Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 i Soundings

Michael Gorman grew up on Lake Ontario in Oswego, New York, and got his first taste of boating at a summer sailing camp that his parents had to persuade him to attend. He eventually took to being on the water, scavenging sailboards from dumpsters and using them to explore, and later, discovering the joys of cruising small sailing craft long distances. After attending a couple of art schools, Gorman wound up at The Landing School in Arundel, Maine, where he fell in love with wooden boatbuilding. These days, he is the boatyard manager at Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. Gorman oversees the upkeep and maintenance of a fleet of 13 historic vessels, including a 1909 crab dredger, a 1934 Hooper Island draketail, a 1912 Delaware River tugboat…

Tell us about your favorite destination — by e-mail at editorial@soundingspub.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/SoundingsOnline Whether for a quickie mini-cruise or for the whole winter, sailing the Bahamas is ideal. It’s only an overnight sail from the Florida coast, albeit separated by the Mighty Gulf Stream, and when you reach the other side — oh the turquoise! If you ask me where I’d most like to come on deck each morning, I say without comparison, it’s the Exumas. This fascinating island chain stretches about 130 miles like a braid from Nassau through the central Bahamas. On the windward side of the cays is the heaving ocean, where an afternoon stroll is very likely to produce dinner. On the other side is the sheltered and mostly tranquil Exuma Bank, a…

I love equally Islet du Gosier, just a few hundred yards off the south coast of Guadeloupe in the French West Indies. Like Roque, the holding ground is firm white sand. Everything else is different. Roque is private; Gosier, public. Roque is cold; Gosier, warm. Roque is quiet, unnaturally so. Gosier exudes Caribbean boisterousness. Call it the yin and yang of cruising. A challenging destination, such as Roque, forces us to rise to the test and rely on ourselves. An easy place like Gosier, strong trade winds notwithstanding, invites us to kick back. Cocooned by its sweet scene, we swim, bask in the warmth and give thanks once again for our stout cruising boat. Ilet du Gosier’s red and white lighthouse is as welcoming as Roque Island’s crescent beach, unbeatable…

In February 1957, a 52-foot yawl splashed into Kowloon Harbor from the Cheoy Lee shipyard in Hong Kong. Mah Jong was the cumulative dream of three American college friends who had pooled their resources, ideas and expectations. Now that the construction was a reality, preparation for a 10-month, 15,000-mile shakedown began. Hovee Freeman of Providence, Rhode Island, was a U.S. Navy-trained navigator and accomplished sailor. Mike Merle-Smith came from an Oyster Bay, New York, sailing family that had connections in exclusive East Coast yachting circles. Gilbert M. Grosvenor of Washington, D.C., was a National Geographic photo editor and grandson of Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, the first full-time employee and a president of the National Geographic Society. They’d acquired the plans for their yawl from the heralded yacht designers of the day:…

Man Overboard System The MOB+ wireless man overboard system consists of an xHUB mounted near the helm and wearable xFOBs. Connecting as many as four people, MOB+ kills the engine when the helmsman’s xFOB is submerged or out of the xHUB’s range. The remaining xFOBs have alarm functions, and a MultiFOB feature can add the stop-engine function to them. The xFOBs can be worn on the wrist, around the neck or clipped to a PFD using the xBAND or xTAG accessories ($19.99 each). $199.99 (MOB+ base pack with xHUB and one xFOB). Additional xFOBs are $39.99. Fell Marine, (855) 683-3355. fellmarine.com Castable Fishfinders FishHunter castable transducers send real-time sonar data to Android or iOS devices without a cellular or Internet connection. FishHunter Pro’s trifrequency transducer (381, 475 and 674 kHz)…

HOME SWEET HOME AFLOAT Two stories high and with 2,208 square feet of living space, the Luxuria isn’t any ordinary houseboat. The fully furnished vessel has two staterooms, including a master with a wraparound head/shower compartment. It has floor-to-ceiling windows, a “chef-quality” galley, a saloon with a simulated fireplace, heating and air conditioning, an office, an outdoor balcony and more. Twin 300-hp Suzuki 4-strokes allow a change of scenery. Priced just shy of $1.5 million, the Luxuria measures 46 feet with a 24-foot beam. luxuria.global A SAILBOAT UNDER THE TREE Measuring 10 feet, 6 inches overall and weighing 111 pounds, the Tiwal 3.2 inflatable sailboat packs into two bags. Once at the beach, the boat inflates and assembles in 20 minutes, says the manufacturer. The hull is made of PVC…

Bernard Lyman was a skilled craftsman and respected cabinetmaker in Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie. Born in 1850, Lyman built boats in his spare time, and his name would become legend. Lyman’s utilitarian boats were “clinker-built” of lapstrake construction. In 1875 he quit the cabinetry business and joined with his brother Herman to open a boatbuilding operation. The Lymans built rugged, easy-riding hulls that stood up to Lake Erie’s notorious chop. Fishermen, hunters and a growing population of pleasure boaters favored their vessels. By the time Bernard retired in 1928, the Lyman fleet was well-known around Lake Erie. His son, William, took over the business, moved it to Sandusky, Ohio, and began building boats on an assembly line. Pre-World War II models were planked with Philippine mahogany over…

What do Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins have in common? They all portrayed Fletcher Christian or Capt. Bligh in a film depicting Mutiny on the Bounty. The mutiny, the getaway, Bligh’s 2,000- mile open-boat voyage to safety, the mission to capture the mutineers half an uncharted world away, the trial, the surprise witness, the hangings and the mystery of what happened to those who sailed the Bounty into thin air — all were real events that epitomize how truth can be stranger than fiction. Time and imagination have allowed portals for fiction to intrude on this tale, but some things are known. Christian, some mutineers, their newfound Tahitian wives and some Tahitian men fetched up on Pitcairn Island. There, they burned the…

Here’s a whimsical painting: a 19th-century steamship in full array, with a deck awash in circus animals and performers, acrobats in the rigging. But there’s more than whimsy to Ed Parker’s art. With a unique viewpoint, he works his subjects in an imaginative way that’s rooted in reality. “Rather than trying to capture a moment in time, I’m trying to capture a moment in a story that draws the viewer in on a different level of discovery,” Parker says. In this case, the story goes back to October 1836 and the sidewheel steamer Royal Tar. She was making for Portland, Maine, carrying Fuller’s Menagerie, a traveling circus that had been touring Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A boiler caught fire off Fox Island, and the Royal Tar sank; 32 of…

The Coast Guard had a one-word problem: A hoax caller kept contacting them, saying “mayday” and disconnecting. Just a couple of seconds of the voice recordings was all that the agency had to work with. Coast Guard investigators had been snagging some hoax callers with old-fashioned detective work, GPS-based technology and searches on social media, where braggarts sometimes post about the commotion they’ve caused. But they couldn’t figure out how, if at all, a suspected repeat caller might be identified from just the word mayday. And it was important to find a way. These calls were among the 150 or so confirmed or suspected hoaxes that the Coast Guard typically receives in a year, out of more than 16,000 legitimate calls from boaters needing help. Responding to the hoaxes wastes…

“You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family,” the cynics say. But the 185 Kadey-Krogen owners who attended the company’s 40th anniversary rendezvous at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island, beg to differ. These enthusiastic folks have made family of friends, and their fondness for Kadey-Krogen yachts — old and new — binds their relationships as strongly as well-cured epoxy. This past summer, the attendees and their 38 Kadey-Krogens moved into the docking plan at Fort Adams State Park. By 5 p.m., music by the band Changes in Latitude filled the grounds, opening the “Margaritaville” cocktail hour and buffet dinner. The first full day of the rendezvous saw a parade of owners stroll into a white tent, smiling and engaging in lively conversation before a…

Roque Island, way Down East in Maine, first charmed me 42 years ago. It still does. For generations, Roque Island has been the Holy Grail for northern New England cruisers. Roque lies 45 miles east of Mount Desert Island’s Northeast Harbor, a good jumping-off spot. Heading east, the rockbound peninsulas and spruce-studded islands to port are jewels in a cold, gray sea. It is a place where the living still comes hard, and where seals, eagles, gulls and gannets outnumber people. There are no marinas, no hotels, no services, no restaurants. It’s perfect. On that first cruise, we set out from Northeast Harbor — four young men on an old wooden boat whose nav gear consisted of a compass, a fathometer and a radio direction finder. The tides raced then,…

Magdelena, Spitsbergen As we prepare for another extended period of cruising we have been discussing where to go. Do we revisit old haunts or look for somewhere new? Over the years we have come to understand that for us there are no magic formulae to what make one place more desirable than another. Early on we discovered that the people we met, both ashore and in the voyaging community, were more important than the view. As our comfort and security increased while effort decreased with better design and construction, an adrenaline factor began to creep in. The mixture of risk, environmental aesthetics and ice for us in particular is an addictive brew. Fatu Hiva Hence a dichotomy in our three favorite destinations. First is Hana Vave Bay on Fatu Hiva…

SPECIFICATIONS •LOA:28 feet, 6 inches •BEAM: 8 feet, 7 inches •DISPLACEMENT: 6,500 pounds •DRAFT: 2 feet, 4 inches •HULL TYPE: modified-vee •POWER: twin 80-hp Torqeedo electric motors •SPEED: 23 knots top, 9 knots cruise •BASE PRICE: $500,000 •CONTACT:Hinckley Yachts, Southwest Harbor, Maine, (207) 244-5531. hinckleyyachts.com Hinckley Dasher Hinckley Yachts took the wraps off its all-electric Dasher at the Newport International Boat Show in September. A new concept for the iconic boatbuilder, the Dasher is being marketed as the world’s first fully electric luxury yacht. The 28½-footer is built atop a lightweight epoxy-carbon hull and draws only 2 feet, 4 inches. To save weight, Hinckley trims the Dasher with “artisanal teak” — a lightweight, hand-painted epoxy composite with varnished-teak looks, but without the traditional maintenance costs. (I thought it was virtually…

I know, I know, Sarasota. It’s where your grandparents moved in 1989 and your parents spend their winters today. Well, there is a reason. It is very, very nice here. Sarasota Bay and the surrounding keys, islands and beaches make the area one of Florida’s most naturally beautiful spots for boaters and lubbers alike. To me — and I grew up in Florida — Sarasota is the best marina destination on the Sunshine State’s west coast. Approaches Come in through New Pass from the north, with the white sand beaches of Lido Key and the homes along the channel with their protected docks, just minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. That entrance alone will have you calling your realtor to sell everything. But if you need more than 23 feet…