Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i Soundings

I’ve only experienced one real man-overboard event. Thankfully it was in fair weather in daylight. A guest on the bow stood up and lifted his binoculars to his eyes. He stumbled and fell backwards over the rail where the lifelines sloped down to the bowsprit. We instantly tossed him a couple of throw cushions. As the boat slid by him, he yelled up “I’m OK.” Oddly, he continued to hold the binoculars over his head, so we knew he wasn’t hurt or panicked. We calmly executed our practiced man-overboard procedure, while keeping him in sight and bringing the boat head-to-wind. We started the engine, dropped sails, and motored back while putting the boarding ladder out. In minutes we were within yards of him, putting the engine in neutral. Someone tossed…

LOA: 33’6” Beam: 10’2” Draft: 3’10” Displ.: 8,818 lbs. Power: (1) 370-hp Yanmar 8LV In 1979, two Danish brothers and their friend built a racing sailboat in the barn, and then went out and won every race they entered with it. That was the start of X-Yachts, a major sailboat builder that over the next 40-plus years produced a large international fleet of popular race boats, cruisers, and performance cruisers. Then, about four years ago, the company decided to add a powerboat line. “A lot of our sailboat owners have a powerboat as their secondary boat, and they were used to X-Yachts’ approach to construction,” said distributor Bob Rodgers of X-Yachts USA, which is headquartered in West Mystic, Connecticut. That approach, he continued, is Scandinavian: “Make it strong first.” Instead…

If you’re planning a fishing adventure this summer and you want it to include good cruising destinations too, head for the state that lies at the crossroads of the migratory paths of some of the world’s most sought-after gamefish: New Jersey. In addition to world-class offshore action, it’s home to a number of popular ports that cater to transient boaters and their families. Following are a few top species to target and ports to visit. WHAT TO CATCH Bluewater Big-Game The waters off New Jersey’s coast have a broad Continental Shelf that terminates in a jagged line of submarine canyons. These features are the scoured-out remnants of ancient rivers that ran across the shelf during the last ice age when ocean levels were 400 feet lower than today. The Hudson…

Tracy Edwards, who hails from Pangbourne, England, has always been an adventurous spirit. After being expelled from school at the age of 15, she left home to backpack across Europe before landing a job as a stewardess on the Greek yacht Piraeus at age 17. That’s when she learned to sail. She would go on to compete in her first Whit-bread Round the World Race, now called The Ocean Race, in 1985/86 at age 23, serving as the cook aboard Atlantic Privateer, thus becoming the first woman to race around the world in a maxi. When Edwards got the idea to skipper her own boat in the 1989/90 Whitbread race, there were only five female sailors competing for every 200 men. So, she assembled the first all-female crew and mortgaged…

These boaters know where the cameras are. And therein lies the problem. Hundreds of thousands of people are tuning in on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more to watch scenes recorded at Baker’s Haulover Inlet and the Miami River in South Florida, where hootin’ and hollerin’ boaters who might otherwise be flopping over frat-house railings are instead flying over bowrails and falling off foredecks. Video after video online shows hands raised high in the air with cold beverages, women dropping their bikini tops, and men bouncing so out of control that they soar right off their personal watercraft and into the drink. “Every time we have to tow a boat on the weekend, it is a war zone,” Capt. Eduardo Barreto, owner of Sea Tow Key Biscayne, says of the Miami…

The old sloop intrigued us. She had nice lines and the most outrageous paint scheme imaginable for a boat, with bold colors straight out of Haight-Ashbury. An artist, perhaps assisted by pharmaceuticals, had worked hard to buck yachting convention. The rest of the boat was less striking. Her seams were beginning to open as she had been left uncovered for some time. Her best days had been before we were born. The year was 1971. Between the two of us, my friend Dan Moreland and I had owned sailing dinghies, a wooden skiff and a waterski boat, which we ran in our home waters near Rowayton, Connecticut. The sense of freedom underway thrilled us. So did voyaging narratives, including Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World. We were chafing for…

The Dettling 51 was the brainchild of Ed and Barrie Dettling, a married couple and lifelong cruisers who were residents of Denton, Maryland, when they got the idea to design a boat that could meet all of their needs. The first hull was produced in 1991, and only about a dozen of the boats were built during its production run, which ended in 2012. As it turns out, their vision for a large, safe and comfortable vessel that could be handled easily by a couple produced what is arguably one of the best cruising yachts in its class. The Dettling’s profile and sheer are timeless and distinctive from some of the swoopy, overworked styles on the water today. Its safety appointments—right down to the 15-inch-wide sidedecks—are still leading edge and…

When James A. “Jim” McCurdy of McCurdy & Rhodes in 1985 designed the 38-foot cutter Selkie for his family, competing in the Newport Bermuda Race was, of course, part of the plan. “My father had done Bermuda races since the 1950s,” says Sheila McCurdy. “He would disappear every two years for a week or so. My mother would disappear and meet him in Bermuda. So there was this thing—it’s just what you do.” It was especially sweet, then, after the 1994 race’s finish when McCurdy called her father, who had by then retired from competing offshore, to report that she, her fiancé and her two brothers had sailed Selkie to second place overall in the coveted St. David’s Lighthouse Division, a result any sailor who knows this race might only…

Imagine a future where you and your partner are doing an ocean crossing, and you both get to sleep through the night at the same time. The boat is running on solar power, so there’s no chance of a clog in a fuel line. The boat also has collision-avoidance software that you can set to wake you if another vessel gets close, or that can simply adjust the boat’s course on its own, in tandem with your radar and AIS, while you remain happily in dreamland. At least some of that future vision will be reality in a matter of years—not decades, but years—according to Pieter-Jan Note, the co-founder of Project Mahi. In April, the 13-foot uncrewed surface vessel Mahi Two, which Note and his team designed, became what’s believed…

A dual-console fishing boat is, at its core, a compromise. It must serve the serious angler, incorporating not only expected features like a live well, but also enough open, uncluttered space to fight a fish. At the same time, it needs to offer all the comforts and amenities of a family-friendly sportboat. The new Sailfish 316 Dual Console from Georgia-based builder Sailfish Boats achieves this without making it look like too much of a compromise. “The boat’s ambidextrous,” said Sailfish Boat President and CEO Rob Parmentier during the 316 Dual Console’s official launch at the 2022 Palm Beach International Boat Show. Standard fishing features on the 316 Dual Console (DC for short) start with the six rod holders arrayed across the back of the transom, a 30-gallon circulating live well…

Even though I love a good boating adventure, previous experiences have made me picky about when, and with whom, I travel. Decades ago, an editor sent me 100 miles offshore with two crazed fishermen who, when the sharks refused to bite, got drunk, pulled out a .44 magnum and started indiscriminately shooting seagulls that were eating the shark bait. The return ride in the 32-footer in 8-foot seas at full speed nearly broke my back. I swore that if I made it back alive, I would never step on a boat again unless I knew a sane person was in charge of the vessel. Years before, barely out of college, I learned not to boat on a tight schedule when I left Nantucket without radar or Loran, and foolishly sailed…

In this piece titled “East River Manhattan, 1655” by artist Leonard Tantillo, the East River is abuzz with shipping commerce. As cargo is offloaded onto smaller vessels from the large fluyt displaying the Dutch flag, the ferry to the left shuttles passengers across the river from Brooklyn to Manhattan, which is still a Dutch town called New Amsterdam. To the far left in the background is the government building for the Dutch West India Company, which also served as the residence for Petrus Stuyvesant, the last director-general of the colony of New Netherland before it was ceded to the English in 1664. Behind the fluyt to the direct left is the Dutch church, and pictured in the distant background to the left of the ferry is a windmill located on…