Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2020 i Soundings

Why is it that the sight of a boat under construction can stop so many of us in our tracks? Todd French has ideas on the subject, particularly now that the USS Sequoia, a National Historic Landmark, has arrived at his shipyard in Belfast, Maine, for a three-year refit. In this issue (page 60), French tells writer Kim Kavin that at a time when polarization is strong and politics so heated, people are finding the simple act of looking at a boat with a common history to be almost therapeutic. “The public is connected to it,” French says of the 104-foot former presidential yacht. “We’ve had so many visitors show up to view this project. They are just in awe, taking pictures. It’s like they’re coming to church.” Many people…

ADRIAN JOHNSON Marine Surveyor, West Mystic, CT Open and close all seacocks and use a flashlight to check them in both positions. ABYC standards require seacocks to withstand a 500-pound lateral load. With the boat out of the water, you’ll feel much better about pressing your foot against a questionable fitting to see if it fails from corrosion. In addition, grease and service all of the boat’s valves. If your boat has a balsa-cored hull and it hasn’t been surveyed recently, then consider hiring a surveyor to moisture-test and percussion-sound it. In sailboats, check the seam between the ballast keel and the stump or hull. Although light cracking and crazing in this area is common, a changing condition may indicate failure or weakness in the bolts or keel stump. Change…

There was something familiar looking about the Albemarle 31 DC when I got my first look during the United States Powerboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland. Maybe it was the dramatic wraparound windshield, which reminded me of Albemarle’s original 32 Express. Or, perhaps it was the almost-broken sheerline, another slice of Albemarle design DNA. Whatever it was that caught my eye, the North Carolina builder’s biggest dual console to date proved to be a different kind of Albemarle. The second and largest dual console the builder has launched in a year, the 31 DC ushers in more dual-console utility for the Albemarle lineup, joining its smaller sister ship, the Albemarle 27 DC. Inside the gunwales, the cockpit is transformable. Seats flip down from the transom and from the port side or…

Absecon Inlet in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is a place of penetrating contrasts. On one side of the inlet, gamblers press their luck inside shimmering, glass sheathed high-rises that reflect down onto the blue green water. Just across the inlet, to the north, pastel green grasses pulse in the breeze atop pearly white sand dunes, casting their own natural brushstrokes across the top of the water. The reflection that Sean Healey and I were casting onto the inlet waters was wholly unnatural, but just as beautiful and impressive. We were cruising out of a no-wake zone in a dark blue Valhalla Boatworks V-41, the flagship in a new fleet of offshore center-console boats that has been in the works for nearly two decades at parent company Viking Yachts. “Hang on,”…

Even Todd French, who knew something special was happening, wasn’t expecting this kind of a response. In October, the 104-foot USS Sequoia arrived at his French & Webb shipyard in Belfast, Maine. The National Historic Landmark had to be brought by barge, with her 1925 hull, a John Trumpy design, needing what French says will be a three-year refit to make her seaworthy again. Even despite her condition, hundreds of people showed up just for a glimpse of her—perhaps thinking about how President Franklin Roosevelt signed legislation on her aft deck, how President Kennedy celebrated a birthday on board, and how President Nixon decided to resign the presidency aboard this ship. “The hometown band came down here and played ‘Hail to the Chief,’” French says. “This is a much bigger…

In 1958, the American boat designer and engineer Jim Wynne teamed up with the Danish boatbuilder Ole Botved to make the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean with outboard motors. Piloting one of Botved’s Coronet cruisers, equipped with a pair of 50-hp engines, the two made it from Copenhagen to New York in 11 days. And they weren’t done making history. Wynne and Botved teamed up again, this time along with fellow engineer Charles Strang and Swedish engine maker Volvo Penta, to change the face of recreational boating with the Aquamatic. Strang was an MIT graduate who wanted to combine a marinized car engine and a trimmable, outboard-style drive unit. Boats could run the higher-horsepower inboard engines without using running gear, and the transom would be clean, with no cutout…

In 1620, a monohull sailing vessel called Mayflower, about 80 feet long, carried 102 passengers and some 30 crew from Plymouth, England, across the Atlantic Ocean to what would become known as the New World. Four hundred years later, another Mayflower, this one a 53-foot trimaran, is scheduled to make the same journey—driven by hybrid propulsion and artificial intelligence (AI), without a single soul on board. “The future is interesting,” says Brett Phaneuf, a founding board member of the nonprofit ProMare and co-director of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship Project, which began construction on the new boat in September. “Using this new technology and robotic systems, we can help to make everybody safer on the water, and we can learn more about our environment and become better stewards of it.” The…

Last week, I was kayaking on a remote paddling trail in the upper reaches of Florida’s Tampa Bay. I was about 2 miles from anywhere, deep in the mangroves and watching a pair of roseate spoonbills walking the shallows. I suddenly remembered where my VHF radio was: in my life jacket, along with my EPIRB. The problem was that I wasn’t wearing that life jacket; I was wearing one I’d pulled from a box in my garage. Admittedly, not much could go wrong in a kayak in 2 feet of water, but if something did, I was totally unprepared. Despite my experience and staunch advocacy of risk management, complacency is a constant battle. Nowhere is complacency more likely to occur than when you are on someone else’s boat. Whether you…

Kathleen Anderson and her boat Gremlin grew up together. In 1953, a month after Kathleen was born, the U.S. Navy motor whaleboat MWB 20039 showed up in her driveway. Her father, Burrage Larcom “Woody” Woodberry, had bought the boat as surplus. Woody and Kathleen’s mother, Dorothy, named the boat Gremlin. Almost 67 years later, Kathleen and Gremlin are still together. Kathleen’s father, a World War II U.S. Navy veteran who’d served as a machinist mate aboard a minesweeper in the Mediterranean, bought the 26-foot carvel-planked whaleboat for $150. MWB 20039 had been built in 1942 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire and served aboard a tug with the British Royal Navy as part of the lend-lease program. The tug towed artificial harbor components across the English Channel for…

Entry-level models are an important part of any boatbuilder’s lineup, even a luxury brand like Jeanneau’s Prestige. The idea is to design, equip and price models just right, so as to secure a customer for life—one who will trade-up through the model line over time. For years, the 420 Flybridge was that boat for Prestige. While there was nothing wrong with the model, its pod drives and interior layout priced it a bit beyond where Prestige needed to be to attract the most target buyers. So, the builder launched this version, which is new from the keel up. The boat feels familiar: It’s open and airy with many entertainment spaces. One of my favorite features on the last model was the electric grill at the transom, which was accessed from…

The forge was roaring and sparks were flying as the steel came out red-hot. With flip-up reading glasses on his nose and wearing a leather apron riddled with battle scars, the master worked fast, bent to the task. First, there was a pass with the steel brush before he placed the piece on the anvil with tongs and brought down a hammer in short, judicious blows. After a few seconds, he returned the bit to the fire. Blacksmithing is an ancient craft, and today, there are few people left who know and do it as well as 68-year-old Ed Louchard. Excelling in disciplines that include making knives, sailing hardware, blocks and sheaves, and working in wooden boatbuilding and yacht design, Louchard is one of the last masters of multiple crafts…

It’s cold. Really cold. Alaska cold. There’s a hint of sheet ice on the frigid waters of Coal Harbor on Unga Island, located in an arm of Zachary Bay at 55 degrees north, 160 degrees west. The sky over the eastern Aleutian Islands shows a thin, chill sunrise; the ship’s mainsail picks up the pale colors, reflecting in her wake. Snow-covered rocks form a winding channel that the broad-beamed, two-masted coastal schooner will travel with a light, following wind. Men are huddled aft, and another sailor trails in the launch, perhaps clearing ice from the bilge. The only sign of warmth comes from a yellow light shining through a window onshore. “This is a gouache study for a larger oil painting,” the artist, Don Demers, says from his Maine studio,…

Back in the day, ships were small enough for the bow lookout to turn, face aft and yell back to the mate on the bridge. A sailor would affirm the correct functioning of the navigation lights each day at sunset by shouting, “The lights are shining brightly!” I loved this old-timey routine. You can call me a nostalgic old toot, but I fondly recite the words under my breath before assuming a night watch to this day, no matter what boat I’m on. Checking to make sure your navigational lights are functioning every sunset underway is just plain good seamanship. This past summer, two recreational boaters were killed and three others were injured on the Great Lakes when a vessel collided with an unlit boat underway on a dark and…

There were plenty of catamarans at the 2019 United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, but the Eagle Class 53 was the showstopper. “It’s wild, isn’t it,” a broker for a nearby catamaran said to me as I was inspecting the boat. Sitting at the dock, the all-carbon, honeycomb-core catamaran, with its innovative hybrid-wing mainsail, C-foils, T-foil rudders, bowsprit, two forward steering stations and tall, raking rig looked like a hyped-up thoroughbred raring to get out of the gate. The boat’s wide-open layout set it apart, too. The on-deck salon with aft galley, bar seating and curving settees are all exposed to the breeze. An attractive hardcover provides shade and some protection from falling rain, but there are no walls or windows and the steering stations are so far forward…

About a thousand nautical miles up the Inside Passage and beyond, into Alaska’s waters, is a place that countless boaters dream of cruising. The region is teeming with whales, glaciers and scenery that towers high above the anchorages in majestic grandeur, but also presents the challenges of routine fog, 20-foot tidal swings, and distances between ports that are so long and remote, even the most experienced skippers can feel hesitant to leave the dock. Those challenges are why so many boaters from around the United States and beyond are booking bareboats as part of captain-led flotillas, says Brian Pemberton, the former-owner-turned-spokesman for Washington-based NW Explorations. The majority of the company’s bareboat clients who book Grand Banks, Ocean Alexander, Kadey-Krogen and similar boats, he says, are already boat owners themselves. Some…

A tugboat with a red hull caused a sensation at the Seattle Boat Show in 1980. The 26-footer from Nordic Tugs was so popular with boaters looking for a salty, seaworthy pocket trawler that 45 orders were taken. The recreational tug market was born. Soon, a Seattle, Washington, broker asked naval architect Jack Sarin, on nearby Bainbridge Island, to come up with a design for a similar craft. At the time, Sarin was known for his commercial tugs as well as for the Symbol and Vantare lines of yachts. Sarin’s recreational tug was a bit bigger than the Nordic Tugs 26-footer and took its look from the hardy Pacific Northwest fishing trawlers that plied waters as far north as Alaska. He called it the Sundowner 30. Two of the boats…

The summer-evening Severn River is smooth as glass, although the sky is its precise opposite, layered and looming with moisture laden, tropical clouds. In the distance over the Chesapeake Bay, rain is sheeting down, but it’s no matter for the guests aboard the Hinckley Talaria 44 Miss B Haven. They fly upriver past the U.S. Naval Academy, then back down into Annapolis Harbor for a star turn through “Ego Alley.” Ensconced in the cockpit, drinks in hand and worries elsewhere, they are enjoying the lively stories of Marianna “M” Belz, who brings them refills as needed. The surroundings are plush, and they are comfortable in the knowledge that David Strange, the boat’s captain, has everything well in hand. Rain, thunder or sopping wet cushions are someone else’s problem. They’re in…

There are a lot of questions to ask and answer when buying a used boat, especially an older one whose builder might be relegated to the pages of boating history. What’s the builder’s reputation? How many of its boats are still around? Does a certain model have design flaws or equipment problems? Can you still get parts? Who can do the repairs? Wayne Burstein asked all of those questions and more as he and Lisa O’Hara looked to replace their Chaparral 2500 SX Sport. “We made many boating and camping friends with that boat,” says Burstein, 63, from Oakton, Virginia. “As my children were moving on to college, Lisa and I were looking to do some longer-distance cruising, and a bigger boat made sense.” The couple didn’t want to invest…