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.
If you read Soundings each month, you’re familiar with our regular contributors, professionals who produce stories that are as educational as they are entertaining. I know these people work really hard to create engaging copy and I’m proud to have them on our team. But I’m equally appreciative of the way they choose to use their energy when they’re not writing for the magazine. How do they spend that time away from the desk? They like to climb on boats in the same way you do, and sometimes those hours on the water are spent doing good deeds for others. Take Gary Caputi, for example, a fishing expert who frequently contributes to Soundings—this issue features his story on the Healey family at Viking Marine Group (page 38). Gary volunteers his…
A BOAT FOR THE BAY I read with great interest several articles in the April issue of Soundings. My favorite was “A Chesapeake Classic,” by George Sass Sr. It’s a wonderful story about the buy boats of Chesapeake Bay. I have owned the buy boat P.E. Pruitt for about 30 years. As Mr. Sass notes, buy boats are ideally suited for conversion to pleasure craft as “they certainly turn heads.” I’ve had some wonderful trips on my boat. Several years ago, I attended the Chesapeake Bay Buy Boat Association’s annual summer cruise, during which we went to Tangier Island, Virginia. Most of us stayed at Park’s Marina in Tangier, although Mr. Park has since died. If you have never been there, it’s definitely worth seeing. If your readers want to…
It’s the largest gathering of wooden boats in New England, and it takes place at one of the most popular summer ports in the Northeast. The Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, will host the 31st annual WoodenBoat Show from June 23 to 25. More than 100 boats built by amateurs and professionals will be on display, from mahogany runabouts to daysailers and schooners, luring those who appreciate the shine of varnished wood and the lines of classic craft. Recent events have drawn up to 12,000 attendees, making the WoodenBoat Show one of the most successful of its kind in the nation. Artisan Boatworks of Rockport, Maine, will display a Herreshoff daysailer and Gannon & Benjamin will exhibit the 100th sailboat designed by Nat Benjamin. Sea Rebel—a 44-foot sportfish built…
Fifty years ago Kiekhaefer Mercury created the Mercury Hi-Performance division as a complete marine racing center. As the business evolved, the name was changed to Mercury Racing, and ironically its focus shifted from racing to high-performance pleasure boat power, a category where it presently rules the roost. Today Mercury Racing is to mainline Mercury Marine as AMG-Mercedes is to Mercedes, a mostly independent subsidiary charged with creating outboard and sterndrive power for demanding performance boat enthusiasts. It is also an aspirational brand, which explains the appearance of Mercury Racing power on pontoons, for example. Besting thy neighbor, after all, is still fun. Mercury Racing outboards are based on a mainline Mercury engine, and its latest offering, the V10 400R model introduced in February, is similar to the Mercury V10 Verado…
Scott Smith, co-founder and CEO of Boston Boatworks, says it was an interesting moment when the team at his 27-year-old shipyard realized they could do whatever they darn well pleased. “When we were given the opportunity to build a boat for ourselves, we thought, okay, what do we want to do?” Smith says. The Massachusetts yard got its start building custom grand prix racing sailboats, and went on to build more than 300 express cruisers that were sold with another brand name. Given that history, the team decided to create the Boston Boatworks 52 Offshore Express Cruiser: the first-ever model under the yard’s own name, designed with a laser focus on purpose. “This is an offshore vessel,” Smith says. “There’s a helm door that gets you to a side deck…
Fall has long been celebrated for striped bass fishing in New England, but June might actually be the best month of all for chasing line-siders. Spring striper fishing is more predictable than the fall run, when a series of nor’easters can send the schools packing and alter their southbound trajectory just enough to leave you muttering at a lot of empty water. Spring is far more benign. The returning fish are hungry and aggressive. They’re found everywhere from bays and tidal rivers to ocean beaches, rips and reefs. The waters are still cool, in the 50s, which means that the fish fight with vigor, shaking their heads, ripping off line and perhaps even tossing a face-full of water your way once you’ve brought a good bass alongside. By the end…
