Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2023 i Soundings

One of Alfred Tennyson’s best-known poems uses a bar crossing as a metaphor for the process of dying. Tennyson’s comparison in Crossing the Bar is fitting because transiting a bar between an ocean and a river or harbor can be one of the most intimidating experiences a boater faces. More than a few people, myself included, have seen the steep seas on a bar and wondered if this might be the end. A bar is a shallow area of sand or mud, usually deposited near the mouth of a bay or river. When a fast-moving river slows down to meet the ocean, it deposits tons of silt and mud that it carries. This bar forms a natural barrier, typically extending across the river or bay entrance, often at roughly right…

LOA: 30’10” Beam: 10’0” Draft (motors up): 2’1” Displ.: 10,500 lbs. Power: (2) 250-hp Yamaha F250s Fuel: 200 gals. Water: 41 gals. From its thoughtful, multi-mission layout to its performance-oriented hull, the new Solara S-310 Center Walkaround from Fluid Motion—the builders of Ranger Tugs and Cutwater Boats—is designed and equipped to satisfy boat owners who want to extract maximum fun from every moment on the water. Solara is a new line and the S-310 CW is the current flagship of the series that’s designed to entertain, tow water toys and wakeboards, fish and even function as an overnight cruiser. There are two ways to board: from the swim platform extensions that flank the outboards and serve floating docks, or from the bow seating area equipped with molded steps—perfect for higher,…

Anybody who has ever fixed up a house before putting it on the market knows the smart money is spent renovating kitchens and bathrooms. Sure, you can dump a bunch of cash into wall-to-wall carpeting or a new surround-sound system, but those types of upgrades rarely bring the return on investment that a new kitchen or bathroom will. Similarly, when it comes to production powerboats up to about 60 feet length overall, experts say there are several types of refit projects that tend to pay off for anyone trying to spruce up a boat for sale. There are, of course, caveats, starting with the fact that every boat owner has a budget. “We’ve done refits ranging from $30,000 to $200,000 on boats between 30 and 40 feet,” says Matt Graham,…

When Dave and Danielle Baker and their two young children pull up to a marina and begin maneuvering into a slip, they often get wondering stares from people on the dock. Instead of emitting diesel exhaust and noise, their Island Packet 27 sloop Gilbert Ivy purrs quietly and handles as precisely as it might if it still had its Yanmar auxiliary. Inevitably, dock walkers approach to help with lines and ask the Bakers what kind of propulsion they use. Dave tells them they have repowered their boat with an electric inboard. “It happens so often that I decided to make a video rather than retell the story dockside,” Dave says. “I got 21,000 views over just the first few weeks.” (Go to soundingsonline.com to watch the video.) When Dave and…

Two rowboats approach the tail of a large whale in Thomas Hoyne’s “Flying Flukes,” created in 1986. In the distance, crews from whaling ships wait and watch. With a leg braced against the thighboard, a man in the boat at left prepares to throw his harpoon. This method of hunting was quite dangerous at the time, as the whale could pull the rowboat under the water, or so far away that the ships might not find the boat or its crew again. Commercial whaling in the United States dates back to the 17th century, but the industry hit its peak in the 19th century. Whaling produced three major products: whale oil, spermaceti oil and whalebone. These products were used in lamps, lubricants for machinery, and textiles for women’s corsets, buggy…

I just received my November issue of Soundings and the first article I read is “Unforgettable.” In this story, you asked readers to share their thoughts on boat designs that should be featured in the magazine’s Classics department. I have a suggestion: the Elco 42. I grew up on a canal in Bay Shore, New York. My family had a 26-foot wooden runabout in our slip; I don’t remember the specific model name. Our neighbor, however, had an Elco 42 and it was just gorgeous. Relatively narrow for its length, it had a roomy pilothouse. One year, my neighbor paid me $5 to sand and paint the entire hull. That was 55 years ago, when I was in my early teens; the wage seemed reasonable to me at the time,…

Curtis Stokes tries to be nice while leveling with the people who call him. They’re all eager to buy boats, and the conversations start out friendly enough, but far too often these days, the broker based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ultimately finds himself talking to a dial tone. “People hang up on me. They think I don’t want to sell them the boat,” he says. “That’s not the case at all.” The callers are frustrated because he tells them that before they can even start shopping for a boat, they need to get pre-approved for an insurance policy. According to numerous industry experts, the biggest hurdle to buying a boat right now is not high inflation or rising interest rates or even the slim pickings on the market following the…

The Sabre 28 was introduced to the sailing public at the 1971 Newport Boat Show by Sabre Yachts, a relatively new builder from Raymond, Maine. The company was founded by Roger Hewson, who was also the boat’s designer. The new racer-cruiser was an instant hit among a growing public that wanted the benefits of a strongly built, easily maintained, modestly sized sailboat for a couple or a small family. Success for Hewson’s new company and design was not just happenstance. His affinity for boats stretched back to the day he held the wood screws his father used to build a boat for the family summer home north of Montreal. He built his first boat of his own design, an outboard powered hydroplane, at age 14 and cut his teeth sailing…

842 PINKHAM Grower: Marianne Pinkham  Displ.: 842 lbs. Power: 8-hp Johnson 2-stroke long shaft Pilot: Todd Sandstrum THE CABIN CRUISER Grower: Edwin Pierpont Displ.: 1,960 lbs. Power: 15-hp Mercury 2-stroke long shaft Pilot: Buzz Pinkham Edwin Pierpont is surprised to see that the 8-inch blade on his Sawzall is long enough to cut through the deck of his latest build. He thought it would be thicker, but he’s not concerned. The deck is plenty thick. Edwin builds destroyers for the U.S. Navy at Bath Iron Works (BIW) in Bath, Maine, where he is an outside machinist, but on this October day, he’s building a boat of his own in the parking lot at Pinkham’s Plantation, a nursery in Damariscotta. He’s spent the summer and early fall nurturing this hull on…

As a propulsion source for boating, hydrogen has a lot going for it. When coupled with a fuel cell, the lightest gas in existence provides a clean and high-efficiency means of electrically spinning a propeller. Over the last couple of years, new technologies have emerged that allow hydrogen to be produced through electrolysis with seawater. One day soon, while out at sea with a solar array, you could literally end up refining your own endless source of fuel. Battery technology has been getting the lion’s share of attention over the last few years, but batteries are heavy and in high-drag boats, offer fairly limited range. To address that, Emirates Team New Zealand, the Defender of the 37th America’s Cup, has been going all-in on hydrogen as a fuel for its…

LOA: 23’3” Beam: 8’6” Draft: 1’4” Bridge clearance: 7’7” Fuel: 100 gals. Standard power: (1) 200-hp Yamaha In 1975 Grady-White introduced the Overnighter 221C, a 21-foot walkaround cabin powered by a single outboard. It took the market by storm, and its popularity led to a progression of larger walkaround models from the builder. Almost 50 years later, Grady-White is reaching back to its roots with the introduction of the Adventure 218, a modern version of the compact walkaround concept the company helped to make famous. It’s aimed squarely at a new generation of boaters. The 218 is unmistakably a Grady-White. You see that in the sheerline and hull shape, although engineers have managed to make this 21-footer more spacious, versatile and better performing than its predecessor. It is a capable…

It didn’t take long for the meatballs to make it to the flybridge. Before Tenley van der Wal disembarked from Snow Goose in Jersey City, New Jersey, she told her husband, Onne, and me to eat out of the fridge before we dove into the pantry or went out to dinner. Less than an hour later, as Onne and I motored the Van der Wal’s 1986 Grand Banks 32 underneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Onne asked me if I wanted to have gehaktballen voor ontbijt. Onne and I were both born in the Netherlands and since the Dutch love meatballs, I told him I would be more than happy to have them for breakfast. Within minutes, the leftover meatballs, accompanied by a mayonnaise-based dipping sauce, came up from the galley and…

Tom and Carol Donlan found Spirit in 2005 after spending about three decades on the water together. Spirit is a lobster boat designed by Ralph Stanley that features a deck by Jarvis Newman of Southwest Harbor, Maine, and a pilothouse with flybridge conceived by Lee S. Wilbur. Wilbur went on to finish the boat as a yacht in 1980. That’s one reason why Tom likes to call his boat a Newman 32. He likes to differentiate it from the version introduced years after the original. The couple started dating in 1971, when they were both working as journalists at the Bergen Record in Hackensack, New Jersey. They shared an appreciation for the water. “Tom and I crewed on a Tartan 34 near Nyack, New York. That’s where our love of…