Nordhavn 51 Awanui NZ owners visit Nordhavn factory in Istanbul, Turkey

New owners, Mark and Fiona Rammell, visit the Nordhavn factory in Istanbul, Turkey to see their new build Nordhavn 51 AWANUI NZ for the first time © Nordhavn

Hi! We're Mark and Fiona! We are the proud owners of the future Nordhavn 51#1 Awanui NZ and we couldn't be more excited to take delivery of her, which will happen sometime around July or August.

We plan on the handover happening right at the factory in Turkey so we can get some expert training from the folks at Telgeren & Partners and then begin our cruising in the Med.

A lot has happened to get us to this point in time, T-minus three-ish months and counting until we officially become owners of the first ever Nordhavn 51. And honestly, there's still quite a bit that needs to happen between now and the time we're out confidently cruising the world's oceans, which actually is the whole reason this new section of nordhavn.com has been created. We plan on giving you a point blank, no-holds-barred view of what the searching, buying, learning, waiting, outfitting, planning, waiting, training, (did we mention waiting?) and actual cruising process is like. Thanks for joining us!

First, a little background...

We are lifelong Kiwis who have been together for 34 years (32 of them as a married couple) and we have 4 children: Ben (30), Christopher (28), Samuel (24) and Renee (22). Ben is with Anna and have gifted us with a granddaughter Lila (2) and a grandson Eddie (8 months).

Mark was an airline pilot for Air New Zealand for 34 years and took early retirement last October, following a couple of final special flights including bringing home Kiwis who were evacuating from Wuhan and repatriating German nationals to Frankfurt at the start of Covid. Fiona was a Maths lecturer (plus is a trained Lay Pastoral Leader) but gave it up to work full-time overseeing our bucolic event center, Aston Norwood.

Aston Norwood is 14 acres of gardens and a venue for weddings, accommodations, and dining within an onsite café. This kept us very well occupied and now we are wanting to shed the weight of the business onto our very capable children while we take off on our adventure of sailing the high seas.

We are both extroverts, hard-working and have drive. We started the gardens 25 years ago on an old dairy farm and put all our energy into running it. Well, Fiona has primarily run it, in addition to raising four kids while Mark was away flying long-haul. It was only when Mark started working at Aston Norwood full time last year that it became clear how much work is involved in the upkeep and how much effort Fiona put in.

Our lives together can be described as 'chaos and work'. We've never really sat still, because as well as building up the business, we also built five houses, including our own on the property. We've always had projects on the go. Even when we relax, we're active relaxers.

If we're home we can't stop working, so that is why we're going to pick up a boat in Turkey and spend three years sailing it home. It'll be interesting to see how we get on relaxing and not working.