented by solar panels on a bimini. Creature comforts include air conditioning (used sparingly), washer/dryer, watermaker (converts salt water to drinking water), two heads with stand-alone showers, two refrigerator/freezers, saloon seating for eight people, and sleeping berths for six.
Prior to embarking on this voyage, Wind River was retrofitted with the latest navigation and safety equipment. Her standing rigging (the steel cables that hold up the mast) and electrical systems on the mast were replaced in 2022, and new ocean-worthy sails commissioned.
About the Skipper
Raffi came to sailing in his early thirties while working overseas. His original interest was in aviation, a field in which he specialized and worked for 10 years and subsequently returned to and learned how to fly. There are many similarities between aviation and sailing; both manipulate the air, after all.
A 15-year career in the information technology followed, until late 2023 when he decided to take a two-year sabbatical and put Wind River to her intended use. Original plans for a longer voyage and circumnavigation of the globe were scaled back to a circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean. The voyage has thus far taken Raffi and Wind River from San Francisco to Southern California, onwards to various ports of call in Mexico, French Polynesia, Fiji, Guam, and Japan (starting in Okinawa and sailing north to Hokkaido). A single-handed, non-stop journey from Hakodate, Hokkaido to Sidney, British Columbia is planned for late June 2025. A San Francisco homecoming will follow later in autumn.
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