Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Soundings

If you still yearn for the good ol’ days when the America’s Cup was sailed on 12 Metre yachts in Newport, Rhode Island, and sailors from around the world milled around Thames Street, then you may want to mark your calendar. From July 8 to 13, the International 12 Metre Class will hold its 2019 World Championship in Newport. The gathering is expected to be the largest-ever of 12 Metre yachts in the United States, with more than two dozen boats from seven countries. The races will be sailed on Rhode Island Sound, where nine America’s Cup competitions were held from 1958 through 1983. The event will include boats built between 1928 and 1987, including seven America’s Cup defenders and challengers. Two of them, Intrepid and Courageous, twice successfully defended…

In earlier columns, we looked at how ground tackle works, reviewed anchoring methods and discussed considerations when choosing an anchorage. But what if your anchor starts to drag? How would you know? What would you do? Preparing for an anchor to drag actually begins long before it happens. The first thing to do upon settling into an anchorage is to establish your position. This is the baseline against which you will measure any change. The most venerable method is to take visual anchor bearings, usually three. Charted objects are not necessary; you are less interested in your latitude and longitude than you are in whether your position is changing. A tree, house or flagpole will suffice, though not a dog unless it is a very good dog. At night, shore…

The new Verado 400 is the most powerful outboard Mercury Marine has offered in its 80-year history. It’s also the performance apogee of an engine platform that has proved durable and influential since its introduction 15 years ago. Mercury says it has built more than 200,000 Verado outboards, with constant, incremental improvement guiding the evolution of this motor family. Originally designed to produce 275 horsepower, the Verado has seen updates that have allowed Mercury to bump peak power first to 300 horsepower in 2007, and then to 350 for the mainline product and 400 for the Mercury Racing 400R model in 2015. That’s a horsepower gain of 45 percent over the original design. Along the way, the Verado earned a reputation for extreme reliability. “Bulletproof” is how one veteran marine…

Bruce Kirby has so many sailing stories that even after nearly 63 years of marriage, his wife, Margo, still hasn’t heard all of them. “I’m probably the only person left who remembers listening to the America’s Cup on the radio before the war,” the 90-year-old Kirby says, describing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s blow-by-blow coverage. “My father and brother listened to it in 1934. By 1937, when Ranger beat Endeavor, I remember distinctly listening to it.” “I never knew that,” Margo says. Sitting at the dining room table in the Kirbys’ home in Rowayton, Connecticut, Bruce shares how he grew up sailing in Ottawa, Canada, and started sketching and carving boats out of wood early in his life. He worked as a full-time newspaper journalist, but always drew boats on the…

Few people had the need for speed that Don Aronow felt. His passion left the marine world a fleet of high-performance powerboats—including the brands Formula, Magnum, Donzi and Cigarette—that still turns heads and wins races today. This 23-footer was the one that started it all. Aronow, born in 1927, made his money in New Jersey construction and then moved to Florida in 1960. He began racing speedboats as a hobby, but they never seemed fast enough. In 1962, Aronow brought together veteran race driver Walt Walters, designer and sterndrive inventor Jim Wynne, and a rigger. The combination was a winning formula. He called the group Formula Boat Company. This talented team went on to produce the Formula 233, the first boat built under the Formula banner. It was all fiberglass,…

The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, celebrates the life cycle of historic ships with a new photography exhibit. Titled “From the Cradle to the Grave: Mining the Ed Coffin Collection,” it showcases 28 of the nearly 3,000 images that Coffin curated during his lifetime, all of New England sailing vessels, most of them from midcoast Maine. Coffin’s collection focuses on ship launches and shipwrecks, or their “births” and “deaths,” according to Kevin Johnson, the archivist for the exhibition. Coffin was not a photographer himself, but growing up on Nantucket, he was always surrounded by the sea. He later joined the Merchant Marine. According to Johnson, Coffin’s time serving in World War II likely inspired his interest in shipwrecks. “He served on several different vessels, and three or four of…

It was the most powerful workboat in the rough-and-tumble Pacific Northwest: the mighty tug Tyee. A 1,000-hp steam engine drove the 141-foot wooden boat that was built in 1884 at Doncaster and McCurdy’s in Port Ludlow, Washington. Rugged service was in store. Andrew Pope and William Talbot’s Puget Mill Co. put her to work in the lumber trade, moving great floating booms of logs between ports on the West Coast, at a time when cities and towns were being built. Based in Seattle, Washington, the tug furthered her reputation by towing vessels—often three or four at once—in and out of that busy harbor. Tyee meant “big chief” in the local Native American dialect, and this “sturdy, low-slung bearer of burdens,” as a writer called her, lived up to the title.…

CAPT. MERRITT WHITE Long Island Fishing Charters I’m a fishing guide on eastern Long Island. My 21-footer has 6,000 hours on its 150-hp Yamaha 4-stroke, and I expect to get a couple more years out of the motor. My secret to fighting corrosion? Rinse, rinse, rinse. Flush the motor after every use with fresh water. I don’t use any additives. Rinse the outside of the motor, and try to get under the mount where the tilt motor lives. On a trailer, you have complete access. Replace the anodes when necessary. I change the oil religiously, every 100 hours, and at every oil change I pull the cowling and wet down the engine with CRC. TIM REID VP, Mercury Marine Your outboard continuously draws water in, circulates it around high-heat components…

GEOGRAPHY LESSON I’ve been a subscriber for many years. While I sail in the un-salted Great Lakes, I truly enjoy your magazine. When I got the May issue, I was eager to read “Just Yesterday” because it had a picture of the launch of the sailing yacht Detroit from the Detroit Yacht Club. The caption says the yacht was photographed at a Lake Michigan boatyard, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Detroit is situated on the Detroit River between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie. While it’s possible to get to Lake Michigan by boat, it’s over 200 miles as the crow flies and significantly more by water. The launch scene in the photo most likely took place at what is today the William G. Milliken State Park and…

Boating is easy to do on big, open water, or when you’re mostly alone offshore. “One whistle, captain,” when passing another vessel in the channel is an easy traffic day. But what about when you are in a crowded port with boats of all sizes and types on the move? Knowing how to listen to the VHF radio will make you a better and safer skipper when you’re out there with the big boys. My experience at the helm is limited, so I asked the saltiest of my friendsfor their advice on using VHF radios. With more than 40 years running commercial and government vessels, Capt. Michael Carr says there are a few key points all recreational boaters should consider when faced with heavy VHF radio traffic. “Listening to the…

In the war over E15 that has raged for more than a decade across the United States, the current battle is the widest ranging yet—set off by a promise that President Trump made to Midwest farmers, and leaving just about every owner of a towable boat caught in the crosshairs as prime cruising season gets underway. At stake is the potential for boaters to wreck their marine engines by accident, simply by pumping the wrong type of fuel into them at gas stations all across America starting June 1. The “wrong fuel” in question is E15, made from a blend of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol, a renewable fuel that comes from corn and other plant materials. E15 can seriously damage marine engines, which are designed to operate…

It looked like an answer to a question nobody was really asking. In 2011, a start-up called Seven Marine revealed the prototype for a 557-hp supercharged V-8 outboard that would weigh more than 1,000 pounds and cost more than $80,000. It was hot rod engineering extraordinaire and a highlight of the Miami International Boat Show, where a crowd 10 deep gathered to see the polished stainless steel exhaust gleaming beneath the open cowl. So very cool, everyone agreed, but who would ever buy such a beast? The industry concensus was that Seven Marine had created an outboard with no viable business plan. Fast forward to Miami 2019. A shoulder-to-shoulder crowd had gathered again, this time for the debut of the Tiara Sport 38 LS, a day cruiser designed for outboards.…

All of Maine’s coast is spectacular, but Penobscot Bay is considered one of boating’s Holy Grails. If a boater makes it this far Downeast—and all boaters should—just keep going to Mount Desert Island and cruise up Somes Sound. Maine may have occasional fog, rocks and cold water, but in the summer and early fall, Penobscot Bay’s marine life, deep-blue skies, cool nights, ever-changing-scenery and picturesque harbors make it a boater’s paradise. Just ask Dave and Deb Ludlow, who run Hiram Blake Camp on Penobscot Bay’s Cape Rosier. They use their Eastern 20 to explore the bay and its many ports and islands. “For 10 to 12 weeks a year,’ Dave says, “this is the best place in the world.” CAMDEN Boats fit inside Camden’s inner harbor like sardines inside a…

LOA: 26’4” Beam: 8’4” Draft: 2’0” Weight: 4,900 lbs. Fuel: 110 gals. Water: 20 gals. Power: (2) outboards or (1) sterndrive Mike Komar is one of those people who has been in, on and around the water for as long as he can remember. The 33-year-old resident of Newport, Rhode Island, grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He started out sailing, became a collegiate dinghy racer and, later, a competitive offshore racer, doing the Newport-Bermuda Race and others. Then he became a sailing coach at a university in Newport and something changed: He turned into a powerboat guy. “Coaching at Salve Regina, I’ve spent so many hours behind the wheel of a motorboat—more than I’ve spent behind the wheel of a car,” Komar says. He owned a pair of center consoles,…

If Washington Jenkins had ever contemplated the future, he likely never imagined the scene pictured here. In 1876, Jenkins was named keeper at a house of refuge for shipwrecked sailors, one of five stations in Florida placed approximately 25 miles apart, from the Indian River Inlet to Cape Florida. His station, New River House No. 4, was near the site of today’s Hugh Taylor Birch State Park in central Fort Lauderdale. Back then, Florida was virtually uninhabited. Living with his wife and children on a paycheck of $400 a year, Jenkins walked the beach, especially after storms, to “afford succor to shipwrecked persons who may be cast ashore, and who, in the absence of such means of relief, would be liable to perish from hunger and thirst in that desolate…

Whether you realize it or not, if you regularly set waypoints between New Jersey and Georgia, then you’ve probably been cruising right over the history of the New York City Subway system. An exhibit of photographs called “Sea Train” that recently opened at the New York Transit Museum’s Grand Central Gallery documents a project that the city’s transit authority undertook between August 2001 and April 2010. In a nutshell, the city gave a bunch of old Subway cars to a half-dozen states so the cars could be dropped into the Atlantic Ocean, all throughout the waters where boaters typically cruise. More than 2,500 of the “Redbird” cars, which were built in the 1950s and early ’60s, and “Brightliner” cars, which made their debut on New York City Subway platforms in…

Is there anything better than a blast of sea air against your skin on a sweltering summer day? Nope, and it seems Formula doesn’t think so either. The builder just revealed plans for an addition to its line of Super Sport Crossovers, the series that combines a fast ride with a full cabin and open bow. Like its siblings, the new 380 is based on Formula’s deep-V performance hull, and it will be powered by a pair of brawny sterndrives: standard 430-hp MerCruisers or 520-hp Mercury Racing engines as options. Sterndrive power will be popular with people who boat on big lakes, and others in saltwater who like the wide swim platform that comes with I/O propulsion. Most notable about the 380, though, is the way it combines a cabin…

ACORN TO ARABELLA ALIX KREDER AND STEPHEN DENETTE’S DREAM began with the idea to build Arabella, a 38-foot, William Atkins-designed sailboat, in Denette’s western Massachusetts backyard. They set out to use trees from the surrounding property, and with a goal of sourcing as many materials as they could locally, relying on salvaged lead from old boats for Arabella’s keel. Today, the pair have more than 95,000 followers on their YouTube channel, “Acorn to Arabella,” where they document the project, which is now their full-time work. MORE SALTY READS A SLICE OF PARADISE Deep Water Blues was inspired by a true story. Bobby Little, who once was a master chef, skateboarding champion and undercover DEA agent, erects his own version of paradise on Rum Cay in the Bahamas. His bustling marina…

Back in 1990, I was wandering around life aimlessly, tending bar and waiting tables with no motivation to go to college and barely enough funds to cover the rent. In 1990, I got fired for carelessly missing a shift. Then I got evicted from my apartment. I spent most days living at a friend’s house looking through the local newspaper and trying to line up interviews. One Sunday, I found an ad that read, “Fawcett Boat Supplies is looking for experienced retail people with boating experience for our Downtown Annapolis store. Please apply inside.” I’d never heard of the place, but most of my newly found sailing friends had. So, I filled out an application. Somehow, despite my limited retail, sailing and overall boating knowledge, I talked store manager Bill…

LOA: 34’9” Beam: 10’10” Draft (engines up): 1’11” Displ.: 13,400 lbs. Fuel: 185 gals. Power: (2) 425-hp Yamaha XF425 4-strokes Price: $530,000 Chris-Craft’s dayboat family has grown by one with the introduction of the Launch 35 GT, which is the second-largest dayboat, after the Launch 38, in the seven-model family. The smallest is a 23. I got aboard the Launch 35 GT off Sarasota, Florida. She had a pair of 425-hp Yamaha XF425 4-stroke outboards painted to match the boat’s topsides. Near the mahogany-and-leather steering wheel were Yamaha’s Helm Master joystick system and digital engine controls, and a pair of multifunction engine gauges. A Garmin GPSmap xsv multifunction display and a Yamaha CL7 7-inch touchscreen were mounted in a blacked-out dash panel that looked like the display on Tesla’s Model…

Some 30 miles west of Marathon, Florida, deep in the predawn Florida Bay and headed toward the Gulf of Mexico, the 45-foot Capt. Justin is making nearly 18 knots. Thirty-year-old Justin Bruland checks the monitors in front of him, their glow illuminating his boyish face. The radar is an older-model Furuno, but he swears it paints a clearer target than the newer one on his family’s other boat, the vessel he usually runs, the 53-foot Daddy’s Princess. Though the Capt. Justin is older, with just a single 740-hp Detroit Diesel, somehow she can still plane easily with a bigger load of pots. She’s also cheaper to run. This year, that’s critical. Now and then, a lobster pot float looms like a ghostly head on the blue-green water, lit up by…

The outboard craze. The phenomenon. The obsession. Whatever you want to call it, the boating world’s current love affair with this engine is not going anywhere soon. While builders of larger-scale, Downeast-style boats—think MJM, Back Cove, Vanquish and Hinckley—have been strapping these motors to hulls for years, boutique builders have been in less of a hurry. Now, companies such as Williams, Ellis, Huckins, Manchester and Wilbur are designing outboard boats as well as inboard versions. Here’s how some of these builders are getting in on the action. WILLIAMS 29 John Williams Boat Co. in Mount Desert, Maine, is basing its Williams 29 on its Somes Sound 26, an open, inboard-powered launch built on a conventional, molded fiberglass hull. The 29-footer is a center console dayboat with wood trim, fore and…

Grey Walls is an extraordinary residence at 86 Beacon Hill Road in Newport, Rhode Island. Because the estate is sited at the highest point in the famed Ocean Drive Historic District, the property offers spectacular views of the bustling harbor, the Atlantic Ocean and the Blue Garden, the former site of Arthur Curtis James’ Beacon Hill estate. Grey Walls also is centrally located to area beaches, yacht clubs and private beach clubs. The estate is listed at $7.2 million. The house, which combines classic shingle-style architecture with contemporary elements, is 6,445 square feet, with seven bedrooms and six and a half baths. It’s full of delightful surprises, from a dramatic spiraling staircase to the state-of-the-art kitchen. Sited on 4.25 lushly landscaped acres, the property features a swimming pool, outdoor patios…