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We’ve been having a lot of fun with our Instagram page. Carly Sisson has been carefully selecting a fleet of standout boats that qualify as classics, and her selections are going over well with Soundings readers. Which boats are topping your list of favorites? Here are a few. I hope you are enjoying these snapshots of great builds as much as we are. 1. HOLLAND 34 Last Call is the first Holland 34 ever built. She is an extended version of Glen Holland’s popular 32-foot lobster hull, which gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s when Holland’s father’s boat, Red Baron, dominated Maine’s lobster boat races. Holland built more than 180 of the 32s, which were often finished by other Maine yards. Last Call has been dubbed a gentleman’s lobster boat,…
In 1894, when William Francis Gibbs was 8 years old, his father brought him to see the launch of the SS St. Louis in Philadelphia. William stood with his younger brother, not far from President Grover Cleveland, awestruck by the sight of the 550-foot-long vessel. William became obsessed with great ships, not in the way that little boys grow out of, but with a passion that would change his life, along with the U.S. military itself. “He didn’t graduate from Harvard because he just wanted to sit in his dorm room drawing ships,” says William’s granddaughter, Susan Gibbs. “He was honored with an honorary degree later, so it all worked out.” Like many professional naval architects, amateur yacht designers and bar-napkin doodlers, William became obsessed with the idea of…
The new Dometic DG3 gyrostabilizer leverages new technologies and smart engineering to improve many aspects of marine stabilizer performance and it could have the potential to reset our expectations for a stabilizer system. According to Dometic, the DG3 offers faster spin-up and spin-down times, reduced power consumption and less maintenance than its leading competitors. Its predictive technology is reported to deliver refined performance that is almost undetectable to the captain and crew. The Dometic DG3 utilizes gyroscopic stabilization to enhance passenger comfort and security by minimizing the rolling motion of a vessel, especially at rest or low speeds. How does it work? A heavy flywheel spinning at high rpm within a gimbal is actuated to generate stabilizing forces through precession. Gyro stabilization, popularized by the Seakeeper brand introduced in the…
At 71, most of my friends are savoring their golden years with grandchildren, hobbies, travel or pickleball. Not me. Instead of settling into a quiet life, I want to return to the rough-and-tumble world of the offshore life. I first embarked on a marine career more than half a century ago while working in New York Harbor as a tugboat cook, where I was one of the first women employed. Now, decades later, when faced with the possibility of retiring, I ask myself why I should leave my working life behind when I can still take on the waves and new adventures? To prep for my re-entry to the commercial marine job market I secured a freshly minted Merchant Mariner’s Credential and a Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC) issued by…
I often make the promise to not suck all the fun out of time on the water. So, forgive me as it will seem as if I’m trying to do just that with this column. The truth is, nothing sucks the fun out of boating like the Coast Guard calling off a search for a lost boater, yet that happens every day. If we want to be safe on the water, we need to be clear about one thing: The water can be a very dangerous thing. To manage a risk, we have to understand it. When it comes to the water outside the boat, we have to recognize that it presents hazards—three, to be specific. The combination of those hazards can create one of the most hostile environments on…
We may never know for sure what really happened in the meeting that led to the largest outboard-powered boat in the world, code-named Project Everest. The way Scout Boats President Steve Potts recalls that day almost three years ago, he was pitching the troops from his R&D and design departments on the idea to build something that didn’t exist: a boat with outboard engines in the 60-foot range. Potts says his chief designer, Jeff Summers, heard him out, then leaned back in his chair and said, “That’s like climbing Mount Everest.” Summers remembers things a bit differently. There’s an inside joke at Scout, he says, that every time they start a new model, they give it a length—but it never sticks. “Maybe we start with a 20-footer. Then it’s a…
