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I have great memories of Montauk, New York. Among them was a day spent hunting for sharks off the point with a great friend who wasn’t a very good fisherman. But he was a licensed captain with a lot of offshore experience, a nose for navigation and a love for that salty port at the east end of Long Island. We left the dock in his sterndrive express cruiser. It was not quite the right boat for our mission, but it had rod holders in the gunwales so we could run a couple of trolling lines, and there was a belt for stand-up fishing tucked into a locker, in the event that we actually caught something. I didn’t realize I’d be in charge of chumming operations. But there I was…
INSPIRED BY WORKBOATS I loved reading about Sam Devlin’s Tugzilla 26 (pictured above) in your February 2021 issue. My wife and I are big fans of tug designs. We own a 21-footer (shown at left). It has a 90-hp Mercedes diesel engine and was active moving docks and smaller barges around the San Francisco Bay area before it was brought down to Southern California. Today, we enjoy cruising around places like Channel Islands Harbor in our boat. It has a very loud air horn that lets everyone know we are coming around the bend! THE CREW OF TRITONSANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA EDUCATION COMMITTEE In your February issue Gary Huge wrote a letter titled “Simpler Rules,” in which he asked for feedback to comments he made about how to simplify the boating…
Not many boats live to see a 90th birthday and look incredible for their age. An exception is Avocette III, the oldest-known Huckins in existence, a Fairform Flyer that was the predecessor to the PT boat designed by Frank Pembroke Huckins. This Offshore 48 was recently made over at Yachting Solutions in Rockport, Maine, where founder and CEO William Morong is quick to note you can’t call the boat a refit or a restoration. Avocette III is what he calls a “resto-mod” craft, which combines restoration and modernization at the same time. Avocette III made her public debut at the New York Boat Show in 1931. Soon after, she was bought by Fred Voges for $17,000. Voges, who served as the Commodore for the Port Washington Yacht Club on Long…
Starting this autumn, America will have another maritime high school, giving kids from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to learn about the fun of recreational boating, and about the opportunities to work and build careers on and near the water. Only a handful of maritime high schools exist in the nation right now; the standard-bearer is The New York Harbor School, founded in 2003 and now located on Governors Island, just across the water from the Statue of Liberty. The newest school will be on the other side of the country: Maritime High School, part of the Highline public school system just outside Seattle. The school is on track to open this fall with a single incoming freshman class, and then will add additional grade levels in following years, welcoming students…
Autopilots are highly advanced navigational tools. A good unit is obedient and unwavering in steering the intended course without judgement. That makes it incumbent on the boat’s operator to be a vigilant supervisor and to guard against complacency. We need to stay knowledgeable about autopilot efficiency and its limitations under varying conditions There have been many autopilot incidents over the years. Accidents and groundings occur because there is simply no substitute for keeping a good lookout and executing a safe voyage plan. Monitoring the performance of the autopilot and having the common sense to know when not to use it are just as important. There are plenty of YouTube videos that show boats being mowed down by other boats in flat water and perfect visibility. We watch them in horror,…
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING GLOBAL VOYAGERS Ben Brehmer and Ashley Stobbart have been sailing around the world full-time on their Lagoon 410 catamaran since 2016, traveling to 35 different countries and covering 40,000 nautical miles. They have filmed their adventures along the way, which are all documented on their YouTube channel Sailing Nahoa. In late 2019, the couple returned home to Canada to have a baby, leaving their boat in Thailand. When Covid-19 lockdown restrictions prevented them from returning and retrieving their boat, they spent the summer exploring British Columbia aboard a 1974 Westerly Cirrus 22-foot monohull with their newborn. Now, after a year, they are reunited with their cat and planning to travel from Thailand to the Maldives, Chagos, Seychelles, Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar and South Africa. MORE SALTY READS FAR…
