Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Soundings

Anative of Camden, Maine, Steve White enjoyed a connection to the sea long before his tenure as president of Mystic Seaport. He grew up sailing with his grandfather and made two trans-Atlantic crossings on a sloop before launching a career as an educator. The former headmaster of Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts, White instituted an ambitious strategic plan and grew the 151-year old junior boarding school’s endowments. In January 2009 White came to Mystic, Connecticut, and tackled his leadership role at the seaport with vigor, focusing on a new strategic plan, fundraising and the development of the museum’s educational programs. The restoration of the Charles W. Morgan had already begun, but it was White who convinced the board of trustees that America’s last wooden whaleship should go back to sea…

S hortly before taking a software analyst job with Microsoft in 2001, Brian Trautman walked into the Bellevue Pubic Library just east of Seattle. He discovered Three Years in a Twelve-Foot Boat, Stephen G. Ladd’s book about a 15,000-mile sailing voyage through South America. “After that I was hooked on sailing, completely obsessed,” says Trautman, 40, who grew up in landlocked Flagstaff, Arizona. The book gnawed at him during his time at Microsoft. The obsession followed him to his own consulting firm, where he clocked 70-hour weeks. “I was wrapped up in things that don’t matter,” he says. “Everything I was doing was targeted towards work. I needed to start living a little more.” He bought a daysailer and taught himself to sail around Seattle. He busied himself with Dove by Robin Lee…

Steve Dashew’s FPB long-range cruising powerboats can claim the 78-foot sailboat Beowulf as their mother. Dashew designed this slim ketch in the late 1990s. Kelly Archer Boatbuilding in Auckland, New Zealand, built her of aluminum, which Dashew left unfinished to reduce maintenance. Bare marine-grade aluminum protects itself with a layer of oxide that forms over time. The painter, in this case, is Mother Nature. Beowulf is the last — and the pinnacle — of Dashew’s sailboat designs, and she is his favorite. She benefited from all the lessons he learned designing and building the series of relatively narrow, lightweight, easily handled fiberglass sailboats marketed under the Deerfoot and Sundeer names. Dashew’s goal for these designs was safe, comfortable, efficient and reliable long-distance voyaging. The FPB (Functional Power Boat) line shares…

LET THERE BE LIGHT Of the dozen historic lightships that remain, WLV-612 is one of the more notable. Built in 1950, she spent nearly 20 years stationed off California’s Golden Gate as the San Francisco Lightship, then served off Cape Mendocino as the Blunts Reef Lightship. She transited the Panama Canal for deployment off Portland, Maine, as the Portland Lightship from 1971 to ’75, then was reassigned as the Nantucket Lightship to mark Nantucket Shoals from 1975 to ’83. Decommissioned in 1985, the 128-footer was meticulously restored as a private yacht and outfitted with a master stateroom, five guest staterooms, a grand saloon with dining for 12, a library and an entertainment room. She’s listed with Nicholson Yachts in Newport, Rhode Island, for $5.2 million. nicholsonyachts.com MAINE’S PROMETHEUS George Washington…

It’s arguably one of the most recognized sailboats. The Sunfish — 13 feet, 9 inches of fun — can be found on beaches and bays and lakes around the world, with more than 300,000 built. In fact, the Sunfish has a place in the American Sailboat Hall of Fame as the “most popular fiberglass boat ever designed.” The Sunfish story starts in 1946 in Waterbury, Connecticut, with carpenters Alex Bryan and Cortlandt Heyniger building iceboats and rowboats under the company name Alcort. While working on a rescue surfboard for the Red Cross (which the Red Cross rejected), they came up with the idea to put a sail on their wooden board. They later added a rudder and daggerboard for better sailing, gave it a cockpit and more beam, and called…

Al Grover was having a midlife crisis. It was 1985, and the affable 58-year-old family man with a marina business in Freeport, New York, had developed an itch. “I’d been going to work for 30, 40 years,” he says. “I wanted something a little different.” His hankering had developed a distinctly Norwegian flavor. As an Evinrude dealer, Grover had learned a lot about the company’s founder, Ole Evinrude, who was born Ole Olsen in Norway and immigrated as a child to the United States. Promotional videos and marketing materials about its founder got Grover thinking: Why not cross the Atlantic and voyage to the Evinrud farm — the site of Ole’s birthplace and his namesake — powered only by outboards? Grover thought this radical plan would be good for business,…

Oil Painting by Neal Hughes The pale light of a new day falls on a skipjack lying alongside a wharf on Maryland’s Eastern shore. It’s early morning at Dogwood Harbor on Tilghman Island, and all is quiet aboard the Rebecca T. Ruark. It’s a moment captured in oils by Neal Hughes, the New Jersey-based artist known for his realist seascapes. Dawn is sometimes called the “golden hour,” he says, when warm and tranquil colors can make a painting more interesting than work done during the middle of the day. “My objective was to capture the light and color being reflected on the boats, water and landscape while the sun was first starting to rise,” Hughes says. “The colors are so rich during the sunrise and sunset … so the painting…

SPECIFICATIONS LOA: 49 feet, 4 inches BEAM: 15 feet WEIGHT: 34,750 pounds DRAFT: 3 feet, 6 inches POWER: twin 435-hp Volvo Penta IPS 600 SPEED: 32 knots top, 25 knots cruise TANKAGE: 400 gallons fuel, 80 gallons water, 50 gallons waste PRICE: $1.25 million (estimated) CONTACT: Cruisers Yachts, Oconto, Wisconsin, (920) 834-2211. cruisersyachts.com The 50 Cantius from Cruisers Yachts replaces the 48 Cantius — the first model in the line, introduced seven years ago. The Wisconsin builder says this is an improved secondgeneration express coupe with a third stateroom, a galley-up saloon and a larger cockpit. “With a yacht like this, overnight accommodations and daytime entertaining are very important, and the changes we’ve made really make the 50 Cantius more versatile and user-friendly in these areas,” says director of marketing…

WATER FRONT REAL ESTATE • LUXURY HOMES “Ayear-round home with lots of space inside and out for family and friends” is how Nikki Joffe describes the waterfront house she and her husband, Michael, own in Toms River, New Jersey. The couple purchased the four-bedroom, two-and-a-halfbath ranch in 2006 because it was near the beach, offered quick boat access to Barnegat Bay and had a mother-in-law suite. Now their sons have grown and Nikki’s mother-in-law has passed, so they want to downsize but stay in the area. Their 75-by- 100-foot property, which has an attached oversized garage, pool, 75 feet of vinyl bulkheaded lagoon frontage and a dock with water and power, is on the market for $487,500. Steps lead from the parking area to the upper-level front porch, which opens…

NEWS, EVENTS, PEOPLE VICTORY AT LAST Armel Le Cléac’h crossed the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne, France, on Jan. 19 to win the Vendée Globe after placing second in the last two editions of the solo nonstop race around the world. The Frenchman covered 24,499.52 nautical miles in 78 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes, breaking by 3 days, 22 hours, 41 minutes the record that Francois Gabart set in the 2012-13 race. The Gulfstream 52 combines the 360-degree deck space of a center console with the benefits of a pilothouse boat, such as weather protection, air conditioning and heat. “Center consoles just keep getting bigger, and there are some great ones being built, but most have a layout that’s been used for decades,” says company founder and CEO Hunt…

TRENDS, ANALYSIS, PERSPECTIVE The storied Coast Guard cutter Tamaroa, which served with distinction for more than a half-century, will be remembered as an unrelenting workhorse as she goes to her final resting place as an artificial reef off the New Jersey- Delaware coast. Built as the Navy ocean tug Zuni and later refitted as a Coast Guard cutter, the 205-foot Tamaroa towed disabled warships out of harm’s way in the Pacific during World War II. In her ensuing 48-year Coast Guard career, she saved dozens of lives, including four Air National Guard airmen in the “No Name Storm” of Halloween 1991. The cutter crew’s heroism in that infamous North Atlantic gale was popularized in the book and movie The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger’s account of the loss of fishing vessel…

If you want adventure, what better way to find it than behind the wheel of a boat? Take a summer to explore the coast of Maine. Head offshore and land your first blue marlin. Dive for lobster in the Florida Keys. Paddleboard in the British Virgin Islands. Maybe cross an ocean or go on an Arctic expedition. The possibilities are endless. Many vessels could serve you well — it all depends on what kind of adventure you’re seeking. Here are three boats suited for a variety of escapades: a fulldisplacement trawler, a Down East-style express and an outboard-powered coastal cruiser. Imagine the adventures you could take … NEAR-COASTAL CRUISING LOA: 48 feet, 9 inches BEAM: 14 feet, 7 inches DRAFT: 3 feet, 3 inches DISPLACEMENT: 39,600 pounds (half load) FUEL:…

W e are en route to Panama from French Polynesia, heading backward against the prevailing winds and current. Just 840 nautical miles remain on this passage that began almost 4,000 nautical miles ago, off Raiatea. A strangely familiar bird is circling Cochise, our recently launched FPB 78. Here, so far from land, it is difficult to fathom that this could be an osprey — a raptor so concerned with efficiency that it carries its prey aligned with the direction of travel to reduce drag. You might say the sight is a metaphor for this voyage. Cochise is the first in a new series of FPBs (Functional Power Boats) and was launched just four months ago in New Zealand. She, too, is far from home and proving that she’s able to…

Mast wiring can become quite a bundle when all the necessary conductors and coaxial cable have to run many feet vertically. Navigation lights must maintain their visibility rating and require less than a 3 percent voltage drop in their conductors. This can lead to fairly heavy wiring between the power source (typically at the boat’s panel board), up the mast and back. Using LEDs can reduce current consumption and allow for smaller-gauge wire, which saves weight. Several manufacturers offer sheathed multiconductor cables. These are an excellent choice if the gauge is sufficient for your application. Supporting this bundle in the mast — while avoiding chafe, interference with halyards and noise from slapping wires — requires careful work. A lot of mast sections have an internal track to support the conductors.…

Garmin VHF Radios The VHF 110 and VHF 200 AIS marine radios complement GPSMAP plotters and multifunction displays, as well as integrating with Garmin systems via NMEA 2000. The VHF 110 has 25 watts of transmit power, Class D digital selective calling, NOAA weather alerts, position tracking and three soft keys. The VHF 210 AIS adds a built-in Automatic Identification System receiver and two-way hailer that can be connected to a horn or external speaker. $279 (VHF 110), $599 (VHF 210 AIS). Garmin, Olathe, Kansas. (800) 800-1020. garmin.com Wi-Fi/HDTV Antenna Shakespeare’s WebWatch is a combination Wi-Fi hotspot and high-definition TV antenna for on-board devices. It provides Internet access for as many as 32 users from nearby Wi-Fi, with a data-only AT&T SIM card or via cellular networks. For optimum connectivity,…

n Herbert W. Barbour opened his New Bern, North Carolina, boatyard on the Trent River in 1933, building and repairing small commercial vessels. It was a modest operation, catering to the local fishing fleet and harbor craft. Few could have foretold that decades later Barbour and his company would be hailed as a “vital force” that was “important to the economic landscape of coastal North Carolina.” Barbour Boats won a Navy contract to build rescue boats, then built wooden minesweepers during World War II. The company had grown to employ 1,200 people, and after the war it built tugboats for the Coast Guard and ferries for North Carolina’s Department of Transportation. But Barbour is perhaps best known for the pleasure craft it built — 16- to 21-foot powerboats with “lapstrake…