Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Soundings

One Saturday morning in July a few years back, I cleared New Jersey’s Manasquan Inlet only to be swallowed in an unpredicted wall of fog a mile off the beach. My radar gave me a good view, so I headed offshore to get away from the numerous bottom-fishing boats that were behind me. I don’t like fishing in a fleet, and I figured I could work some of my hotspots without having to worry about all of those weekend warriors in my boat’s wake. When I had arrived at a good location, my crew got to work coaxing fluke to take interest in hooks sweetened with fresh smelt and squid strip combos. The fog was still present and had blanketed all sound in a curious way. With the Caterpillar diesels…

Heather Doyle is building a volunteer army to help prevent shark attacks in Massachusetts waters, and the next platoon she hopes to enlist are recreational boaters and anglers. “We don’t want to know every time somebody out on the water sees a shark, but we do want to know when they’re nearshore,” says Doyle, who cofounded the nonprofit Cape Cod Ocean Community in spring 2019 after a series of shark attacks. “Boaters know, especially around here, that there are a lot of sharks.” The number of reported shark attacks has risen in recent years near Cape Cod, including a great white attacking two female kayakers in 2014, a shark biting into a paddleboard in 2017 and the fatal mauling of 26-year-old boogie boarder Arthur Medici in 2018—the first deadly shark…

When buying a new boat, or repowering an older one, consumers seem to have more outboard options than ever. It used to be that outboards were all about the horses, but today’s outboards might have digital controls, more powerful alternators, joystick controls and features that were not imaginable when motors were simply designed to turn the propeller. “A decade ago, outboards were all about speed,” says Ry Landry, product education manager at Yamaha Motor Corporation, “but what you’re starting to see now is a big spread in the benefits an engine can deliver. It actually comes down to how and where you use the boat. Fishermen might go for maximum power because they want to get out to the fishing grounds faster, while a boater who intends to spend more…

One thing leads to another. For John and Laurie Gray, it was a voyage on the Great Loop that turned the veteran cruisers into liveaboards, moving from recreational tugs to a husky, 39-foot trawler. “We started planning for the Great Loop in 2006,” says Gray, 66, who lives on Hat Island near Everett, Washington. “We did the western half in September 2008 and liked it so much that we knew we wanted to do the whole adventure.” The decision fit right into the natural progression of John’s boating life. He started out sailing a Sabot, an 8-foot-long mahogany pram that his father built, and went on to crew on sailboats. “I resumed boating some years later when Laurie and I moved to Puget Sound and started a family,” he says.…

This delicious launch is design No. 88 from Nat Benjamin at the Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. Her name is Toast, and she is a descendant of Baguette, a motor launch that Connecticut boatbuilder Jack Wilbur created in the 1980s. “It’s such a fun boat to go out for lunch or a sunset cocktail,” says Abby Boal, who owns Toast with her husband, Jeff. “We can get her into pretty shallow areas all around Narragansett Bay. She’s such a fun, happy little boat.” The Boals commissioned Toast after seeing Baguette, which Gannon and Benjamin rebuilt to use as a workboat after Wilbur died. No plans existed for the original design, so Benjamin drew them. He kept similar dimensions—Toast has a length overall of 23 feet, 6…

VINTAGE MOTORS The Pine Tree Chapter of the Antique Outboard Club of America gathers an eclectic, fun-loving group of gearheads—primarily from Maine—who enjoy collecting, fixing up and running antique outboard motors, some of which are more than 100 years old. The group’s YouTube channel, PineTree Boating Club, aims to inform enthusiasts about everything from meetups to the special tools, techniques and tricks one might need to get a clunky old motor back to its original glory—or simply get it running again. There’s something here for beginners, experts and every do-it-yourselfer in between.…

The town of Gibsons sits on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, just 10 miles from Vancouver, but they might as well be a thousand miles apart. Rocky inclines, mountain passes and deep-water channels make it cost-prohibitive to build a road or bridges between the two locations. It requires a ferry or floatplane to get to Gibsons. Water is everywhere, which is why boats loom large in this maritime community of 4,900 residents. Coastal Craft President Jeff Rhodes grew up on the Sunshine Coast. “My family has been here since the early 1900s,” he says. “Even though it is the mainland, it’s like living on an island.” Rhodes started his working life on fishing boats and as a young man captained tugs and barges to Alaska. But in 1996 he transitioned from…

Sharon Peaty has been on the water her entire life, thanks in part to her father, John Peaty, who has, as he says, “always been a boatie.” She started out sailing as a kid and then moved up to dayboats as an adult, most recently a Sea Ray bowrider. When Sharon was ready to transition into a larger vessel to push her cruising boundaries in the waters off Sydney, Australia, she consulted her father for advice. The 42-year-old IT business owner takes after her father in that respect. He has owned a number of boats throughout his life, continually trading up over time. “I think the old saying is you need a foot of boat for every year of your life,” he says with a chuckle. That has been true…

A fleet of catboats from the Quincy Yacht Club in Massachusetts beats to windward in this big, bold, 23x40 oil painting by Richard Loud. But there’s more to “Catboats Racing off Cape Cod” than just an exciting scene. The work speaks to the artist’s boating heritage, from which his inspiration is derived. Richard Loud is so familiar with catboat racing history that he can almost reach out and touch this scene from the 1920s. “I was a member of the Quincy Yacht Club back in the 1960s,” the artist says. “I remember the old images on the wall of the racing cats.” He also remembers the sights and sounds of his father’s Quincy boatyard, where the youngster learned boat design and construction from the ground up. Back in the 1920s,…

This early twentieth-century image from Red Cross magazine illustrates a story on lifesaving. While the exact location of the scene is obscure, the chronicles of the lifesaving crews’ heroics during the age of sail are well known. But, what about the boat? What kinds of craft did these life savers use to brave storms, surf, wind and waves to rescue those in peril on the sea? Early life-saving began on a regional basis with volunteers using local craft in local waters. The Massachusetts Humane Society, formed in 1786, set up a station on Nantasket Beach, and shortly afterward volunteers saved five crewmembers from the sinking ship Emeline and a dozen more from the wreck of the Mohawk. Standardized rescue craft came with the establishment of the United States Life-Saving Service…

Kelvin Franks says his wife pegs the effort at about $30,000 over four and a half years. He doesn’t think he spent quite that much, and he’s not sure about the amount of time, since he’d occasionally take a month off to do other projects. But he knows what he has today: a 15-foot boat he built from scratch that somebody just offered $80,000 to buy. “I told him I just finished it—I’m not selling it,” Franks says. “But that was a good note.” Franks, a retired mechanical engineer who lives in Duson, Louisiana, started building Drift Wood while killing time during consulting work for an oil company. He was surfing online and came across plans for the Glen-L Ski King. He thought it might—with modifications—be a good tender to…

The clouds looked sinister. On land, white puffy clouds against a dark blue sky are pleasant. But 40 miles off Hatteras Inlet in North Carolina, with the wind blowing spray off a boat wake, they appeared evil. Standing on the bridge of Release, a 50-foot Carolina sportfish, I watched two rods bend under the pressure of high-speed lures. Next to me, Capt. Rom Whitaker powered the boat through the chop at 14 knots. In the cockpit, a half-dozen anglers held on and watched the lures. A few minutes into trolling, we saw what we’d been waiting for. One of the rods bucked heavily followed by a blast of spray in the distance. For a split second, I spotted a silver and blue torpedo in the white water. With line leaving…

Carl Herndon worked with Bertram Yachts in the 1960s when the Bertram 31, with its radical deep-V hull design, was changing the face of small-craft design. By the ’70s, Herndon had design ideas of his own, and in 1973 he left Bertram to start his own company, Blackfin Yacht Corp., in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His plan was to improve on the deep-V hull, and he tapped designer Carl Jannace to help him achieve that goal. The result was a 29-footer with a deep-V hull featuring wide strakes and chines for added lift, plus a sharp entry that quickly transitioned toward the 21- to 22-degree transom deadrise. With its low freeboard and low center of gravity, this first Blackfin earned a reputation for its dry ride and solid performance in a…

It’s about a two-block bike ride from Bill Pinkney’s house in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, to the marina where a 44-foot Norseman catamaran is moored. He knows the boat well. Until the pandemic crushed the charter boat industry last year, he and his wife, Migdalia, led charters aboard it for a Chicago-based partner. Now, Pinkney is “a boat nanny” instead. The pandemic also crushed the partner’s business, so he sold the boat, and Pinkney is looking after it for the new owner. “That’s the way it goes—first your money, then your clothes,” Pinkney laughs ruefully. It is that quick, wise sense of humor about the vagaries of boats and life that makes Pinkney seem 85 years young. (Nor does it hurt that the former professional limbo dancer can still cut a…

So, how do you keep your propeller free of marine growth? For Onne van der Wal, the answer is Propspeed. Onne used Propspeed on his 1972 Pearson 36 sailboat, Snoek, and the foul-release coating lasted about three seasons. “Every time I dove on the boat this gold and shiny propeller was staring at me.” Onne had tried other products to keep Snoek’s propeller clean, but nothing really worked. “Every time I pulled the boat there were barnacles,” he says. Knowing that Snow Goose, his 1986 Grand Banks 32, isn’t exactly a speed demon, and that he would need all the performance he could get from his prop, Onne called Propspeed’s Keith Mayes. Mayes provides technical and sales support for Propspeed and teaches boatyard employees how to apply the coating. The…