Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i Soundings

The fall weather couldn’t have been more perfect for the hundreds of attendees on the docks at Trawlerfest Baltimore, hosted by Soundings’ sister publication PassageMaker in October. Harbor East Marina in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was the location for the combination boat show and seminar series that featured trawlers and long-range cruisers ranging in length from 23 to 55 feet. After touring the boats on display, show-goers were asked to cast votes for their favorite new model. The winner: North Pacific’s 49 Euro. The 49 Euro is more of a departure than a brand-new design, in large part because it rides on the same semi-displacement hull as the builder’s 49 Pilothouse. The major difference between the two is styling. The Euro is more contemporary, and it was made that way to…

Frank and Celene Varasano call them-selves conservative cruisers. Sure, their Fleming 78 can top 20 knots in a pinch, but as these retirees make their way up and down the U.S. coasts—which they’ve done eight separate years now—they generally cruise at around 10 knots. And only if the weather looks good. “Even trying to do a trip to Nantucket and back from New York when you have a week or two, it’s not the same as when you have the luxury of time,” Frank Varasano says. “Having the flexibility to do what you want, when you want, is absolutely huge.” The Varasanos’ trawler (which they call simply V, because, “We think a lot of people try too hard with boat names”) is one among an increasing number of boats in…

If you love boats, and wooden boats in particular, there’s a good chance you’ve seen nautical photographer Alison Langley’s images and videos. But Langley doesn’t just photograph boats—she’s a self-described boat nut. She has a 25-foot Mako chase boat for work, but ask her what she’d like for her personal use and she’ll say it’s hard to choose just one. She likes the Herreshoff 12 1/2 “to go out for the day,” but wouldn’t mind a Grand Banks “for overnight trips,” or a Holland lobsterboat “because they run beautifully.” Langley is always looking at boats. “If I want to really get into it,” she says, “I get in bed with my laptop and look at Craigslist.” Her interest in boats is so keen that she recently received the 2021 Rebecca…

The sun is setting in this piece titled “Saybrook Point Light-house” as two schooners make their way through Long Island Sound, taking advantage of the last bits of daylight. For maritime artist Loretta Krupinski Bailey, this scene is not a product of her imagination, but rather a depiction of the real seascape she found in front of her while sailing from Mystic Seaport to Essex on the Sylvina W. Beal, the oldest existing auxiliary knockabout fishing schooner in North America. “Anyone who’s been on sailboats can always remember one of the best sails they’ve ever had,” Bailey recalls. “It was beautiful, and we happened to arrive at the lighthouse around sunset.” Bailey, who paints from her own photographs, was carrying her camera on the sail and started taking pictures as…

Garfield Arthur Wood, better known as Gar Wood, was the son of a Minnesota ferryboat operator who worked on boats from an early age. Wood invented various devices, including a hydraulic lift to unload coal from trucks, and used his wealth to satisfy his lust for speed on the water. In 1916, he purchased a motorboat named Miss Detroit, bought the company that made it and hired the two brothers who’d owned the business. (One of the brothers, Chris Smith, would later form a company called Chris-Craft.) His company went on to build Miss America with twin 400-hp Liberty V-12 marinized airplane engines. It would set the world water speed record in 1920 at 74.870 mph. A showman, Wood would use his racing success and publicity stunts to sell his…

TAKE IT EASY OUT THERE I enjoyed Kim Kavin’s story “Defensive Driving” (November) and agree that it can be challenging for a boat operator on the waterways these days, given the increase in traffic. It’s my impression that many of the newcomers have a large learning curve ahead of them. As a delivery captain, there are two dangerous situations I come across frequently. First, PWCs are often operated by underage and/or inexperienced drivers. It is scary to see a kid who is too young to drive an automobile piloting a 60-mph machine on the water. Then there are the kayaks. But once again, some operators are totally oblivious to what’s going on around them. Kayaks can frequently be found in the middle of narrow channels or shipping lanes on the…

After three decades of boating and fishing from an inlet where commercial vessel traffic was almost non-existent, I moved to a new locale adjacent to the main thoroughfares for New York Harbor and Port Newark. I am a lifelong recreational fisherman with a penchant for center console boats who formerly called Point Pleasant, New Jersey, my home port. That area includes a small commercial fishing center that caters to trawlers and clammers, but most of the boats are recreational craft. While the narrow waterway could get congested, it always felt manageable. That all changed two years ago when I moved my boat about 35 miles north to Gateway Marina near the mouth of the Shrewsbury River in Highlands, New Jersey. Suddenly, I was navigating to fishing spots in and around…

LOA: 35’10” Beam: 11’8” Draft: 2’5” Weight: 14,530 lbs. Fuel: 217 gals. Water: 50 gals. Power: (2) 300-hp Mercury Verado outboards Time these days is a commodity that seems in short supply, especially with the number of families still working and learning from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s all about work, meals, house chores, kids, homework and sleep. Then wash, rinse and repeat. Busy schedules mean when there is room for boating, people want to make the most of it. Enter the outboard-powered dayboat, a vessel with baked-in performance, entertaining features and lots of comfort with minimum fuss when it comes to maintenance. It’s a market segment that has seen explosive growth over the last 5 to 7 years. Cruisers Yachts—a Midwestern builder with facilities in Oconto, Wisconsin,…

Gamefisherman was founded in Stuart, Florida, in 1985 by Mike Matlack, a lifelong fisherman who had spent many years working at Rybovich Boat Works in Palm Beach. At that time, boat builders were enjoying the efforts of engine manufacturers, who were producing bigger, more powerful engines. The new iron allowed builders to create larger boats into the 60-foot range with more complex systems. But Matlack remained a fan of the day-boat designs that were coming from Rybovich and Merritt during that period. For that reason, the first boat produced by his company was the Gamefisherman 40, a serious offshore machine sought out by tournament fishermen who believed a good boat is like a sharp hook and designed to do the job well. The boat’s traditional cold-molded construction resulted in a…

Savio Mizzi might be considered a new-comer in the world of marine artists, but he has been a creative force in fine arts for more than 40 years. He is passionate about his art, but like everything else in his life, it takes a back seat to fishing. When Mizzi and his wife, Gigi, were house hunting in the Hamptons in the late 1980s, they drove past a group of anglers catching fish from the beach. “That was all it took,” Mizzi says. “We bought a house near Three Mile Harbor, and I set up my studio. I was still doing freelance graphics work for ad agencies in Manhattan, and commission work, including book covers for New York publishing houses.” This was in addition to his endless musings on sketch…

Some people go to the opera. In South Bristol, Maine, people go to a John’s Bay Boat launch. John’s Bay Boat Company owner Peter Kass has been building his traditional plank-on-frame lobster boats from a water-front property in South Bristol, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He started his boat-building career down the road at Gamage Shipyard, but when Gamage started building steel boats, he went to Padebco and then opened his own shop in 1983. Kass designs and builds recreational and work boats, but his wooden vessels are admired for their easy motion, a feature that’s prized by all the lobstermen who swear by his boats. When Kass gets ready to launch one of his new boats, other John’s Bay Boat owners, curious onlookers and friends and family of…

OCEAN GUARDIAN Just about anyone with a connection to the sea knows something about Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the Frenchman who spent a lifetime exploring the world’s oceans while documenting his adventures, discoveries and research on film. Some may remember his television series, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” which aired from the late 1960s through the 1990s. A new National Geographic documentary film, “Becoming Cousteau,” chronicles the life of the explorer and his constant desire to decipher the ocean’s mysteries. The film was directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus and dives deep into Cousteau’s personal life, his iconic films and inventions, and the voice he used to inspire generations to protect the Earth and its oceans. The documentary premiered on the big screen in late fall last year and will…

LOA: 25’0” Beam: 8’0” Draft: 1’6” Displ.: 3,500 lbs. Fuel: 85 gals. Power: (1) 200-hp Yamaha Price: $92,250 Plenty of boaters recognize the Rosborough name. Founded in 1955 in Nova Scotia, Canada, the builder’s biggest hit in the recreational arena was its remarkably utilitarian RF 246 trawler—a trailerable, inboard- or outboard-powered cruiser that still has a loyal following. Rosborough sold the RF 246 molds to Eastern Boats in 2012. Today, the Canadian builder is getting back into the recreational market after spending the last 9 years focusing on military and commercial projects. The new model, the Wild Islands 25 (WI 25), is based on the proven commercial hull found in its HammerHead 25. The WI 25 made its debut at the U.S. Powerboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, in October. “We…

One of the highlights of every new boating season is spotting boats fresh out of the yard with gleaming topsides, new rigging and neatly sanded decks. The sights are even more special when those boats are older hulls that have been brought back to their original beauty. Seeing the proper restoration of a classic hull can actually take a boater’s breath away. Right now, there are a few interesting projects in the works at leading Maine shipyards. Here’s a look at three interesting refits being done at Lyman-Morse, Front Street Shipyard and Brooklin Boat Yard. LYMAN-MORSE: REIMAGINE & ZEMPHIRA Back in the mid-1990s, Lyman-Morse built a 90-foot motoryacht that C. Raymond Hunt Associates designed. That boat is Reimagine, which recently got a new owner who is putting her through a projected…

LOA: 38’4” Beam: 12’7” Draft: 3’6” Displ.: 23,000 lbs. Power: (1) 540-hp Cummins QSM 8.3-M diesel Fuel: 300 gals. Water: 200 gals. Dana and Martha Robes have done a ton of boating over the last 36 years—strong emphasis on the word ton—in a wide-ranging selection of sailboats and powerboats. “Martha says I have a B.A.D. condition, her acronym for Boat Acquisition Disease,” Dana says. “We started boating in 1985 in a 17-foot O’Day Daysailer, which Martha gave me for a birthday present. I sailed it almost everyday that summer, and when we moved to Maine at the end of that season, I decided I wanted something a little larger, a boat that could handle the big water and tides.” They bought a Cape Dory 28 and sailed it along the…