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I took a detour and slowly drove through the local boatyard yesterday. The sky was low and gray, the trees were bare, and boats were everywhere: Shrinkwrapped, on jackstands, flank-toflank they stood, their normally submerged regions exposed to the winds and weather. I spotted a beautiful Dyer I had considered buying a few years ago, tucked in a back lot of boats that stood like a field of windswept wildflowers. A catboat waited to be wrapped at the entrance to the shed — mast stepped, sails stowed, its barn door rudder now an unwilling winter wind vane. Bare docks stretched out into the white-capped river like fingers reaching, too late, for something just dropped, the hand of a loved one who’s already left. Winter has never been my season, but…
This fall we completed a similar trip with 20 people on three larger boats, also from Le Boat, the company that the writers of your story used [“Quiet. Beautiful. Delicious.” October]. We had a great time through the wineries of Bordeaux along the Canal du Nivernais. One hitch: The 50-kilometer week took us through no fewer than 50 locks, and in the offseason many of the more rural lock keepers were assigned to drive among as many as four locks. We spent an awful long time locking or waiting for an opening, to the detriment of our sightseeing. Next trip, we’ll pick a route with fewer locks, such as the Canal du Midi. Joe Jablonowski Bristol, Rhode Island KEEP ON KEEPING ON Whatever Mary South has been doing at Soundings,…
AU REVOIR A fleet of 29 Open 60s departed Les Sablesd’Olonne, France, on Nov. 6 for the start of the Vendée Globe. The solo sailors will spend upward of 75 days at sea as they race around the world in a non-stop, unassisted sprint via the great capes: the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn. vendeeglobe.org After nearly two years of inactivity, Greenline has returned with a new boat and new ownership. Vladimir Zinchenko, owner and CEO of SVP Yachts in Slovenia, says the 36 Hybrid — along with other new Greenline models — will be faster under diesel power. The standard engine is a 220-hp Volvo Penta diesel. An optional 370-hp Yanmar diesel gives her a top speed of 25 knots. An electric motor pushes the…
Brothers Rod and Bob Johnstone arrived at the same conclusion independently 39 years ago before launching the perennially popular J/24 sailboat. The wave of baby boomers who were having so much fun sailing Hobie, Sunfish and other beach boats were marrying and having children, and they were primed for owning a performance family keelboat. Rod, a writer, photographer and ad salesman for Soundings in 1974, already was building one for himself and his growing family in his garage in Stonington, Connecticut. Bob, transitioning into the marine business after 17 years in marketing and operations at Quaker Oats, had become marketing vice president at AMF Alcort, manufacturer of Sunfish, Hatteras, SlickCraft and Wellcraft boats. He hadn’t been able to convince the corporate brass that the market was aching for a versatile,…
Anyone who sails around the world solo and nonstop is a hero. Jeanne Socrates took it to another level by doing it for the first time at 71. That’s right, the first time. Socrates recently embarked on a second solo circumnavigation — if she makes it, she’ll be the oldest person to sail around the world nonstop. What makes this all the more remarkable is that Socrates stumbled into dinghy sailing in her late 40s and didn’t venture aboard a larger boat until her 50s. She was a math teacher, and when a school trip aboard a boat that required five sailors was short two participants, she and her husband, George, agreed to fill in as the additional crewmembers. And the rest is history. They bought a Najad 361 and…
In 1986, the organizers of the New York National Boat Show invited a group of seafaring adventurers to talk to the public about their record-setting exploits. Among those in the group was a 58-year-old marina owner from Freeport, New York, a coastal town at the western end of Long Island. And did he have a tale to tell: He’d driven a 26-foot boat across the Atlantic — the first person to cross unassisted in an outboard powerboat. Al Grover had been running his marina for 35 years and building boats on the side under the Groverbuilt nameplate. “I wanted to prove that our boat was a capable boat,” he told New York Times reporter Barbara Lloyd. He figured crossing the Atlantic would be “good for business.” With his son Al…
