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.
Welcome aboard the diesel-powered version of the impressive MJM 4 performance day yacht. We recently tested the MJM 4, looking specifically at her performance and handling as powered by the new Volvo Penta DPI advanced drives. We begin our look out of the water, with Volvo Penta’s twin, counter-rotating Duoprop propellers. This next-generation design features a double hydraulic clutch pack that performed silky smooth and with zero clunking in our testing. With the trim and steering hydraulic, the control unit is mounted on the transom inside the engine compartment. The DPI is a fully integrated package with the drive paired with the latest \ computer-controlled version of the 440-horsepower Volvo Penta D-6 inline 5.5-liter diesel engine. These drives are fly-by-wire and rigged with sensors and lots of anti-corrosion features we…
Bob Davis was in his early 60s when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. The radiation treatments were so brutal he lost 80 pounds in a short period and then became heavy with fatigue. He was spending a lot of time on his sofa at home in Niantic, Connecticut, while his 28-foot O’Day sailboat sat on the hard for the season, not a lick of salt on her hull. That’s when a friend called and asked Davis to come out for an afternoon aboard his 46-foot Alden yawl. “It was a perfect day with a perfect breeze. I was at the helm and the boat was right on point,” said Davis. “I was once again caught up in the art and enjoyment of sailing. I thought, ‘This is what life…
Mainers are used to big storms, especially in winter. Residents still talk about the blizzard of 1978 and the Patriot’s Day storm of 2007. But on January 10 and 13, Maine was hit by two ferocious, wind-driven storms that caused massive damage along the coast—wiping out docks, shoving historic fish houses off their pilings, damaging roads, completely destroying oceanfront homes and even damaging lighthouses that had withstood the ocean’s fury for a hundred years or more. The scope of the damage was unprecedented. A King tide contributed to the mayhem, but what set the storms apart was where they came from. Both storms rolled in from the southeast, an unusual direction for winter storms, and at an angle that was unfortunately almost perfectly perpendicular to Maine’s coastline, driving ocean waters…
Imagine holding a flashlight above your desk and shining it down at the surface. The area it lights up is pretty small. The beam produces a tightly contained circle. Now, imagine climbing onto the roof of your house and pointing that same flashlight down toward the ground. A much larger area brightens. You can see a lot more. “That’s sort of what we’re doing with sound,” says Derek Sowers, mapping operations manager for the Ocean Exploration Trust and lead author of a study detailing how scientists just mapped the largest known deepsea coral reef in the world. “If you can picture, underneath a vessel, we have mounted on the hull a fan of transducers that look out broadly in each direction. It’s painting the seafloor.” The newly documented reef covers…
Nailing down a free spirit is a logistical nightmare, particularly if that spirit is across the ocean, hundreds of miles away from the nearest landmass. “Max Campbell isavailablethisweek,” myeditor texts me. “Get him on the phone while you can.” Campbell, is halfway across the world on a circumnavigation he began in early 2020. He set sail from his homeport of Falmouth, England, aboard a 1970 Sparkman & Stephens-designed Swan 37 he found languishing in a boatyard. Landfalls are common on his voyage, but so are weeks-long passages without cell service. The 28-year-old has a tenuous relationship with terra firma, and yet he’s surprisingly easy to find. His Instagram bio places him in New Zealand, and a GPS tracker reveals Elixir, his lovingly restored monohull, is docked in Opua, a picturesque…
The Sirena 48 is the smallest vessel in a four-model line that runs to 88 feet from the Turkish shipyard. Like her sisterships, the 48 is drawn by the Argentinian yacht designer Germán Frers. Her profile is defined by an elegant plumb bow, copious hullside glass and a tall pilothouse with forward-facing windows that echo her straight bow. It is a fetching look that translates well up and down Sirena’s model line. During the Sirena 48’s premiere at the recent Cannes Yachting Festival, the optional passerelle brought me over her hydraulic swim platform and into the cockpit, where buyers have a choice of layouts. These can include fixed or loose furniture with a deep lazarette and a transom door that opens to the swim step. An owner could opt for…
