Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i Soundings

We bought our first family cruiser at the New York Boat Show 16 years ago. My husband was working in Manhattan at the time, so he asked me to meet him at the Javits Center on 11th Avenue. I bundled up our two young children for the trip from Connecticut on a cold winter day, packed the stroller, filled the sippy cups and hit the road. Two hours later, our foursome was happily navigating the bustling halls of the exhibit space toward the Sea Ray booth. There we signed a contract for a Sundancer, rang the ship’s bell to ceremonialize the closing of the deal, and then climbed aboard the boat to take photos with friends who had met us there to celebrate what felt like a mini milestone for…

There are countless ways to monitor and predict weather online, but for some, wading through the many choices can be daunting. Are you a mariner who enjoys weather analysis and forecasting or the type who wants simple apps with colors and arrows? The key to getting concise user-friendly information is to finetune your own device to efficiently deliver the information you need. Most recreational boaters use a laptop, tablet or smartphone, relying on Wi-Fi or cellular broadband signals. Hopefully, Wi-Fi is available for planning purposes before you depart. Once you’re underway, coastwise at least, you still have a fairly good chance of accessing weather apps and forecasting sites with cellular broadband. Simple weather forecasting can be done using free apps, which offer straightforward weather research and computer forecasting models that…

The first time my family and I motored into Onset Bay in Massachusetts, we were traveling from Maryland to Maine via the Cape Cod Canal and needed a place to stop to await friends. We’d had a boisterous sail up Buzzards Bay and entered the canal on a tidal flume that roiled us north until Hog Neck, and the marks denoting the entrance to Onset, came abeam. The turn from the current-ripped canal into the narrow channel was suitably invigorating. If a boat can leave a skid mark, I’d swear ours did. But as soon as we’d cleared the first marks and backed off the throttle, there were deep breaths all around. The well-marked, if slender, channel led past gently sloping shorelines into a broad, beautiful bay. In the bay’s…

I’ve wanted to motor up the Hudson River for decades. So, when my brother Rik bought a 1989 Transworld 50 Fantail Pilothouse Trawler—the perfect miniyacht to cruise the Hudson—I proposed a leaf-peeping tour for October. My brother and his wife, Anne, were headed for Australia that month, but he directed me to their daughter Hannah—my niece—who lives aboard Consensus in Jersey City, New Jersey. Rik had spotted the fantail in the Soundings classifieds the previous fall, decided he liked it and proposed a deal to Hannah. If she paid the docking fees and shared the maintenance costs, he would buy the boat to cruise and she could live aboard the rest of the time. Hannah’s Manhattan lease was ending, and she’d just been promoted to be the Port Authority’s Environmental…

When Brunswick Corp., the parent company of Sea Ray, Boston Whaler and other brands, decided to hold a virtual boat show on July 21 and 22, Ritch Ragle and his team had to do something different: be available online to consumers in a newly organized way, for 12 full hours each day. Ragle is the director of North American sales and customer service for Sea Ray, which means he’s used to talking with consumers at places like in-person boat shows. But the level of interaction that happened during the virtual boat show, he says, was beyond anything he could have possibly imagined. People who may have lurked online saw so many other participants asking questions that they also jumped in. People who may never have attended an in-person show logged…

This vintage picture postcard from the mid-20th century depicts Pep’s Inn and Village, located on beautiful Lake Wallenpaupack in Pennsylvania’s Pike County. The owners of the establishment called it an “all-in-one” resort that offered the big three of summertime–fishing, boating and swimming–along with cottages and a colony cove of future home sites. Many people first experienced the joys of boating as youngsters on freshwater lakes like this one. Today, those people often recall stories of a father, grandfather or uncle who had a cottage on a lake and a rowboat, runabout or sailing dinghy to cruise. The hours spent fishing, water skiing or just puttering about with family and friends helped plant the seeds for a lifetime love of boating. It wasn’t always that way. In the early 1900s, America’s…

THE ALLURE OF FOG Of the many boats I wish I could own, I include the Pulsifer Hampton. The design is both simple and graceful, and the name conjures thoughts of New England waters. It was fun reading about that boat brand and its long history in Midcoast Maine in your September issue (“A Fox in the Fog”). Keep up the good work. It’s why I read Soundings. As you know, you don’t have to go to Maine to find yourself in the fog. I recall a flounder fishing trip I took many years ago on New Jersey’s Navesink River. When the fishing was done, we stowed our rods, pulled up the anchor and, surprise, looked up to see nothing but thick fog in every direction. As the boat swung…

SOUNDS FISHY There are approximately 33,600 fish species swimming around the world in both salt and fresh waters. Some are rather ordinary looking while others appear as if they came straight out of a nightmare. From tuna to triggerfish, the world’s waters host an amazing array of finned creatures to learn about. Author Helen Scales acquaints readers with some of the more interesting fish in her book Eye of the Shoal: A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything. As you may infer from the title, Scales aims to tell a fish story in her own way. She cleverly reveals some of the lesser known characteristics of fish, disproving their reputation as slimy, scaled beasts, and reinvents them as emotional, singing, thoughtful creatures. The book is an underwater journey…

Nothing comes easy in offshore fishing. The run is long, the waves are big and finding a fish in a million miles of ocean is hard. But there is a bluewater fishery with surprisingly easy entry. Two rods, a box of tackle and a thousand yards of line are all you need to deep-drop for swordfish. Up until a few years ago, most anglers targeted swordfish at night by drifting with rigged baits and bright lights. The tactic was marginally successful and not easy. Then, anglers in the Florida Keys developed tactics to catch huge swordfish during the day. They dropped rigged baits more than 1,000 feet to swords feeding near the bottom. Since then, the technique has spread around the world. Daytime swordfishing is especially popular in the mid-Atlantic…

A Chesapeake Bay waterman prepares his pound net off the Love Point lighthouse as a tropical storm bears down on Kent Island, Maryland, in Marc Castelli’s painting Discretion. “Leaving one’s gear in the water during such high wind and tidal events can destroy a pound net,” says Castelli, 69, who’s been painting scenes like this one for more than 30 years. “Discretion is the better part of valor.” The bay and those who harvest from its waters have been the inspiration for Castelli’s workboat paintings over the years. (He’s also well-known for his dramatic, colorful America’s Cup paintings.) “Working alongside many watermen while they go about their business is how I gather my material for paintings and drawings and articles,” he says. Castelli even works as a waterman at times…

Steve Morlock has been working on the water for about 40 years in roles that range from harbormaster to his job of the past 12 years, running TowBoatU.S. out of Oyster Bay on New York’s Long Island. In all that time, he’s seen plenty of things go wrong for all kinds of people aboard just about every type of boat. But he’s never seen anything like summer 2020. “It’s like Fourth of July every weekend,” he says. “When I pull alongside somebody who’s in trouble, it seems like I’m hearing it every day. ‘Oh, I just bought this boat.’ Or, ‘I’ve never had a boat before.’ My head has to be on a swivel. On more than one occasion this year, I’ve had to stop and reverse and hit my…

U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY’S PREBLE HALL Preble Hall is a naval history podcast produced by the United States Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. Interviewees include historians, practitioners, military personnel and a wide variety of other experts covering naval history topics from ancient to recent. The latest episodes include The USS Kirk and the evacuation of Saigon, Navy tattoos and the National Museum of the American Sailor, the Somers Mutiny and the establishment of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Persian Empire and its Navy, and plenty more. You can catch the episodes by visiting naval-history-lyceum.simplecast.com. TRAWLER TALK New from Soundings’ sister publication PassageMaker is the Trawler Talk podcast, which focuses on a variety of briny topics. Hosted by Passage-Maker’s Editor-in-Chief Andrew Parkinson, guests include weather wizard Chris Parker, electronics guru Ben…

IT’S FALL BOAT SHOW SEASON, but this year is different. Very different. The Covid-19 pandemic has made it challenging for companies to produce these events—a number of major shows were cancelled when we went to press—and while a few may get underway, not all boating enthusiasts are comfortable leaving their homeports to walk the docks in another locale. How, then, can those who are hungry for information on new models get their new-boat fix? Boatbuilders, dealers and Soundings have launched virtual boat shows where buyers can safely enjoy walkthroughs from their own homes and helms. Fortunately, there’s a lot to see, including these new models that are scheduled to launch within the next six months. 1 GRAND BANKS 54 Like its sisterships, the 60 and 60 Skylounge, the 54 rides…

A good boat is one that gets used, and the best boat gets used by the whole family. It doesn’t matter what kind of boat it is or what size; if it’s not at the dock, it’s doing what a boat should do–getting people out on the water. Scott Arnette’s 18-foot Maritime Skiff is a case in point. Arnette and his wife, Trude, have owned the boat for more than a decade. In that time, they’ve enjoyed the waters around New Jersey’s Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers and watched their four kids (now between 25 and 27 years old) develop their own love of boating. “The kids have grown up on the water, driving boats,” says Scott, a 58-year-old trial attorney in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey. “They’re on the boat with…