Innehållsförteckning för November 2020 från Soundings

My older brother and I have a phone-tag problem. It typically takes four calls and three voicemails that usually contain humorous digs at each other before one of us isn’t too busy to answer. Sometimes it takes days to connect. For that reason, I was really surprised last month when I called his number and he answered, because he was definitely too busy to talk. “Hey, Bro. We’re moving a 54-foot cruiser for a friend, and the GPS just went out,” he said. “I’m trying to get it back. I’ve got no idea where I am. Can I call you back later?” I told him to check the antenna connection for corrosion and restart the unit; other than that, I said, it’s probably a lost cause. Then I mentioned that…

For decades, Capt. Bob Douglas and The Black Dog Tall Ships have welcomed fourth- and fifth-grade students from Martha’s Vineyard’s elementary schools aboard the schooners Shenandoah and Alabama for week-long, immersive sailing voyages. Since the 1990s, more than 5,000 children have gone out to sea, rising early for deck swabbing, galley duty and hauling sails and anchors by hand. For many, their week aboard was their first time away from their parents in what often proved to be a transformative experience. With no modern conveniences, the kids would return to another time, sailing the Shenandoah without an engine, using hand-powered water pumps, warming themselves by a coal-fired stove and sharing camaraderie with the captain and crew. They would learn basic seamanship, navigation, small-boat handling and rope working skills while cruising…

Each time we go to the Newport show we end up buying a new boat,” says Cindy Cuminale, who lives in Darien, Connecticut, with her husband, Jim. The couple most recently attended that Rhode Island event in 2017. They went in search of a larger boat to replace the Eastbay 50 they’d owned for a few years. Upon arrival, they made haste to the display of a builder with a new 60-footer, but were disappointed when the design fell short of their expectations. So, Cindy and Jim continued to work the docks. They hadn’t walked far when they found the Hunt Yachts fleet. “We were already familiar with the brand and the storied history of the Hunt deep-V hull. But at that show, we were able to really see the…

Here’s a Victorian couple dressed fashionably for winter, ready for a ride on an iceboat. They had better hold on. The image belies the rigors of the 200-year-old sport. At one time, the iceboat was the fastest man-made conveyance on Earth. The iceboat came to the U.S. in the late 1700s from Europe, where it served as a utilitarian craft on frozen canals and rivers in Holland, Scandinavia and Russia. The first hot bed for this desgin in America was New York’s Hudson River where, in 1790, boatbuilder Oliver Booth put a box on top of a set of skate-like runners, added a tiller/runner combination for steering, and powered it with a primitive sail. His contraption worked. By the mid-1800s, iceboating had gained a core of ardent supporters. Clubs and…

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy made clear in his August 25 budget address that the state was in serious trouble because of Covid-19. With unemployment at 16.8 percent and a $5.7 billion shortfall in projected revenue, the state needed, among other things, to implement tax policy changes that would yield more than $1 billion of revenue in nine months. His proposed changes included imposing a tax on all income above $1 million, restoring the sales tax on limousines, and removing the tax cap on sales of new and used boats. Since 2016, boat buyers in the Garden State have paid no more than $20,000 in sales tax, no matter the vessel’s value. Under Murphy’s plan, starting October 1, they will now pay 6.625 percent on the full price. “Millionaires and…

RIVA GOES HOLLYWOOD … SORT OF Yacht builder Riva grew from humble beginnings. Back in 1842, a storm on Italy’s Lake Iseo nearly wiped out the entire fishing fleet. Young shipwright Pietro Riva was quick to react and spent long days restoring the damaged vessels, earning him respect and admiration from the locals. Soon after, he opened a yard in Sarnico, Italy, and the story of Riva Yachts began. By the 1950s and ’60s, the outfit was churning out jaw-dropping, varnish-slathered runabouts crafted from mahogany and teak. The boats had such grace and elegance that they often were featured in movies. Now, a short film aims to celebrate Riva’s relationship with moviemaking. Shot entirely among Venice’s canals, Riva in the Movies starts as Pierfrancesco Favino crosses Piazza San Marco just…

LeAnn Morris Pliske, stuck at home in Fort Lauderdale with her husband, their 12- and 13-year-old kids, and a couple of dogs, was the personification of pretty much every American’s psyche this past summer. “I was losing my mind,” she says. “My kids were stir-crazy. We had to get out of here.” They all got tests showing they were negative for Covid-19, packed up that paperwork along with their passports, the Bahamas health visas that they obtained online, and their usual customs forms, and headed to the islands aboard their 45-foot Hatteras sportfisherman Half Fast. A few hours and 50 nautical miles later, they were legally off the coast of Bimini with three weeks’ worth of supplies, and with aquamarine water and open space all around them. “It’s dead flat…

When boatbuilder Thomas Townsend saw the Alice W. for the first time he was immediately smitten, even though the Beals Island-style lobsterboat was in need of repair. Growing up in Northport, New York, on Long Island, he remembered seeing Beals Island lobsterboats moored near his family’s 1928 Wheeler, and thought they were “the sexiest, coolest and most seakindly boats around.” Townsend’s parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle all owned boats, so he went from being a baby in a bassinett to a toddler on deck, where he says he learned how to walk. (That is why, he likes to joke, walking is not something he does very well today.) During high school, after his parents’ divorce, he moved from his family’s house onto a 42- foot Matthews motorboat he shared with…

With so many new boaters on the water this past summer due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was no shortage of vessels plying the waters of my usual serene haunts in the river, bay and ocean near my home in New Jersey. Word on the street was boat sales were booming as people who were stuck at home decided to trade summer travel plans for keys to new boats, possibly encouraged by a story in the New York Times last July that said driving a boat was easy and anyone could do it. Well, not so much. One morning I couldn’t back out of my slip because there were a dozen yoga enthusiasts behind my boat in the navigable waterway, posturing on their paddleboards as the sun was coming up.…

Fierce and ferocious wind sweeps over the beleaguered land. The sand is washed from sight as monster waves break over an entire island that stands knee-deep in water where once there was solid ground. Many survivors have attested to the awesome power of this type of storm. The noise has been described as a freight train roaring right over your head or an avalanche that never stops. Marine artist Carl Evers paints a picture of those words in his watercolor, Hurricane. He captures the fury of a tropical storm using colors with an almost photographic clarity. They depict foaming, seething green water in the foreground, the spindrift swept off the wave tops and palms bracing against the wind. The American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) calls Evers, who passed away…

Fifteen minutes after the ferry for Monhegan Island leaves New Harbor, Maine, Capt. Chad Hanna tells the Hardy III’s passengers to look to starboard where they can see the lighthouse at the tip of the Pemaquid Peninsula. He tells them Pemaquid Point Light is the most photographed lighthouse in the state and is featured on the back of the Maine quarter, but he doesn’t mention that his most famous ancestor once served as its lightkeeper. If Hanna were to regale the passengers with his family’s maritime history, the one-hour ride to Monhegan wouldn’t be long enough. As the Hardy III’s twin 350-hp Caterpillar diesels propel the ferry and its 48 passengers towards Monhegan, Hanna and one of the deckhands, Kaden Pendleton, point out marine wildlife and noteworthy landmarks. Usually, the…

LOA: 25’0” Beam: 8’6” Draft: 2’0” Weight: 5,400 lbs. Power: (2) 90-hp outboards Fuel: 115 gals. Rob Russell didn’t get a youthful start in boating. He never owned a boat as a young man. Instead, his thing was flying. “I’ve been a pilot and aircraft owner ever since my father taught me to fly in our 1941 Piper Cub J5 when I was 16 years old,” the 68-year-old, semi-retired forensic psychologist says. But after owning a handful of airplanes and logging thousands of flight hours crisscrossing the continent, he was looking for a new adventure. That’s when boats came to mind. “I always read books on boating and admired the sailboats and trawlers I’d see out on the water,” he says. “Getting into boating seemed to be a natural next…