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“Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.” — Epictetus It’s been an odd summer. I had planned to spend a few months working from Matinicus Island, Maine, but fate intervened with other less-pleasant notions. It happens, and I recognize that I’ve reached an age where it’s likely to happen more often. Also, for the first time in 12 years, I don’t own a boat. There were some panicky moments in the beginning, when I wondered who am I without a boat? Even when I have been unable to get out on the water, having the option to cast off those lines and head over the horizon has been a big part of my life — not just a comfort but…
We wanted to send this photo of our dog with the hopes that it might make it in one of your issues. Cobalt has been coming on our 41-foot Hatteras, IDK, since she was a puppy. She loves the boat and especially the beach. She is usually camera shy, but in this picture I was able to capture her playful nature. The caption could read: “Come on, can we stay at Block one more day?” JoAnn Jeche Mystic, Connecticut IT’S NOON SOMEWHERE As usual, good June issue. I do have a question. I may not understand Mark Corke’s Seamanship column mentioning that he finds longitude by noon sight: “To work out longitude it is essential to know the precise moment that local noon occurs.” I have always used my local…
NEWS, EVENTS, PEOPLE HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU She’s no African Queen, but Santana was once owned by Humphrey Bogart. Designed by Sparkman & Stephens and built in 1935 by Wilmington Boat Works in California, the 55-foot classic was awarded Best in Show-Professionally Restored Sailboat at the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic (Connecticut) Seaport in June. Loughborough Marine Interests and East Passage Boatwrights, both of Rhode Island, did the restoration. Hell’s Bay Boatworks is offering its first bayboat, the 24-foot, 10-inch Estero. The Titusville, Florida, builder of high-end skiffs worked with its pro staff and professional guides to “improve the bayboat as a tool for inshore fishing and near-shore fishing,” says Chris Peterson, who has owned the company with his wife, Wendi, since 2006. “We paid attention to the fishing details just…
As an ocean research scientist, Bruce Appelgate thought it best to start going green at home, on one of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s research vessels. Appelgate, the San Diego institution’s associate director, decided to run the 125-foot Robert Gordon Sproul on 100 percent “renewable diesel” fuel from September 2014 to December 2015, a period when the Sproul undertook 39 research and educational missions, put in 89 operational days at sea and covered 14,400 miles. Though renewable diesel is made from non-food-grade vegetable oils and waste fat from foods, fish and slaughterhouses, it isn’t technically a biofuel because it is “hydrotreated” — cracked with hydrogen, which removes the oxygen in it — so its chemical makeup is nearly identical to that of petroleum-based marine diesel. The beauty of renewable diesel is…
TRENDS, ANALYSIS, PERSPECTIVE Two miles down on a seafloor strewn with chimney-like accretions that spew a black plume of super-heated chemical soup, life exists. Tube worms 7 feet long have colonized here, along with tiny translucent octopuses, giant clams and shrimp dining on bacteria that produce energy not by photosynthesis but chemosynthesis in this light-starved, chemicalrich environment. This is the surreal world of hydrothermal vents, where seawater meets magma deep within the Earth’s crust and spews back out onto the seafloor, and supports a unique and particularly vulnerable community of undersea life. The mineral-laden water also leaves sulfide deposits rich in cobalt, gold, copper, zinc and rare earth elements, much coveted by mining companies that are working to develop technology to operate 10,000 feet and deeper beneath the surface. This…
Terry Ingels’ first command was her own 25-foot Cape Dory sailboat at the mouth of the Chesapeake at age 18. Her most recent was an 82-foot Viking sportfisherman that cruised between the Viking factory in New Jersey and New England. In between, there have been Browards, Burgers, Palmer-Johnsons, Lazarras, Westports, Deltas, Sunseekers and Feadships — some as large as 150 feet. She’s cruised the Mediterranean, Caribbean and other far-flung places and is a member of an elite club that’s smaller than it should be: female professional captains. The experience required to advance from being a licensed deckhand to holding a 1,600-ton USCG Master’s License, 3,000-ton ITC, Upon Oceans (as Ingels does) demands a passionate commitment to seafaring and a willingness to leave “normal life” on shore for long periods of…
