Soundings is the news and feature publication for recreational boaters. Award-winning coverage of the people, issues, events -- and the fun -- of recreational boating. Check out our generous boats-for-sale section and our gunkholing destinations.
Heather Brewer and Paul Bultema were living in Seattle, Washington, when they met on the dating app Bumble in March 2020. Heather liked his profile immediately. “He’d been to 91 countries. I had seen 72. I knew he would be interesting,” she says. They felt a strong connection on their first date. On the third, they boarded a plane to Guatemala with the intent to see parts of Central America. “People said I was crazy to take off with this guy I had just met, but I had a good feeling about him. We have a number of professional friends in common, and we’re both action-oriented people who go after our dreams.” They were having a blast when the Covid-19 pandemic put the brakes on their travel plans. They headed…
HOW WE FOUND THE PERFECT BOAT I read with interest the story about the Treibick family purchasing their Fleming 65 Yacht Calypso (Used Boat, December). It made me think about my family’s journey to acquire our current boat Westerly, a Grand Banks 53 Aleutian. My son, who knew I wanted a raised pilothouse under 60 feet, called me and asked if I had ever seen a 53 Aleutian, which I had not. He sent a link to the listing, and my wife and I loved it. The only problem was the broker was in Majorca and the boat was lying in Istanbul. Nevertheless, we made an offer in November of 2013 without ever having seen the boat. It was accepted, subject to survey and sea trial. Two weeks later, I…
Last November, in the span of one week, three announcements suggested that the U.S. is about to get more serious about electric powerboating. First, Navier, a Silicon Valley startup, and Maine’s Lyman-Morse boatyard announced that the iconic builder would construct a fully self-driving, electric hydrofoiling boat for the California-based company. Within days, Seattle-based Pure Watercraft and General Motors reported that the automaker had made a $125 million cash investment to take a 25 percent stake in the 9-year-old electric boat company. GM said it would also contribute engineering, supply chain, manufacturing and EV know-how to the partnership. A couple of days later, Arc Boat Company, a Los Angeles-based startup with former Tesla and Space X employees, announced that it had raised $30 million from investors like Will Smith, Kevin Durant…
Today’s boaters want the ability to download, stream, email, video chat, play in multiverses and more. And they want this ability when they’re docked at a marina, cruising offshore or anchored in a remote cove. And they want it more than ever, with a lot of couples and families spending more time on their boats since the Covid-19 outbreak. People figure that if the adults can do their paid work remotely, then why not do it all from the boat with a swim afterward? Creating that kind of connectivity became one of Robert Kinney’s areas of expertise when he took ownership of Alcom Marine Electronics in California back in 1993. Since then he has seen things change quite a bit among boaters. “They started out 25 years ago buying $40,000…
Every longtime boater has run aground, even if they don’t admit it. Odd things do happen. I learned that during the peculiar grounding of my 57-foot ketch in the Intracoastal Waterway. Off-watch in the forward cabin, I was jolted awake by a loud thud. I jumped out of my bunk and ran aft. The helmsman stood frozen, so I leapt to the controls and shut the engine down. Forward, the bowsprit pointed toward the treetops as we peered overboard. Like a circus elephant posing for the crowd with its front legs on a pedestal, the entire cutwater was high and dry. We were perched ridiculously on top of the middle of a cypress stump submerged just inches under the surface of the black water. The boat remained motionless on a…
EIGHT-LEGGED TEACHER Among the most intelligent mollusks that swim the seven seas are octopi, creatures with eight suction-cup-lined legs, each of which can literally think independently. They live short lives, spending much of their 1 to 2 years in the sea hiding from predators while stealth-hunting crabs and other crustaceans. It turns out that humans can learn something from them, too. “My Octopus Teacher,” a Netflix Original Documentary, tells the story of South African documentary filmmaker and naturalist Craig Foster, who begins daily free-diving exercises and eventually forms a heartwarming bond with a female common octopus that lets Foster in on her everyday life beneath the waves. She allows him to investigate her burrow, watch her sleep and observe how she avoids the ever-present pyjama sharks that love nothing more…
