Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i Soundings

I just returned from an excellent adventure, hiking in Patagonia. I spent seven days exploring spectacular trails in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz that’s also known as the gateway to the icy landscape of that country’s Glacier National Park. During long treks, the group I traveled with climbed high above treelines and against the famously gusty winds of the region. The experience was invigorating and the physical efforts were always rewarded with breathtaking views. And yet as much as I loved discovering the area on foot, I have to admit that my favorite part of the trip was the boat ride. That’s right, the boat ride. A big catamaran, to be specific. In Puerto Bandera, on the sandy edge of a sprawling cattle ranch, our group boarded an 80-plus-foot…

“Kick the tires and light the fires!” That was something we would sometimes say in my Coast Guard days when heading out to the helicopter for a rescue mission. It was mild bravado, a way to make us feel…cooler. In contrast to any daring acts we might or might not perform on a mission, starting an aircraft or launching a rescue boat was a ritual of nerd-like checks and tests of systems and equipment that came after previous checks and briefs about the proposed mission and a review of the aircraft’s maintenance history. Thinking and talking about starting the engines took much longer than actually firing them up. We never rushed. We never looked like we were in a hurry. Show me footage of a crew running to a helicopter…

The Garlington 61 has been described by its owners and admirers as classic, elegant, graceful and iconic. In the early 1980s, Richard Garlington was well known as a Stuart, Florida, builder of custom sportfishing boats using the cold-molded wood construction technique. His boats, most in the 40-plus-foot range, were highly regarded on the tournament circuit and prized for their finish as much as their ability to handle offshore conditions. As tournament fishermen began to demand boats with longer range and faster speeds, Garlington decided to build a larger boat that could fish the waters of the Bahamas, the Caribbean and Central America in safety and in comfort. The 61 was originally designated as the 58, a design from the board of Dan McCarthy, a friend of Garlington and an experienced…

For most mariners, the opportunity to buy a dream boat is a rare privilege. Few are so fortunate, and even fewer manage to do so by cold-calling an expired ad they spotted four years earlier. Jon Kandell, however, had luck on his side. “I’d saved the ad from back then, and I just thought, maybe if I call, he’ll tell me who bought the boat, and then I could reach out,” Kandell says. Now the proud owner of the North Pacific 28 Slow Dance—his dream trawler and the boat that allowed him to downsize his family’s cruising life—Kandell is on a mission to showcase the benefits of long-distance cruising on smaller vessels. Through his newly minted YouTube and Instagram channels, @SlowDanceCruising, he’s sharing his experiences and encouraging us all to…

It’s a clear summer day, and the harbor in South Bristol, Maine, is filled with lobster boats. In the distance, sailboats ply the Damariscotta River off Rutherford Island. A well-known fishing and yachting destination, South Bristol encompasses just under 30 square miles of which only 13 square miles are land, but it has a rich maritime history and classic coastal charm that Lou Bonamarte captures in this vibrant watercolor painting. Located in the heart of Midcoast Maine, South Bristol is bordered to the west by the Damariscotta River, to the east by Johns Bay, and to the south by the Atlantic Ocean. The southern third of the town is located on Rutherford Island, which is connected to the mainland by a draw-bridge across a narrow passage of water called “The…

The situation is treacherous: Four sailors cling to the rigging of the three-masted steel barque Garthsnaid, securing a section of the foresail that came free from the gaskets in the heavy seas as the ship made passage from Iquique, Chile, to Delagoa (now Maputo) Bay, Mozambique. As the storm raged, the daring second mate, Alexander Harper Turner, then 19 years old, climbed onto the jibboom to capture this photograph with a camera he’d purchased in Iquique. The Age of Sail had long passed when this photo was taken between April 24 and July 26, 1920, but sailing ships were still used to transport bulk cargo like grain, lumber and metal ores across oceans. The Garthsnaid, which was built in 1892 by Archibald McMillan & Son under the original name Iversnaid,…

For the past half dozen years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been telling boaters that it plans to sunset its paper and raster nautical charts. That process was completed this past December, when the last of NOAA’s paper charts was canceled. Now, if boaters want printed-out charts from the government, they have to use the electronic NOAA Custom Chart program. Instead of boaters being able to order an updated paper chart by number—say, NOAA Chart 13230 for Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts—the Custom Chart program creates paper charts from the agency’s Electronic Nautical Chart database. This method satisfies regulations for larger ships, while recreational boaters can click on a defined area and then print out a chart based on their request. But this new way to get corrected, printed-out charts…

LOA: 25’0” Beam: 8’6” Draft (engine down): 3’2” Displ.: 7,700 lbs. Fuel: 60 gals. Water: 13 gals. Max Power: 400 hp Chris-Craft—a brand that is celebrating 150 years of building boats for families to enjoy—is adding a new type of watersports fun to its catalog of models. The 2025 Sportster is available in 25- and 28-foot versions for boaters who want to get in on the trend of wake surfing. “Our brand can play anywhere. We can choose where we want to play and focus on the bigger market, go back to where the value is, and we saw that in the surf market, providing a good-riding boat even in rough water,” says Chris-Craft President Stephen Heese. The Sportster models have a forward drive that places the propellers under the…

It’s an odd thing, winning a seamanship award for abandoning your boat. So much so that when the Cruising Club of America told Carter Bacon that he was being awarded its Rod Stephens Seamanship Trophy, he asked them why. They told him the recognition was in honor of his timing. A lot of sailors, they said, would have failed to decide early enough to leave their boat, to allow for an orderly rescue. Bacon is philosophical about the loss of the boat he owned for 24 years. “It’s not as heartbreaking as somebody being hurt or killed,” Bacon says. “It’s not even in the same category.” That, of course, is precisely the point. The Cruising Club’s award announcement cites Bacon’s “meritorious handling” of the sinking of his 50-foot K. Aage…

Experienced skippers know how important it is to keep their bottoms clean by maintaining an effective layer of antifouling paint. Without it, their boats face invading armies of barnacles, mussels, seaweed, algae and other marine pests. The first ones arrive about five minutes after the boat is launched, or so it seems. Others keep on coming, and soon a once silky-smooth bottom becomes an underwater jungle of seagoing flora and fauna. Antifouling, or “bottom paint,” is your defense against uninvited marine guests. There are seemingly endless choices of antifouling paint on the market, so how do you choose the right one? Should you pay extra for a multi-season “ablative” paint? Are there environmentally friendly options? Sounds complicated, but fortunately picking a bottom paint isn’t rocket science, once you know what’s…

Much has been made of how SpaceX’s Starlink has altered the way boaters stay connected to the internet. It used to be that staying connected on your boat meant slow WiFi, pricey data plans, or unreliable service. Starlink offers fast, affordable internet for boaters, and with varying equipment and data plans, ensuring the proper equipment selection and plan is essential. Whether you’re trying to watch Netflix while traveling on the ICW or staying in touch with friends and family on ocean crossings, Starlink has become the go-to solution. Here are the dishes, plans and accessories boaters should use, so you can pick what’s best for you. STARLINK OPTIONS Starlink currently offers three hardware options that are recommended for boaters, which include the Starlink Mini, the Standard, and the Flat High…

LOA: 40’8” Beam 11’’7” Draft: 3’5” Displ.: 17,637 lbs. Fuel: 264 gals. Water: 55 gals. Power: (2) 400-hp Mercury outboards Max speed: 45 knots Food trucks, reggae music, balloons and Florida sunshine elevate the pleasant party atmosphere at MarineMax Pompano. Bopping around the docks are people who have been invited to this VIP event to get an exclusive look at the full line of boats from Finnish builder Saxdor. In the fleet is the 400 GTC, a new build that’s making headlines for its transformer-like qualities, as it can morph from a sexy Med-style open day boat to an adventure cruiser with a full-beam wheelhouse that stands up to cold days in Maine. I board the 400 GTC and meet a nice guy in his 50s wearing a Depeche Mode…

We’ve all heard it: the typical conversation between a customer and a salesperson at a boat show that invariably turns to deadrise. “How much deadrise does she have?” the buyer asks, innocently enough. “Twenty degrees,” the salesperson answers reflexively, referring to the deadrise at the transom. Having exhausted his knowledge of the subject, the seller quickly moves along with the buyer to something they’re both more comfortable with: “How about those cupholders?” It’s a shame because deadrise is important to understand how a boat will perform at sea. The right amount of deadrise, which generally varies from bow to stern, matters. Deadrise distribution is the key to making a planing hull perform well. WHAT’S DEADRISE? Deadrise is the angle between the bottom of the hull in relation to a horizontal…

LOA: 50’ 1” Beam: 16’ 3” Draft: 5’0” Fuel: 800 gals. Water: 300 gals. Power: (1) 500-hp John Deere diesel The man who owns Hull No. 1 of the new flagship Helmsman 46 Pilothouse had the boat commissioned at CSR Marine boatyard in Seattle. I caught up with him at the nearby Salmon Bay Café, where he told me about his life growing up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where he spent a lot of time on boats. “I’ve had all different kinds of boats, from fishing boats to express cruisers and now trawlers,” Robert Chanpong told me, ticking off about two decades worth of boats. His newest ride by Helmsman is named Kiskadee, after a tropical bird native to the Caribbean. Chanpong’s trawler lifestyle began in 2018 when…