Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2015 i Soundings

To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim — the rocks — the motion of the waves — the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?” — Walt Whitman Yesterday — between writing a feature and closing pages of the August issue of Soundings, which you now hold in your hands — I dashed to the town hall to get paperwork notarized and sent it off to the documentation agent by FedEx. This morning I wired the closing money into an escrow account. As soon as the owner countersigns, I’ll be the happy owner of a 1988 Cape Dory 28 Flybridge. I’m not going to lie to you: There have been some bumpy moments getting here. In the spirit of summer, I will…

Test your knowledge with these Coast Guard license exam prep questions from the National Captain’s Institute captains.com 1. INTERNATIONAL RULES: What is the minimum length of a vessel that is required to show two all-around anchor lights? A. 20 meters B. 50 meters C. 150 meters D. 200 meters 2. INTERNATIONAL RULES: Two vessels are crossing in fog. Which is the stand-on or right-of-way vessel? A. vessel with the other on port side B. vessel with the other on starboard side C. vessel whose fog signal is heard first D. neither vessel 3. INTERNATIONAL RULES: You wish to pass a vessel in a narrow channel in international waters. You give 2 prolonged, 2 short blasts. He replies with 5 blasts. You: A. pass him slowly to starboard B. pass him…

I’ve always known about etiquette. I just haven’t been sure about how to say it. I don’t usually use French words, and I think etiquette is one of them. I took the language long ago in my small rural Southern high school and learned how to say “Polly voo Frances,” but that’s about it. I spent the first few weeks in class trying to figure out what it was that Polly did to Frances, but I finally came to the conclusion that since both of the ladies were probably French it had to be well beyond my experience level. In the many years since then I’m proud to say that etiquette has become very much within my experience level. Many of my learning experiences have been on the water. These…

Is there a gene for boating? Perhaps that would explain why in some families boating is a passion that spans generations, passed down from one to the next. William Moriarty remembers boating with his father and his grandfather while growing up in southern New England. “I have been on the water since I was a kid,” says Moriarty, 42, owner and president of operations at Bell and Williams, a Massachusetts-based debt-collection service. “We had a 26-foot Sea Ray and then a 34-foot Silverton. I remember having a good time all the time.” Moriarty later shared ownership of a 22-foot Pro-Line with his grandfather, an avid fisherman — and fishing is another passion that’s been passed along. Moriarty’s most recent boat was a 25-foot Pursuit. Now there’s a fourth boating generation…

Editor’s note: Last month’s column focused on initial preparations for a canyon run. In this installment, we look at the best ways to gather current offshore intel and the gear you’ll need, and run through some of the finer points of high-summer trolling action. As you prepare for your maiden run to the edge, keep in mind that you can run up a whopping tab on fuel alone. You’ll also need seven or more 30-to 50-class stand-up rods, trolling gear, hooks, sinkers, leader material, gaffs, gimbal belts and a couple of kidney harnesses. You’ll need hook baits, a minimum of a half-dozen flats of butterfish for chum, spinning setups and squid jigs to make live bait at night, a dip net … All told, the final tally for your provisioning…

Meet Capt. George Farnsworth. He was known as “Tuna George” to his fishing friends around Catalina Island, off Southern California. In the early 1900s there was no one who knew better how to catch ’em than this Connecticut-born charter captain. The pioneering Farnsworth was involved with the Catalina Tuna Club since its founding and helped many members to record catches, including the first-ever broadbill swordfish taken on rod and reel. And speaking of reels, he and club member William Boschen developed the internal star drag reel, creating a sea change in game fishing. Perhaps his most outlandish innovation was the kite-trolling technique. The kite was used to troll the bait — a flying fish — away from the boat to avoid spooking the quarry. And what was Farnsworth’s quarry? The…

Many salts in Soundings’ home port of Essex, Connecticut, remember the old Klang II, which resided at Essex Island Marina for years. The boat was last in town on a mooring until two seasons ago, when the birds nesting aboard and a ramming from a stray boat chased her to easier waters in Greenport, New York. Klang wintered at Schooner Wharf in Mystic, Connecticut, but she has such extensive corrosion and structural needs that ye little ship is now disabled for sea. The Schooner Wharf had kindly accommodated Klang until prescheduled boats came to stay for the season. Klang is now anchored in Mystic River Pond above the bascule bridge and just north of Mystic Seaport. The seaport declined our request to take a working dock to fix Klang’s problems,…

If you’ve ever been around the class of racing boats known as speed skiffs, developed along the New Jersey shore, you know that you can hear them coming long before you see them. There’s a lot of exhaust noise, of course, but the distinguishing sound comes from their traditional lapstrake hulls slapping the water, bass-drumming down the waterway. Jersey speed skiffs alternately rise and fall in a rhythm known as porpoising, named after the classic motion of the bottle-nosed marine mammal. The driver and throttleman sit in an open cockpit behind the engine, above the propeller shaft, with their backs against the transom. That’s the only location where they won’t be beaten to death, quite literally, from the incredible impacts and associated G-forces closer to the bow. Farther north, Maine-iacs…

Carolina Classic was known for its 25- and 28-foot express fishing boats when company president Marc Privott introduced a 35-footer at the 1997 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The boat was designed as a full-bore fishing machine. “Carolina to the core,” as Privott described it. Prices on the used market begin at $125,000 to $150,000 for early models and run up to $250,000 for more recent models. This past June, newly formed Edenton Boatworks acquired Carolina Classic and Albemarle Boats. North Carolina businessman Scott McLaughlin had acquired Albemarle in 2008 and Carolina Classic in 2011. McLaughlin merged the brands under one umbrella and sustained the businesses through the Great Recession.…

The extended flybridge has become a popular feature on motoryachts and large express cruisers as boaters spend more time together in this open area. Trawler builder Kadey-Krogen Yachts has been upsizing its flybridges to create what company vice president Larry Polster calls “social zones” — first with the 44 AE and 48 AE and now the 58 Extended Bridge. “We’re getting a wider variety of boaters used to spending a lot of time outside and not in a pilothouse,” says Polster. The Krogen 58 EB’s bridge area extends from the pilothouse windshield to the transom — enough real estate for a “summer kitchen” with a refrigerator and stove and plenty of seating. “We’re going for more of a patio layout and feeling,” Polster says. There’s room for a day head…

“I’ve always enjoyed the gorgeous view of Oriental Harbor,” says Alice Underhill, a 69-year-old former North Carolina state lawmaker who owns a waterfront town-home in the center of the village of Oriental, N.C. “It’s so relaxing to sit on our porch and just watch the water and the boats.” She and her husband, Reed, 72, a New Bern, N.C., physician, purchased their getaway in 2006, but now are downsizing. Their two-story, three-bedroom, 1-1/2-bath town-home with a two-car garage is on the market for $499,000 (the furnishings are negotiable). Dockominium slips ranging from 30 by 15 feet to 50 by 20 feet are available at the adjacent Oriental Harbor Place Marina. Former power-boaters, the Underhills now just enjoy the relaxing, boating-oriented ambience of the self-proclaimed “Sailing Capital of North Carolina,” where…

For decades, powerboaters have been satisfied with their wet bars, cockpit dinette tables, swim platforms and freshwater showers when they dropped the hook for a summer afternoon or spent an overnight in a new harbor. “But that’s not the extent of boating anymore,” says Tom Slikkers, CEO of S2 Yachts, builder of Tiara (and Pursuit) boats. “They want to day-boat, but also want to cruise for a weekend to some nook and cranny, and they want to have everything with them, like paddleboards, kayaks, folding bikes — you name it. How do you accommodate all that without hurting the boat’s natural look?” The Slikkers family has answered the question with the Q 44 — a highend sport utility vehicle of sorts geared toward active boat owners. Built on the same…

How many times this past week did you use the term polymath? Me? Less than once. It’s a word that is rarely used because people who know a lot about a lot are not en vogue. We are a society of experts who seem to know much about little and learn more about less until we know all about nothing. That, perhaps, is the pinnacle of expertise. It’s no different in yacht design. What once was the job of one guy now is done by an army of specialists: naval archtects, computational fluid dynamicists, performance prediction specialists, composite chiefs, electronic and software engineers, meteorologists, sailmakers. Back in the day, you had Nathanael Herreshoff, who knew everything about everything. And one of the very best at the design game but not…

The launch Vedette is bouncing across the water at 17 knots, en route to the container ship LOA, when the driver advises the pilot, who is soon to guide the 878-foot freighter out of Baltimore harbor: “Gusts this afternoon of 40 knots, Cap.” The pilot, Capt. John Traut, acknowledges this with a nod and adds, “It’s dropped out a lot,” for which they are both grateful. A few moments later the launch gently nudges the ship, and the pilot scrambles up the rattling gangway to be greeted by an AB (able seaman) in orange coveralls on the main deck. Identification confirmed, the young sailor guides Traut to the elevator and sends him up to the bridge with the third mate, who rubs his tired eyes and shakes hands. It has…

Modern marine engines have come a long way from the sputtering, oil-dripping beasts they used to be. Electrical systems with smart chargers, inverters and advanced sealed batteries are light years ahead of the leaky blocks of energy that used to start our engines and power our coffee makers. Despite these improvements, items still wear, and parts break down. The challenge for the vigilant boater is to monitor the vessel’s systems in a measurable way so you know when something is wrong before it keeps you tied to the pier on a beautiful weekend morning or calling for a tow when you’re adrift. Establishing a baseline In order to know when something is not running right, you have to first know what “right” is. That means establishing a baseline against which…