Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2016 i Soundings

The most interesting yachting in local waters during the season was furnished by the new 30-foot class of the New York Yacht Club. — Rudder magazine, November 1905 The class was the New York 30, designed by Nathanael Herreshoff and launched at the company yard in Bristol, Rhode Island, as a fleet of 18 earlier that year. Today they are living legends, with many of the originals still sailing and racing — some with their original names — under the aegis of the New York 30 Class Association. At the time, NYYC members were looking for a racing boat that was smaller than the big schooners that were being sailed. Herreshoff produced a gaff-rigged sloop, 44 feet overall and with moderate overhangs and a fin keel. Measuring 30 feet on…

Finding a boat with historical literary significance these days is no easy task. Many boats that writers once owned have disappeared, lost to time or misfortune. Maybe that’s due to the chaotic and tentative nature of a writer’s life. Maybe that’s just boat ownership. Either way, few sailed by famed authors remain today. The two authors most associated with boats are Jack London and Ernest Hemingway. London is connected to four boats: a 14-foot sloop named Razzle-Dazzle, which he used to pirate oysters; a 35-foot sloop he converted into a yawl named Iris; the 30-foot sloop Spray, which he bought with proceeds from The Call of the Wild and aboard which he wrote much of The Sea-Wolf; and Snark, a 43-foot ketch. All four boats are believed to be gone.…

More Pumps Last month we examined diaphragm and centrifugal pumps. This month, let’s take a look at piston and flexible impeller pumps. Flexible impeller pumps are found on nearly every engine to supply raw water for cooling. They can self-prime and lift fluids, but since they rely on the pumping fluid for lubrication, they cannot run dry. The impeller is bonded to a hub that matches the pump shaft and can have a key, splines or other drive method. The impeller changes shape and, therefore, displacement as it rotates in the housing. Wear is accelerated when pumping sandy or muddy water, so the impeller, cam and faceplate are replaceable. Water leaking from behind the impeller housing usually indicates that the seal has failed, requiring a pump rebuild. When checking a…

In the beginning…. Brothers Scott and Elliott Davidson, as infants, were rocked to sleep cruising the Connecticut River from Portland to Niantic in their father & grandfather’s (Robert and Noble’s) 32’ carvel planked Chris Craft Constellation. The family’s recreation was quite contagious to the boys growing up and they were soon sailing and waterskiing. As teenagers, the family sold the Chris Craft for a 40’ 1929 Nova Scotian Ketch. The boys were involved in the maintenance and learned navigation the old fashioned way. At 17, Scott was Dock master at the Niantic Bay Yacht Club and successfully navigated the ketch (including thick fog conditions) numerous times to Block Island and Nantucket as sole captain and navigator. Younger brother, Elliott followed suit shortly and was soon involved in yacht handling, hauling…

Own A Piece Of History Cruiser, would-be circumnavigator, training ship — the historic schooner Highlander Sea has worn many hats in her 92 years. This 121-foot, 9-inch gaff-rigged schooner was designed by Starling Burgess in the Grand Banks tradition with a spoon bow, round bilge and full keel. Built in Essex, Massachusetts, by J.F. James & Sons, she was launched in 1924 with the moniker Pilot and served 47 years as a Boston pilot ship. In the 1970s she found a new owner who had an eye on a circumnavigation and got as far as Fiji. With another owner, in 1976, she became Star Pilot and a Coast Guard-certified school ship. Yet another owner in the late 1990s sailed her from San Diego to Nova Scotia, where she worked as…

My husband bought a J/24 when they first came out and was the first person to own one on Sodus Bay [Classics, March]. As a matter of fact, John believes he was the first J/24 owner on all of Lake Ontario. I wish we had a video of the delivery; those in attendance at the marina were stunned, with mouths dropped open, when the truck arrived. Ginny Fowler Sodus Bay, New York HEAT, NOT ICE I was struck by a stingray, and Mary South is right about the extreme pain — worst I’ve ever experienced [Underway, March, “Once More Unto The Beach”]. What every boater or swimmer should know is that ice does nothing to alleviate the pain. It’s crucial to apply heat or very hot water immediately. I have…

Few things fire the imagination like a mystery at sea, where distances are vast, the heart of the deep is fickle, and ships and crews meet their end in ways upon which we can only speculate. Ships are lost or abandoned; crews disappear; ghost ships drift through fog-shrouded water; skippers go missing or, as we have just seen in the news, are found adrift and mummified. In The Mirror of the Sea, Joseph Conrad writes: In the word “missing” there is a horrible depth of doubt and speculation. Did she go quickly from under the men’s feet, or did she resist to the end, letting the sea batter her to pieces, start her butts, wrench her frame, load her with increasing weight of salt water, and dismasted, unmanageable, rolling heavily,…

Boston Whaler 250 Outrage LOA: 25 feet, 5 inches BEAM: 9 feet DRAFT: 1 foot, 8 inches FUEL: 172 gallons POWER: twin 200- or 225-hp Mercury Verados, single 350-hp Verado SPEED: 52 mph top, 30 mph cruise PRICE: $110,506 (single 350), $125,252 (200s), $131,964 (225s) CONTACT: Boston Whaler, Edgewater, Florida, (877) 294-5645. bostonwhaler.com There’s nothing like the pull of a fish when you hook up, whether it’s a striped bass, dolphinfish, marlin or other gamefish. Adrenaline flows. Eyes focus. The brain screams, fish on! Landing the catch on slick-calm water, perhaps with a picturesque coastline within sight, doesn’t hurt, either. There are dozens of fishing boats out there, from 16-foot skiffs with 50-hp outboards to offshore convertible battlewagons that top 90 feet and are powered with twin diesels that pump…

By typical kindergarten standards, John C. Harris was sort of a weird kid. As a 5-year-old he preferred fiddling with the pencils, compasses and other drawing tools on his father’s drafting table to the more conventional childhood games his friends were playing outside. And when his classmates were drawing engineering schematics in high school drafting class, Harris’ frustrated teacher simply left him alone to design and draw what he was completely obsessed with: boats. Almost three decades of scribbling and designing later, Harris today owns and runs Chesapeake Light Craft, a woodenkit-boat company based on the shores of Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Maryland. The company has an enthusiastic, cult-like following made up of thousands of amateur garage, basement and backyard boatbuilders. And if there were any doubt about the popularity…

SPECIFICATIONS LOA: 20 feet, 9 inches BEAM: 8 feet WEIGHT: 2,400 pounds DRAFT: 1 foot, 2 inches HULL TYPE: deep-vee TRANSOM DEADRISE: 20 degrees POWER: single 150- or 200-hp outboard SPEED: 44 mph top, 28 mph cruise (single 200) FUEL: 90 gallons PRICE: $64,900 CONTACT: USWatercraft, Warren, Rhode Island, (401) 247-3000. uswatercraft.com A Rhode Island boatbuilder will launch the second generation of its North Rip 21 this spring, improving a seakindly deep-vee center console. USWatercraft has closed the transom and moved the outboard to an Armstrong engine bracket, freeing cockpit space for a live well and storage while making the boat drier and safer, says Max Buerman, the chief financial officer and a company partner. “The 21 is versatile, perfect for the bays and capable of heading offshore,” says Buerman.…

If there’s one thing that brings people together like the dinner table, it’s a boat. It’s where you can disconnect from the day-to-day and reconnect with your loved ones. Whether it’s the perfect day with the family or a cocktail cruise with friends, there’s no place you’d rather be than on your boat. Leisurely BBQs and days spent on the water are times and memories that can’t be made anywhere else. MarineMax Vacations, the fastest growing charter company and a division of MarineMax, offers you the industry’s newest, most luxurious fleet from the world’s most experienced boating company and voted the best BVI Charter Company, 2015! We know boats, but that is really because we are boaters ourselves. We truly understand how meaningful it is to be out on the…

The Florida Keys, circa 1960. This is the boater’s version of the American Dream. Dad has fired up the grill, and sister stands by looking stylish in her pedal pushers. The swimsuited youngsters are surf-casting, with the old Seven Mile Bridge in the background. And here comes the picnic basket. It all looks familiar today, but in postwar America, this was a new way to go boating. Economic prosperity had created a middle class with leisure time on their hands and money to spend. And boatbuilders were ready with new technologies and new designs to get people on the water. The boat pictured here is a far cry from the double-and triple-cockpit mahogany runabouts of the 1940s. In those boats you climbed in, sat down and enjoyed the ride —…

The 450 Sundancer, the third model among Sea Ray’s next-generation coupe-style sport yachts, is a foot longer and beamier than its predecessor, launched in 2009. “With today’s boaters, it’s all about interior volume and space that’s comfortable and controllable,” says Ron Berman, Sea Ray vice president of product portfolio. “This is a new-from-the-keel-up boat and much different than the previous 450, having the ability to be completely enclosed or open.” The switch from express to coupe called for extending the hardtop and side windows aft, enclosing the deckhouse with sliding glass doors, and moving the galley and saloon up to the helm and companion area. A three-window opening skylight in the hardtop lets in air and natural light. “There’s no canvas to be dealt with,” says Scott Ward, senior vice…

Linda Greenlaw’s first experience with commercial fishing was during her undergraduate years at Colby College in Maine, where she majored in English and government. She needed tuition money, so she got a job as a cook and deckhand aboard the swordfishing boat Walter Leeman. She liked it and was good at it, and after school she decided to stick with it. Greenlaw went on to become the first female captain of a swordfishing boat on the East Coast — and one of the industry’s best. But that English degree wasn’t going to go to waste. Her appearance in Sebastian Junger’s book The Perfect Storm, which recounted the loss of the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail in a deadly storm, first brought her into the public eye. Publishers, ever on the prowl…

Simrad’s StructureScan 3D gives anglers a better understanding of where fish, bottom contours and structure are in relation to the boat. “It’s like walking on the bottom of the ocean and looking right and left and up and down,” says Dave Laska, owner of L&L Electronics in Branford, Connecticut. “Conventional sonar was like using a flashlight; this is like using a floodlight.” I checked out StructureScan 3D sonar on a 27-foot center console in the Florida Keys. The 278 Dusky Open Fisherman was tricked-out with the latest electronics from Simrad. Two NSS evo2 touch-screen systems with 16-inch multifunction displays anchored the console. Each was equipped with StructureScan 3D, which won an Innovation Award at the Miami International Boat Show in February. “StructureScan 3D can be used to aid navigation, but…

A squall. Two figures in a small boat. The mainsail is blown, the little craft scudding before the wind. Using a subtle gray-tone palette and an uncanny feel for the sea and its elements — wind, wave and weather — Winslow Homer created a story, a drama. Here is the moment when the sea gets the upper hand; the sailors are in trouble. It’s a feeling anyone who has been caught out can relate to. Few could depict the marine world better than Homer (1836-1910), considered one of America’s greatest Impressionist artists. His coastal views — painted around his Prout’s Neck, Maine, studio late in life — are perhaps his best-known works. But Homer worked prolifically over a lifetime, and his paintings also included such subjects as the Civil War,…

Let The Light Shine Larson Electronics’ RL-15-LED-CPR is a 15-watt rechargeable LED floodlight equipped with a USB cord and adapters for connecting it to a DC receptacle or a wall outlet. It generates 1,100 lumens of cool white light while drawing 15 watts. A rustproof die-cast aluminum housing and an impactresistant polycarbonate lens protect the LED assembly, and a magnetic base allows you to attach the light to any ferrous metal surface. It’s IP67-rated waterproof and contains a 3.7-volt lithium-ion battery that has a runtime of 4½ hours on a full charge. $56.25. Larson Electronics, Kemp, Texas, (800) 369-6671. larsoneletronics.com On Our Radar Furuno’s new DRS4D-NXT solid-state radar has pulse compression and Doppler frequency shift in a 24-inch radome. Designed to be used with NavNet TZtouch and TZtouch2 MFDs, it…

Jay and Bonnie Noonan’s home stands prominently above the harbor in the downtown Old Shipbuilder’s Historic District of Duxbury, Massachusetts. “History permeates this property,” says Bonnie, 71, an interior designer who owns an antiques business. “The 1831 section was built on the foundation of a 1700s home, and stones from the 1700s wharf still remain on our waterfront.” After decades in the house, she and her husband Jay, 73, an executive in a family business, want to downsize. They are offering their 6,600-square-foot, five-bedroom, fivebath home, which sits on 2 acres and has 90 feet of harborfront, a two-story garage/barn, a swimming pool and spa, for $5.5 million. The home epitomizes the town’s elegant charm during the early 1800s Old China Trade era. Extensive expansions, remodeling and updates exposed the…