Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i PassageMaker

Since this issue arrives during Halloween season, I can share a scary tale that brought me face-to-face not just with witches and goblins, but also with the very sea gods themselves. It all began with a phone call, from which I emerged horrified. Appalled to the point of being speechless. I was, in the British vernacular, gobsmacked. My friend Jon had acquired a new-to-him trawler yacht, and I had asked him when he planned to christen it, thinking I needed to find a suitable gift for the event. “Nah, I’m not gonna bother,” he said, sending me into my shocked state before adding, “I’m going to save the champagne for us to drink.” Jon not only was going to sneer at one of the most sacred of boating customs, but…

Reusable water bottles. “It killed us to see all those plastic bottles being thrown away.” Clothespins. “The few that came with the boat were in constant demand for hanging our wet clothes out to dry.” Favorite coffees or teas. “The number of Starbucks in the BVI? Zero.” Waterproof phone cases and dry bags. “We almost lost some of our tech for good.” Personal koozies or Yeti cups. “With eight of us on board, we were always losing track of whose drinks were whose. Fortunately, we knew we were all Covid-negative.” Big straw hat. “Because who doesn’t need your own personal, portable sunshade?” Waterproof bandages. “The ones in the first-aid kit kept falling off in the water.” Handheld VHF radio. “It’s a small amount of luggage space to sacrifice for total…

The Moorings The Moorings is a well-known bareboat brand worldwide, with bases in all the premium cruising destinations: Florida, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. The Moorings also offers a solid lineup of power catamarans that range from 42 to 53 feet length overall, and that have three or four staterooms for cruising with family and friends. Crewed charters are also an option, if you want to relax as a guest instead of handling the helm. Crewed bookings come with a captain, chef, all meals and beverages, a fully stocked bar and more. moorings.com Southwest Florida Yachts Southwest Florida Yachts has been offering charter options for more than 35 years. The company has a trawler-heavy fleet that includes Grand Banks, Mainship,…

BEGINNINGS I have always had an affinity with all things water, both on and in it. My boating evolution started with a 16-foot, half-cabin trailer boat used predominantly as a dive boat. We put many sea miles under her hull, traveling to some of the great diving locations on the New South Wales coast. On the journey to our current boat, we owned a Huntsman, two Bertrams, a Riviera and a Halvorsen Island Gypsy 40 aft cabin. The Island Gypsy was the catalyst that saw us become coastal passagemakers. THE BOAT Our journey to our current boat started around 2012, when we stepped on board a Fleming 55 on display at the Sydney, Australia, boat show. Love at first sight, showstopper, drop-dead gorgeous all sprang to mind at the same…

When struggling to remove a prop or deal with a difficult-to-rotate shaft, you might be tempted to hold the shaft with one of these tools. Scars and imperfections in the underwater portion of a shaft can lead to microfracturing (the formation of minute cracks), eventually leading to a shaft failure. Additionally, the scars can set up tiny variations in voltage potential, leading to pitting corrosion and weakening of the shaft. For more DIY tips, visit passagemaker.com/tips…

A few years ago in Bimini, we met a couple on a smaller boat who seemed quite apprehensive about making the crossing back to the U.S. mainland. They asked if they could buddy boat with us. I said fine, but “you need to make your own weather decision” and—you should have seen their faces when I added—“as long as you understand that basically we will be there to rescue the survivors.” In talking with them, we realized that no matter what kind of problem they encountered, regardless of wave and wind conditions in the middle of the Florida Straits, they expected us to be there to fix it for them, or tow them to the United States. These are surprisingly common expectations among people new to buddy boating, and it’s…

Cormorant 555 New from Poland, the Cor555 is intended for cruisers who value large interior space in a boat that’s capable of shorthanding, without sacrificing safety and performance at sea. The “trawlerly” Cor555 is built under CE certification A class, with a low center of gravity for stability and a tall, raised bow to help keep the decks dry. A pair of 330-hp John Deere engines adds reliability. tinyurl.com/bss75nke Back Cove 372 “Over time, the Back Cove 37 has become one of our most beloved models. In 2020, the production molds used to build the 37s finally surrendered to boatbuilding wear and tear. We took this opportunity to reexamine the 37 with owner feedback and our recent design advancements in mind. We recognized that the resulting boat really deserved its…

Dynamo Too LOA: 45ft. 1in. DWL: 38ft. Beam: 13ft. 10in. Draft: 4ft. 8in. Displacement: 39,000 lbs. This design was a commission by my friend Bob, a resident of my home waters in the Pacific Northwest’s Puget Sound region. The boat is modeled after one of my favorite designs, the Dynamo by William Garden. Bob also loved the Dynamo’s design, but he wanted me to convert Garden’s traditional plank-on-frame construction to my preferred construction method of stitch and glue with cold-molded plywood. Everything else, including the interior arrangements, would remain the same. Bob thought the original Garden design was brilliant in its intent. I knew Garden and his designs well, and I visited him many times before he died in 2011 at age 92. Garden was an absolute genius with the…

Charts are about to change in a big way. The paper charts we’ve used for decades are going away. So, too, are their electronic cousins, called Raster Navigational Charts. That leaves us only with vector charts, otherwise known as Electronic Navigational Charts—and we’re at a point in the changeover process when every boater needs to contribute information, to make these charts as good as they can be. To understand why, you have to learn a bit about the technological evolution that got us here. We now have GPS on our helm electronics, tablets and phones, but GPS only tells us where we are, not what’s there. We had raster charts to tell us what’s there, but in the early days of chartplotters, the raster chart file sizes were far too…

History books credit the advent of modern charter in the BVI to a New Jersey dentist by the name of Jack Von Ost. He founded Caribbean Sailing Yachts in 1967 in Tortola with a fleet of 16 Capri 30s. He also initiated concepts such as owner lease-back programs and on-site provisioning before handing over his bookings to The Moorings in the early 1990s. But locals say there was another man before him, a man you’ve probably never heard of. His name is Paul Gouin, and in 1966, he was the first to advertise charters originating in the British Virgin Islands. “I shipped three boats from France to Puerto Rico ahead of the winter season in 1966, then single-handedly sailed them to Tortola to rent them,” Gouin says. Gouin was 23…

With boat shows ramping up again, cruising enthusiasts will be out in force to see the fresh crop of new and previously owned trawlers. I never tire of wandering from dock to dock. If you’re anything like me, you use these shows as an opportunity to get aboard as many boats as you can. The starboard side of the brain admires the styles, while the port side collects feature ideas for the future. Shopping for a new boat is, of course, as much about your cruising plans as it is about the boat. Do you simply want something fresh and new? Have you decided to travel to distant waters and explore different horizons? Perhaps the family has outgrown your current boat? Has a bucket list of destinations become the new…