Belisama

Belisama is a 1987, 37 Foot Long Albin Trawler, Palm Beach Model.

We purchased her in late June, 2025 through Maple Leaf Yacht Sales. She has spent a considerable part of her life on Georgian Bay in the Port Severn and Midland area. The previous owners had her for over 20 years. It is obvious that she was well loved and they had lots of adventures aboard her.

As the new owners we will go on even more adventures and, at the same time, refresh the boat with some refurbishments and upgrades. More on that later…

Here’s a “shout-out” to Declan Bondy, the broker we dealt with. He works for Maple Leaf Yacht Sales in Midland. He is a wonderful guy – extremely patient and helpful through the entire purchasing process. We are really grateful for his support and assistance. If you are ever looking to buy or sell a boat we highly recommend him.

The Albin 37 Palm Beach has an interesting layout. Up top there is a spacious flybridge and helm station. Down below the main cabin area hosts the inside helm station and galley/settee. For sleeping it has a double cabin layout with the master sleeping cabin in the bow. The aft cabin is set up as a small den that can be converted to a sleeping cabin. The fore and aft cabins each have their own head. That’s really convenient when guests are aboard. We love to share our boating adventures with family and friends so a double cabin boat was a priority to us and having two heads is a bonus! As the old saying goes… two heads are better than one!

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The boat has twin Cummins turbocharged diesel engines plus an Onan diesel generator. The twin engines and a generator will be a new experience for me as our other boats have been single diesel engines.

I like the concept of twin engines for reliability and maneuverability. Santosha, our 34′ Marine Trader Trawler had a single diesel with a bow thruster. I got quite adept at handling her in tight spaces with the aid of the bow thruster. Ananda, our 36′ Nauticat ketch rig Motorsailer was also a single engine but had no bow thruster. I got quite good at handling Ananda in tight spaces but even so, there was more than one occasion when I had to make a few tries at docking before we were secure.

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Now that we have a twin engine boat (with no bow thruster) I am learning how to handle her in tight spaces by independently shifting each engine from forward to reverse – depending upon how I want the boat to move – to port, to starboard, forward or reverse. In theory I should be able to almost turn the boat in a full circle on its axis simply by strategically shifting each engine into forward or reverse. I expect the first few days going through the Trent-Severn locks will be interesting – to say the least!