Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Soundings

LOA: 21’0” Beam: 7’3” Draft: 2’1” Range: 50 nm Top Speed: 30 knots Cruising Speed: 20 knots Power: (1) 125-kW electric motor About five years ago, at his dealerships all across South Florida, Nautical Ventures Group CEO Roger Moore tried to bring electric-powered boats into his customers’ lives. “We fell flat on our face,” he says. “The marketplace wasn’t ready. There were some pretty good products out there, but nobody wanted to hear about it.” Today, he says, boaters seem more interested in the idea, so he’s giving it another go. At a time when electric-powered automobiles are becoming a more common sight on America’s highways, Moore’s dealerships are now selling multiple brands of electric-powered boats. Early this year, Nautical Ventures Group became the Florida dealer for Swedish manufacturer X…

If you want to understand why “super RIBs” are now showing up at boat shows and marinas nationwide—with features and amenities the simple dinghy could never have imagined—you have to go back in time about 40 years, to the era of Cabbage Patch Kids, MTV and Caddyshack. It was during the 1980s and into the 1990s that rigid inflatable boats really started to evolve for recreational boaters. The style of boat had been invented in the 1960s in the United Kingdom, where the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was trying to find a fix for wear and tear on the fabric bottoms of inshore lifeboats. They tried using plywood, but it cracked up in rough waters. Eventually, various builders figured out how to use fiberglass and aluminum with an inflatable collar…

The Chesapeake Bay is famous for its crabs and oysters, and the boats that have worked so hard catching these local delicacies have a celebrity status among locals. For over 100 years bugeyes, skipjacks, log canoes and deadrise boats have been part of the bay’s rich maritime history, and today a number of them are part of the fleet maintained and exhibited at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. Among the fleet’s standouts are three unique Chesapeake Bay buyboats. These historic boats are spellbinding. You can’t walk away from them without turning around for another look. They are handsome beasts. Also called deckboats, freight boats, packet boats or mast boats, they boast a distinctive profile and hull form designed to safely haul and deliver fresh catch, livestock,…

LOA: 35’0” Beam: 13’0” Draft: 3’0” Displ.: 14,500 lbs. Power: (2) 425-hp Crusaders Fuel: 175 gals. Water: 70 gals. John and Jennifer Scanlon live in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and have a long history of freshwater boating on Green Bay and Lake Michigan. Native Midwesterners, they have a love of the water, which only grew stronger when they met and married in 1990. A Chaparral 2350 served them well for a time, until they got out of protected waters. “We took a vacation across Lake Michigan one summer and got caught in some good-sized waves,” Jennifer said. “We made the crossing safely, but it was quickly obvious that, with a growing family and a desire to cross open waters, we needed a bigger boat.” The boat they chose was a used…

That was an excellent article by Charles Plueddeman on the new Mercury V-10 outboard (“The Power of 10,” February). I have just one small suggestion to add to his comments about using the motors. The story states that those who want to slow troll with this outboard on the transom have to consider that trolling speeds could be below the threshold of the 48-volt alternator that’s controlled by the Navico Fathom e-power system. I have a simple solution, provided there are at least two of these motors on the boat. Just troll with a low-rpm motor engaged, and idle up (in neutral) to above the 48-volt threshold with the other motor. I hope this might help those like me who do a lot of slow trolling. VINCE ZALECKASMONTGOMERY, NEW JERSEY…

LOA: 60’3” Beam: 16’11” Draft: 4’0” Displ.: 53,350 lb. Fuel: 700 gal. Water: 150 gal. Cruise: 26 knots Top: 38 knots Power: (2) 1,000-hp Volvo Penta 1350s The October winds off Lake Michigan delivered a refreshing chill. Chicago beckoned from ahead as the Tiara EX 60 chugged at a steady 21 knots into a 3-foot chop. It’s a site that operators of tugboats and cargo ships have soaked up for decades as they maneuver toward the mouth of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. We were on a leg of the delivery of Tiara’s EX 60—the builder’s largest boat to date—from Holland, Michigan, to Florida. This was a trip not without challenges, including weather. The forecast for our original departure date called for seas near 20-feet and gale-force winds. I boarded…

Last fall, when Onne and Tenley van der Wal headed to Florida aboard their 1986 Grand Banks Snow Goose, one of their goals was to go to less-traveled places. Here are the locations the couple really enjoyed. Tangier Island, VA This place was on Onne’s bucket list and the island and its people did not disappoint. The couple found the locals, who speak a unique version of American English, to be very welcoming. Tangier is a conservative and religious place. It is also dry, meaning no alcohol is available for sale. Otherwise, the island is literally getting wet. Since the 1960s, sea level rise has consumed all but 40 percent of the habitable land, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts that some of what remains will disappear below…

Fiery debates about the cause of whale deaths erupted along the mid-Atlantic coast in recent months after more than a half dozen humpback and sperm whales washed up on New York and New Jersey shores and near the Maryland-Virginia border. Some environmental groups demanded investigations into offshore wind-farm work, prompting the federal government to say there was no evidence tying that industry to the deaths. Initial findings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration instead suggested that at least some of the whales died following vessel strikes—at a time when NOAA is pursuing a controversial proposal that would, for months at a time, limit the speed of many recreational boats along the Eastern Seaboard, in an effort to protect North Atlantic right whales from similar fates. Conservation groups that favor…

In 1917, Addison Whiticar moved his family to the then sleepy oceanside town of Stuart, Florida, to pursue a life in commercial fishing. The existence of a large and passable inlet, plus the knowledge that the Gulf Stream delivered desirable species to the nearby waters, created an opportunity that was too hard to ignore. Whiticar’s chance for success was boosted by Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway. In 1912, Flagler’s venture had connected Jacksonville to Key West, bringing increased trade, land development and tourism. In the mid-1930s, one of Whiticar’s sons, Curtis, who was a charter fisherman, built a single-screw 33-footer for himself. He then built a twin-screw, 38-foot sportfisherman for his dad. His skills set the family on a course that would inextricably bind their name with sportfishing—particularly among…

Rolling swells passed gently under the hull as Capt. Brandon Ballay ran his boat past the mouth of South Pass, one of the larger outlets that funnel water from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. A third-generation guide, Ballay knows the waters of the Delta like the back of his hand. We started the day fishing near the mouth of Southeast Pass and caught a few nice redfish, but as the tide changed he ran to a miles-long sandbar just west of South Pass, explaining that bigger reds should be hunting there. Here the swells became breakers before crashing on the bar and mayhem erupted as schools of baitfish trapped in the whitewater were harassed by bull reds. This was going to be epic fishing, which is not…

Flames burn through a three-masted ship caught in rough conditions in A Fire at Sea: Abandon Ship!, a mid-19th-century oil painting by an unknown artist. Near the burning ship are two lifeboats filled with crew members and passengers. The wind moves across the painting toward the burning ship, where smoke billows in large clouds above it. Darkness dominates the upper right corner, but sunbeams pushing through the clouds shine an almost direct light on the lifeboats, highlighting them at the center of the painting. The light creates a heavenly glow, as if to signal that the passengers will be okay. According to Lyles Forbes, vice president of collections and chief curator at The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia, works by unidentified artists are as important to marine…