Michael Reardon’s Year of Living Dangerously

Catalina Yachts and Daedalus Close Doors. Can Tartan Survive?

Peter Swanson Nov 5

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This year has been an interesting one for boatbuilder extraordinaire Michael Alexander Reardon, to put it mildly.

Reardon is a native of Australia who has created an image of himself—cheered on by our slavish boating press—as a hugely successful boatbuilder with a reputation for technically wizardry. His resume, as shown below, includes employers such as Gunboat, Skagen and Greenline.

As we were about to publish, Reardon replied to a text message asking for his side of the story. You can read the interview here:

Q&A: Catalina Will Reopen, Reardon Says Peter Swanson   ·   2:22 PM Read full story

2025 Timeline

Reardon is arrested by police on February 5 for allegedly driving his unregistered car through a stop sign and speeding away from police “carelessly and heedlessly in willful and wanton disregard of the rights and safety of others.” (For the record, the North Carolina prosecutor dropped all traffic charges against Reardon without explanation.)

On April 11, witnesses say, Reardon attacks a worker on the floor at the Daedalus yacht factory. Reardon ends up on the ground when a second worker intercedes. A third worker videotapes the tussle, news of which will have an outsized effect on the future of the Edenton, North Carolina, builder.

Later in April, Reardon enters into a provisional purchase agreement with the California parent company of Catalina Yachts in Largo Florida. He takes ownership of the company with a requirement to make regular payments.

In late July, Reardon’s financial backer—and purchaser of the only boat under construction at Daedalus—had the vessel hauled out of the factory and put on a ship to France for completion there. There was a dramatic video on YouTube showing the move, copied here:

Best known as the inventor of Google Maps, Stefan Muff is advertised as Reardon’s partner in Daedalus. That carbon-fiber 100-footer above was being built for him and his wife, who visit frequently to check on the status of their boat.

According to former Daedalus employees, some of whom had formed their own relationships with the Muffs, the Swiss couple had been looking for a way to shed themselves of Reardon and Daedalus.

According to the ex-employees interviewed for this article, the fight on the factory floor provides the Muffs with a “last straw,” enabling them to nullify their contract. That’s when they take their boat and go back to Europe.

On August 20, the Daedalus workforce is furloughed. Owned by the Muffs, the factory itself is listed for sale for $3.5 million.

At some point in August, Reardon visits Anacortes, Washington, to discuss purchase of Tartan Yachts from owner Seattle Yachts. No one remembers Reardon saying anything about Daedalus going out of business. The sale of Tartan is finalized in September; the Ohio workforce is furloughed but returns to work soon after.

On September 4, Reardon visits the Catalina factory for a talk with workers who haven’t been paid in weeks. In an audio tape obtained by Loose Cannon, Reardon can be heard telling workers that he was “under huge financial stress” but there is hope because of an expected windfall:

I just delivered a 100-foot boat to France for Daedalus company. We haven’t received our final payment—as we should have—yet. A few technical issues need to be resolved on the boat.

According to ex-Daedalus people, “a few technical issues” was a bit of an understatement. The boat that had left the Edenton plant was just a carbon-fiber shell, months or maybe a year away from any seatrial that would precede delivery and any final payment from the owner.

(The total cost of the finished boat had been estimated at $35 million.)

On September 18, California Catalina files a lawsuit against Reardon for non-payment of rent for the Florida Catalina factory and, by default, the $1 million promised for purchase of company assets—real estate, tooling, etc.

Catalina Yachts Owner Evicted from Factory Peter Swanson   ·   Oct 24 Read full story

On October 14, the president of Catalina Yachts, Patrick Turner, is videotaped assuring workers that Reardon had “done his part,” trying to find an investor to keep Catalina going. According to Turner, Reardon had been dealing with an unnamed potential money-man who asked questions but did not commit. Turner announces that Catalina was shutting down “temporarily.”

On October 22, a Florida court grants California Catalina’s motion to have Reardon evicted from Largo premises, so no one except the family of late Catalina founder Frank Butler, or a successor company chosen by them, can reopen the plant. In the accompanying Q&A, Reardon says the plant will reopen but doesn’t specify how.

Meanwhile, the question has to be: With this kind of public record, who would ever be convinced to put a downpayment on a new Tartan? Reardon avoids answering that question in the accompanying Q&A with him.

Ken Bauer of the Catalina Owners Association has his own take on Reardon’s track record:

I get so frustrated when I hear people claim that Reardon is some sort of “corporate raider” or private equity guy. No, that’s giving him too much credit, because corporate raiders and PE guys know how to effectively plan for capital needs. They don’t make foolish mistakes like this. Reardon bought this company with no plan, and no clue how to make it work, and now everyone is screwed. This is the same guy, after all, who after many years has yet to deliver one single completed boat at Daedalus Yachts.

Investor Balked at Saving Catalina, Company President Told Workers (Video) Peter Swanson   ·   Oct 25 Read full story

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411 Walnut St. No. 1944, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043
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Right Turn, Clyde…You Too, Erin, Gabrielle, Humberto & Melissa

How Forecasters Knew They Would

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The author is a postdoctoral researcher at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division, University of Colorado-Boulder. This October 29, 2025 article first appeared in The Conversation and is reprinted here with permission.

By ETHAN MURRAY

Hurricane Melissa grew into one of the most powerful Atlantic tropical cyclones in recorded history on Oct. 28, 2025, hitting western Jamaica with 185 mph sustained winds. The Category 5 hurricane blew roofs off buildings and knocked down power lines, its torrential rainfall generated mudslides and flash flooding, and its storm surge inundated coastal areas.

Melissa had been wobbling south of the island for days, quickly gaining strength over the hot Caribbean Sea, before taking a sharp turn to the northeast that morning.

As a hurricane researcher, I work with colleagues at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory to improve predictions of hurricanes’ tracks and strengths. Accurate forecasts of Melissa’s turn to the northeast gave many people across Jamaica, Cuba and the eastern Bahamas extra time to evacuate to safer areas before the hurricane headed their way.

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Throughout 2025, most hurricanes similarly veered off toward the open Atlantic, sparing the U.S. mainland. To understand the forces that shaped these storms and their paths, let’s take a closer look at Melissa and the 2025 hurricane season.

Origins

Before they evolve into powerful hurricanes, storm systems start out as jumbled clusters of clouds over the open ocean.

Many of 2025’s Atlantic tropical cyclones began life far from the U.S. coastline in the warm waters west of Africa, near the Cape Verde islands. These Cape Verde hurricanes are consistently blown toward the United States, especially during peak hurricane season.

The driving force steering these storms is a hot, semi-permanent high-pressure air mass often found spinning above the Atlantic Ocean known as the Bermuda high or Azores high.

When this high-pressure system, or subtropical ridge, is positioned farther east, closer to the Azores islands, its strong, clockwise-rotating winds typically curve tropical cyclones briskly out to sea toward their demise in the cold North Atlantic. When the high-pressure ridge is closer to the U.S. and centered over Bermuda, it can send storms crashing into the U.S. coast.

Because that high-pressure system was positioned further east in summer and fall 2025, many of the season’s strongest storms, such as hurricanes Erin, Gabrielle and Humberto, swung east of the U.S. mainland. Combined with an active jet stream above the Southeast U.S., most tropical cyclones were steered away from the Atlantic coast.

The clouds that eventually became Hurricane Melissa traveled farther to the south, avoiding the Bermuda high and making their way into the Caribbean Sea.

Balancing Act

After a tropical cyclone forms, its path is guided by the movement of air surrounding it, known as atmospheric steering currents. These steering currents direct the forward movement of storms in the Atlantic at speeds ranging from a sluggish 1 mph to a blistering 70 mph or more.

Hurricane Melissa’s meandering track was determined by these steering currents. At first, the system was caught between winds from high-pressure systems to its northwest and southeast. This setup trapped the storm over the warm Caribbean Sea for days, just to the south of Jamaica.

As a tropical cyclone is steered by outside forces, its internal makeup also constantly evolves, changing how the storm interacts with its steering currents.

When Hurricane Melissa was a weak, lopsided system, it didn’t receive much of a push from its upper-level environment. But hurricanes draw energy from warm water, and Caribbean sea surface temperatures have been rising. As Melissa gained strength from very warm ocean water below, it grew taller. Like a skyscraper reaching high into the air, major hurricanes like Melissa have towering thunderstorms and feel more of a push from upper-level winds than weaker storms do.

Melissa’s center also became aligned vertically, allowing the tropical cyclone to rapidly intensify from 70 mph to a staggering 140 mph sustained winds in 24 hours, and it would continue to strengthen.

Eventually, the precarious atmospheric balancing act holding Melissa in place collapsed. A ripple in the jet stream known as an atmospheric trough steered the hurricane to the northeast and into the Jamaican coast.

Melissa’s snail’s pace of about 2 mph was rare but not unheard of. Slow storms like Melissa are more common in October, as steering currents are often very weak or pushing in opposite directions, which can trap a tropical cyclone in place. Similar steering currents affected Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Tragically, stalled tropical cyclones often bring prolonged rainfall, winds, flash flooding and storm surge with them. The wind and downpours can be extreme for mountain communities, as their high topography enhances local rainfall that can trigger mudslides and flooding, as Jamaica saw from Melissa.

Better Forecasting

Meteorologists generally understand how atmospheric steering currents guide tropical cyclones, yet forecasting these wind patterns remains a challenge. Depending on the atmospheric setup, certain hurricanes can be harder to forecast than others, as changes to steering currents can be subtle.

New approaches to hurricane track forecasting include using machine learning models, such as Google DeepMind, which outperformed many traditional models in forecasting storm tracks this hurricane season. Rather than solving a complex set of equations to make a forecast, DeepMind looks at statistics of previous hurricane tracks to infer the path of a current storm.

NOAA Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance data can also accelerate progress in predicting tropical cyclone paths. Recent tests show how accounting for specific measurements from within a hurricane can improve forecasts. Certain flight patterns that Hurricane Hunters and drones fly through strong hurricanes can also improve predictions of a storm’s path.

Scientists and engineers aim to further improve hurricane track and intensity forecasts through research into storm behavior and improving hurricane models to better inform the public when danger is on the way.

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411 Walnut St. No. 1944, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043
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