Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i Soundings

Jim Eastland, whose Eastland Yachts brokerage firm in Essex, Connecticut, introduced thousands of people to the joys of boating, died April 19, 2021. He was 86. “It’s like there’s a hole now in the fabric of friendship and sailing here,” says Eastland’s longtime friend Mark Ellis. “It’s a loss to a broad piece of the community.” Eastland grew up in Westbrook, Connecticut, and was considered an athlete so gifted that when the U.S. Army sent him to Germany, it had him train others in competitive swimming and basketball. After returning from service, Eastland attended school for industrial design, and then got the boating bug while living in Westport, Connecticut. He started a dealership called Associated Yachts in Rowayton, Connecticut, in the 1960s, and then founded Eastland Yachts with his friend…

In mid-May, Homewood Resort’s Marina installed the first electric-boat charging station on California’s Lake Tahoe. The news is big. So big that Sean Marrero, president of Ingenity Electric, has a hard time containing his excitement. That’s because he thinks the charging station could become the standard-setting technology for similar stations all across the country. “I think it’s the first marine CCS charger that’s anywhere in the U.S. It’s the first one that I’m aware of,” Marrero says. “It’s showing you what’s to come.” CCS stands for Combined Charging System. It has a type of connector that, if an electric-powered boat is built to accept the connection, allows for rapid charging—basically, the difference between using a regular shorepower plug and having to let the boat charge slowly overnight, or using a…

Facebook sent me to Matinicus. When former Soundings editor-in-chief Mary South posted a spectacular photo of the Maine island that she sometimes calls home, I told her I might have to run my RIB out there for a lunch visit. But before opening my mouth, I should have done my homework. I knew Matinicus was out in the ocean, but a closer look at a nautical chart provided me with a bit of a shock. A straight run from my homeport of New Harbor, Maine, to Matinicus is 27 nautical miles in exposed waters. My 16-foot Zodiac, Bob, can do 30 knots, but not in a big chop or a short swell, and with Matinicus about 20 miles from the mainland, I pondered whether I was biting off a little…

Any sailor who’s dropped a chute in a close race, whether in a Blue Jay or a J-boat, knows the feeling. It’s show time—a time for crew work, handling sheet and guy, working the foredeck and steering in traffic. It’s the moment when leads can change hands and races can be won or lost amidst cries of “Starboard” and “Hold your course!” Marine artist Willard Bond—a member of The American Society of Marine Artists as a Signature Artist, Fellow and Fellow Emeritus who passed away in 2012 at age 85—captured it all in his 32 x 44 watercolor painting, “The Drop.” Using his trademark bold colors and strokes, Bond conveyed the intensity of racing around the leeward mark, action so familiar to sailors. Bond’s inspiration came from his love of…

This vintage card, postmarked in 1971 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is not only a nice shot; it captures some of the universal elements that make the boating lifestyle so appealing. First, there’s the boat. Whether it’s an open fisherman like this one, or a Hatteras motoryacht, a Hinckley Sou’wester or a Hobie Cat, the boat is the vehicle that gets us out there. The fish? The one in this image could be symbolic of the activity we enjoy when we’re on the water, whether we are cruising, day-tripping, gunkholing, wake-boarding or just watching the world at sea. We all have something we like to do out there. And, of course, there’s the water. The waves and winds that live where we do our boating are vast and sometimes overwhelming, but…

John Condon needed a few minutes to double-check the numbers. At first glance, it seemed incredible that in just two years’ time, the number of calls to TowBoatU.S. from boaters needing on-water help could have increased by 43.9 percent. But it was true. Last year, when the coronavirus outbreak led Americans to buy boats faster than they had purchased them in more than a decade, TowBoatU.S. experienced a 20 percent increase in requests for on-water assistance compared to 2019. That surge amounted to more than 81,000 requests in total during 2020. It was the highest-ever year-over-year jump. This year, requests for help are up again, another 21 percent compared to 2020 during May alone. That spike, along with figures from January through April, has TowBoatU.S. projecting 100,000 dispatches this year…

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING ONNE’S NEW GOOSE Onne van der Wal, the world-famous marine photographer, is at it again. A few years ago, he completely refitted Snoek, his 1972 Pearson 36, which was featured in PBS’ special presentation Second Wind: The Snoek Refit with Onne van der Wal. Now, Van der Wal is working on an entirely different sort of project. He and his wife, Tenley, are refitting their 1986 Grand Banks 32, Snow Goose, with a mission to spend a significant amount of time cruising her. Van der Wal is documenting the process with pictures and videos, and Soundings has been following along with the process. You can watch van der Wal install a new hatch, apply Propspeed to Snow Goose’s wheel, replace lighting fixtures, electronics, corroded bits and pieces…

This exciting and dynamic boat has been called a fireball for the high speeds it delivers in such a compact package. It’s the Jersey Speed Skiff, a New Jersey-built boat steeped in the state’s history. The stuff of myth and legend, it’s also an active speedboat class on the racing circuit. And to think that this 16-foot-long, 70-knot inboard runabout had such humble beginnings more than a century ago. The design came out of the Jersey coast in the early 1900s. The clinker-built, sailing/rowing Jersey skiff had a flat bottom so it could be launched and hauled off the beach. The high sides and wine-glass-style transom helped it run through the surf. (Two earlier versions, the Sea Bright skiff and the Southern Shore, differed in some design details.) The first…

Pamela Douglas Webster knew that she had work to do before moving aboard a Pacific Seacraft 34 five years ago with her golden retriever, Honey. The dog is timid and sometimes reacts badly to new things, so Webster sought advice from trainers on how to prepare for life on the water. “We bought a wobble board and put it in our backyard and taught her to stand on it, so that when she got on the boat and things started to move, she wouldn’t be nervous,” says Webster, who writes the blog “Something Wagging This Way Comes,” about living aboard with a dog. “We would put a tarp up on a clothesline on a windy day and practice doing trick training—which she loves—and do it closer and closer to that…

The old Vetus windlass on Snow Goose, Onne van der Wal’s 1986 Grand Banks 32, had seen better days, and although there was a 35-pound CQR anchor on the boat, Onne wanted to replace it with a Mantus anchor. He’d used a Mantus on his previous boat and was very happy with it, so he decided to stick with what he knew. Getting the old Vetus windlass off was simpler than he expected. Access to the bolts was easy since the windlass was mounted on a stand with access ports on both sides. “It was a very straightforward job,” Onne says. “I was lucky that all the old bolts came off easily.” He drilled new holes for the bolts to mount the new Lofrans windlass, an Italian brand imported by…

Since 2003, Back Cove Yachts has built a reputation for producing practical and attractive Downeast-style cruising powerboats using high-quality construction methods. One of its most popular models to date is the Back Cove 37, of which more than 200 have been built since it first splashed in 2009. In 2020, the production mold for the 37 was ready to retire after 11 years, giving Back Cove the opportunity to reimagine the design while retooling the mold. The company will launch the updated model as the Back Cove 372, which will have new features built into the original modified-V hull, with 16 degrees of transom deadrise, high freeboard and gentle sheer. The hull stringers will be dry-installed, and then infused with the rest of the hull using a vacuum resin infusion…

Today we have many computer weather programs, phone apps and satellite communications. Why then do recreational mariners also need a meteorological understanding of wind prediction? Because they still get caught with their pants down. It helps to know how wind is generated. Wind is simply air in motion between two masses of different atmospheric pressures, which is due to temperature differences and the rotation of the earth. Land and sea breezes blow on or offshore as the sun heats the land, and it cools off again at night. A change in air temperature equals a change in air density. Wind blows from areas of cooler high pressure toward warmer lower pressure. Warming land causes air to rise, drawing in cooler air from the sea. Then, as the land cools later…

Your neighbor has a new Tesla automobile that can parallel park itself with a tap on its touch screen. My neighbor plants corn hands-free with a GPS-guided John Deere tractor that turns itself around at the end of a row, self-aligns with a three-inch tolerance and proceeds down the field while he sits in the cab checking futures prices on his tablet. Which begs the question: When will my boat be this smart? When will I be able to touch the screen and then rub sunscreen on my wife’s shoulders while the boat backs itself into a slip? The technological cure for your docking anxiety may not be that far off. Late this year new docking-assist systems from Volvo Penta and Raymarine will reach the pleasure craft market. Neither offers…

Four-and-a-half years ago, after he was diagnosed with ALS, Lance Garms began living his life based upon a new calculus. “I started this motto: Always say yes. Even if I’m tired, say yes.” Garms, 51, is gazing out across the glimmering expanse of the Chesapeake Bay’s Potomac River on a bluebird spring day. He’s seated in his wheelchair in the dance-floor-sized cockpit of a specialized 46-foot Chesapeake deadrise called Redeemer, surrounded by a group of lively friends and his two daughters, all of whom stumbled out of bed at o-dark-thirty to drive two hours south of Annapolis to meet the boat on time. Ostensibly, they’re all here to chase rockfish—that’s the tangible part of this day and this boat’s mission. But what they, and this boat, are really here for…

You never know what you’ll find in the used boat market. Ted Boynton was one of the lucky ones. He uncovered a forgotten piece of yacht racing history, got it up and running again with a group of sailing enthusiasts and took top honors at one of the East Coast’s most prestigious classic yacht regattas. Boynton’s 36-foot racing sloop Dagger is one of a series of prototypes designed by Ray Hunt in the mid-1930s, progenitors of the International 110, which is one of America’s most enduring sailboat designs. Yacht racing was a major sport at that time—along with baseball, college football and boxing—with national coverage of boats, designers and sailors. It was also an expensive sport. Hunt, along with engineers Bror Tamm and Gordon Munro, drew up plans for a…