Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Yachting

TO ME, EACH MORNING REPRESENTS PURE OPTIMISM. The promise of potential is palpable. That’s how my Independence Day started. Our crew heard reports of an amazing tuna bite not far from our home port on Long Island, New York. We left before first light. ¶ As the boat eased out of the inlet, gray light cracked the eastern horizon. Adrenaline amped up even more as our team traded stories of whose friend caught what fish and where just a day or two earlier. The fish tales raised the crew’s cumulative blood pressure in a positive way. ¶ The sea was like a glass tabletop, and our sport-fisherman’s 30-knot cruise had us offshore in a hurry. We came across a pod of dolphins circling in rapid fashion; it looked like they…

THE CHESAPEAKE BAY IS a gloriously BEAUTIFUL BODY of water, but it CAN ALSO BE NASTY. Some 15 knots of wind and a soaking rain nearly canceled my sea trial of the Sabre 45 Salon Express, given the bay’s shallow contours and an opposing tide and wind.¶ Five minutes after we cleared the breakwater and opened up the throttles on the pair of 435 hp Volvo Penta D6 diesels coupled to IPS600 drives, the weather was an afterthought. ¶ The yacht’s modified-V hull form—with a 23-degree deadrise amidships and a 16-degree transom deadrise—flattened the bumps in a head sea and held steady in a beam sea, even when cranked to a wide-open throttle speed of 30.9 knots. Cruising at 23.5 knots (at 3,000 rpm while getting around 0.8 mpg), the…

NUMEROUS CLIENTS HAVE CHARTERED ONCE, TWICE OR THREE TIMES AND THEN PURCHASED A WESTPORT OF THEIR OWN. AT FIRST, HE DIDN’T WANT to share. ¶ The yachtsman had owned a 28-foot Chris-Craft as well as 64- and 95-foot Azimuts, but at boat shows, he always admired the Westports. He loved the speed and style of his own rides, but he craved more space, which he got with the impulse purchase of a Westport 40m at the 2014 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. ¶ “We said we were going to put her in charter,” he recalls, “but once we got on her, I thought we wouldn’t. Why would I want strangers on my boat?” ¶ Like a lot of Westport owners, he softened after the first few years of ownership, and…

IMAGERY OF BLUE SKY, LUSH VEGETATION AND THE SUNSHINE State’s warm waters streamed down from a hovering drone’s camera as we circled the waters off Virginia Key aboard Raymarine’s Boston Whaler 350 Outrage. The drone’s operator swung the camera’s perspective, and our boat came into view. He was controlling the drone directly from our vessel’s 12-inch Raymarine Axiom Pro multifunction display — not from the drone manufacturer’s remote control — and the live footage was playing in real time on the MFD’s split-screen display. ¶ Giuseppe Carnevali would have been impressed. When Carnevali, the founder and former CEO of Navionics, unveiled the world’s first chart plotter in 1984, his goal was safe, reliable navigation, not third-party interoperability. But now, almost a quarter century later, the technology has evolved tremendously. Raymarine…

IT ALL STARTED WITH his first green-winged macaw named Julia, says Victor Hernandez, the bird expert at the Hilton Aruba Caribbean Resort & Casino. An animal lover in general, Hernandez became enchanted with (and adopted multiple) exotic birds while working at a pet store in his early 20s. That job led to a 30-years-and-counting career as a hotel bird expert. ¶ When the pet store was called to service the birds at a local hotel, Hernandez would bring along his own just for kicks. “And people would go crazy, and people started taking pictures and such,” he says. “Then I was hired by that hotel because they saw the potential of having the interactions.” ¶ Now, Hernandez takes care of Hilton Aruba’s 13 tropical birds, from macaws to cockatoos to…

MY PAL JIM HAS been dabbling in the creation of a new production yacht for several years. I considered it a harmless mental exercise until he shared an email that suggested he was crossing the dream-reality horizon. It was a note from his builder suggesting the time had come to choose a color. Jim was seeing red. ¶ “The right color can make the difference between success and failure of a new project,” Jim lectured. ¶ “What about Henry Ford?” I countered. “Any color so long as it is black worked for him.” ¶ “Old school, Coyle,” Jim said. “The waterfront is a battleground of ideas.” ¶ “Hell, it’s a war zone,” I grumbled. “Picture windows, monolithic masts, dreadnought stems. At this point, do you really think color matters?” ¶…

BENETEAU MAY BE BEST known for its sailboats, but a large share of its models nowadays are powerboats — and among those powerboats, the 15-year-old Swift Trawler line has been well-received since its inception. Swift Trawlers are known for their creative use of onboard space, performance, seakeeping ability and relatively affordable price points. ¶ The latest Swift Trawler model to splash is the 47, which bolsters the top-end of a series ranging from 30 feet to 50 feet in length. The 47 is scheduled to make its entrée into the world at this month’s Cannes Yachting Festival. It is a collaboration borne from the minds at Beneteau Power and Andreani Design. ¶ The 48-foot-4-inch yacht has a relatively wide 14-foot-6-inch beam. Three staterooms plus a sofa bed mean she can…

PEOPLE WHO HAVE CRUISED FROM ALASKA TO THE GALAPAGOS SAY THIS IS THE CHARTER OF A LIFETIME. IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN Nicolas Benazeth stepped onto the aft deck as the crew prepped the sub for a dive to about 200 feet. ¶ The 254-foot expedition yacht Legend was anchored in an Antarctica bay that looked like it was “on another planet. The light — you have these amazing mountains all covered in ice and snow, so everything is smooth with this eerie, moonlight glow,” he says. “The sub has this amazing array of lights, and you see these alien life forms down on the seabed. And I was thinking, I’m in a submarine at night in Antarctica seeing these jellyfish and worms and things that you see on nature programs.”…

HIGH-DEF ANGLING Lower sonar frequencies let anglers stalk fish at greater depths, whereas higher-frequency systems deliver greater detail at the expense of range. Garmin’s Ultra High-Definition GCV 20 ($599) is a black-box sonar module compatible with GPSMap and EchoMap Plus multifunction displays. It broadcasts on frequencies from 0.8 to 1.2 MHz, delivering photolike imagery of depths to 200 feet. The GCV 20 can provide views below (ClearVü) and around (SideVü) the boat. Garmin, garmin.com SILENT SENTRY Nautic-On’s remote vessel-monitoring system is designed to help ensure peace of mind, irrespective of an owner’s location. The system ($600 to $1,470) can be ordered in a variety of configurations that range from a single battery sensor to five battery sensors and three bilge-pump sensors. Additionally, users can use the system to check a…

OFTENTIMES the difference between success and failure comes down to nailing the details. It’s a concept Cockwells understands well. Take the British builder’s latest launch, the Titian Tender. This 34-foot retro beauty has bespoke carpentry, original fine art in her interior, and stainless-steel fittings. Those are just some of the little things that set her apart. And with twin 320 hp Yanmar 8LVs pushing her along, she’s not just for show — she’s also for go. Whom It’s For: The Titian Tender is for the experienced owner with refined tastes and an eye for classic design. Picture This: Your yacht is moored off the coast of Corsica late one summer morning when you get a taste for a specific bowl of zuppa corsa you discovered at a hole-in-the-wall café last…

FOR EACH OF US, THE DREAM IS DIFFERENT. Some of us want to get back to an anchorage like the one below with crystal-aquamarine views and water toys galore. Others want to go where no one else has gone, to the farthest reaches of the seas, where icebergs and whales are the only stop signs. Still others want to cruise, in a way, back in time aboard a classic yacht that feels like a 1920s movie set. In the following pages, we show you how to live each of those dreams aboard some of the season’s most noteworthy charter yachts.…