Tartar’s owner, a well-known architect from Seattle, was an experienced sailor with plans to make trips to Hawaii and Alaska with his new motoryacht. It was quite new in those days to give the steel hull a special ‘preservation treatment’, meaning sandblasting the steel skin plates then immediately spraying on layers of special compounds. The specially constructed keel also served as a heat sink for engine cooling water. After the sea trial, Tartar spent the winter of 1967 in the Mediterranean and then left for her home port of Seattle.