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.
There are many great things to do by boat, and one of the best pastimes is enjoying a satisfying meal at a waterfront restaurant that you travel to by boat—arriving in style, and rarely with a parking issue. So, what makes a great dock-and-dine? Some boat owners say it’s the view and the location; others want excellent food and service, while another group prefers a fun atmosphere with good music, a great crowd and a salty vibe. What’s your preference? Soundings wants to know where you take your boat when the crew is hungry. For that reason, we’re launching our first Readers’ Choice Awards for Best Dock-and-Dines, and we want you to weigh in. When you have a few minutes, we’re hoping you’ll go to our website, soundingsonline.com, and cast…
I LOVE NEW YORK I really enjoyed reading “Big Apple Boating” (Seamanship, January). Having run New York Harbor on several occasions, both day and night, I found Gary Caputi’s story an accurate portrayal of the challenges boaters encounter when traveling those waters. Caputi wrote about being caught in the fog and how difficult it can be to discern aids to navigation from boats. I have a good suite of electronics on my boat, and I’ve found it helpful to display radar returns as an overlay on the chartplotter screen. This can help to determine if the return is an aid to navigation; there’s a good chance it is if the return is in the same proximity as an aid shown on the chart. Of course, there are often small fishing…
Hacker Boat Company, now in its 114th year of building traditional wooden boats, has decided it’s time for something new and different. The company was founded in 1908 in Detroit, around the time that Henry Ford started building cars there. Following a move in the 1970s, Hacker has continued to build boats in Ticonderoga, New York—until this past September, when production moved about an hour south to a more suburban location in Queensbury, New York. This move gave the company 35 to 40 percent more space to run its boat-restoration business and build custom boats, including three new models unveiled in January as The Evolution Collection. “We’ve been wanting to take Hacker-Craft to that next era of design. We don’t want to do away with our Legacy models, but we…
When boaters walked into the Seattle Boat Show in early February, they saw two things they didn’t expect: brokerage boats mixed in with the new boats on display at the indoor venue, and a new logo intended to help buyers identify the most reliable brokerage boats for sale. Call it kismet. Or a convergence of trends. Or yet another fledgling idea that the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated into reality. Whatever the combination, it’s the kind of thing boaters nationwide can expect to see a lot more of in the future. Boat show organizers everywhere are trying to deal with the booming boat sales brought on by the pandemic and supply-chain crunches. After two years of both, there is a boat-inventory shortage. Dealers—sold out of the new and brokerage models they had…
Let’s face it, managing a dinghy can be a pain in the transom. Here’s a common example. On a southbound trip home one year, crossing the Gulf of Maine on my friend’s boat, the sea was flat calm in fine weather. We had a brand-new console RIB, which was quite expensive and too big to stow on deck, so we towed it. Suddenly, one of the kids yelled, “Where’s the dinghy?” Thankfully, after retracing our track on the reciprocal and doing an exacting search pattern for three hours with all eyes glued to the horizon, we recovered it. Others have not been so fortunate, judging from the number of small boats found drifting offshore over the years. Put a bunch of boaters together and they are bound to share stories…
I have always thought of Gardiner’s Bay on the east end of Long Island, New York, as special. Native Americans, colonists, pirates and generations of baymen thought so too. Today, recreational boaters agree. I’ve been sailing Gardiner’s Bay for 40 years. Its beauty never fails to inspire awe. The many coves and harbors make for an ideal weekend or weeklong cruising experience as there are superb anchorages and endless things to do ashore. The bay lies 20 statute miles southwest from New London, Connecticut, and 54 miles southwest of Newport, Rhode Island. To the east is Gardiner’s Island, south is Three Mile Harbor/East Hampton, west is Shelter Island and to the north are the towns of Orient and East Marion. North to south, the Bay spans 10 miles and east…
