Friday, March 29

Browsing: Cruising Life

The problem with coming in to a strange harbor at night is determining which lights are which. Which are the ATONs, marking a jetty, a shoal, a side of the channel? And which are merely background lights – a house, a car, a bridge? I once cruised down the Florida Keys in a fast boat after dark and thought I was looking at lights marking one of the resort marinas I was aiming for, until I realized the lights were from a night game at a Little League baseball diamond. Time to throttle back. For navigating at night, you can…

Jim and Cathy Barnard of Waterford, Connecticut, are giving a new meaning to the idea of living aboard. They don’t actually live on a boat that floats; instead, they live on a house they built on dry land that looks like a boat. And a classic boat at that. According to this story in The Day, the Barnards designed their 4,400-square-foot house so it would look like a vintage steamship. They had some property on a 60-foot bluff overlooking the Niantic River, basically between East Lyme and New London, and about six years ago they started designing the house “on…

TECHNOHULL, the Greek yard that’s been making high-performance RIBs since 2005, has just introduced a new T688 model, it’s smallest yet at 23’ 6”. Powered by a 250-hp outboard, the new RIB tops out at 50 knots, and can be used as a tender to a larger boat or as a fun sportboat in its own right. The T688 is designed with a center console with an optional T-top; the passageways mean you can walk from bow to stern on either side. The driver and a guest sit in two wrap-around, shock-absorbing seats, while another seat is built into the…

For the moment, let’s forget about the issues of war and peace, of taxes and immigration, of politics and Washington and Congress. Let’s deal with things we really care about: Where can we find the best beach bars in the United States? To help us along, Coastal Living has compiled a list of the ten best beach bars, including spots from Massachusetts and Rhode Island to Oregon and California, plus two in Florida. (I must be doing something wrong, because I haven’t been to a single one of them, although now I can add them to my ever-growing must-visit list.)…

The new, highly creative 70-foot, four-cabin Azimut S7 won the “European Power Boat of the Year” for over 45-foot yachts at the Dusseldorf show in January, recognizing its innovative features inside and out. Azimut used a lot of carbon in the S7, particularly in the superstructure, to keep the weight – and the CG – down, while triple Volvo IPS1050 pod drives propel the luxury-filled Italian-built cruiser to a 36-knot top speed. The exterior styling, by Stafano Reghii, gives the boat an aggressive low profile with a raked front windshield, aft-set flybridge, and diamond-shaped deckhouse windows that showcase the play…

A weaker Gulf Stream, combined with overall global warming, could mean a lot of trouble for the coast of New England, according to this well-documented story from Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson.  The New England coast already has been hit hard by storms and surging high water (see the picture of Scituate, Massachusetts, above) in the past few months. Two nor’easters earlier this month produced two of the three highest water levels ever recorded in Boston Harbor, and things could get worse. A basic problem is that the sea level along the Northeast coast is rising faster than it is…

A woman taking a selfie fell 15 decks off her cruise ship balcony into the water near the Bahamas at night, but quick action by the captain and crew of the Norwegian Epic liner saved her life. Passengers said they could hear her screaming as she fell. It was about nine at night, with many passengers still eating dinner, when the announcement “Code Oscar portside” came three times over the intercom. The ship, which had been at cruise speed, came to a stop, turned around and launched a tender. Passengers watched as the boat searched in the darkness, using searchlights,…

This is a story that just keeps getting worse. Now it turns out that one of the 76 (yes, 76) containers that tumbled off the Maersk Shanghai while it was off the coast of North Carolina last week was carrying 5,900 pounds of sulfuric acid. The Coast Guard, NOAA and the EPA are trying to track the containers, which the Coast Guard has labeled “hazards to navigation.” The crew of the Shanghai called the Coast Guard after the containers fell off the ship in a heavy roll during nor’easter 17 miles off Oregon Inlet in the Outer Banks, saying they…

The oldest message in a bottle, thrown off a German ship in the Indian Ocean in 1886, has been found on a beach 110 miles north of Perth, Australia. The bottle, in remarkably good condition, was authenticated by German and Australian authorities. The bottle was found by Tonya Illman, who was walking along the shore of Wedge Island, in Western Australia. She was picking up debris, and saw the bottle, with a tightly rolled message inside. The message paper was wet, so she took it home and put it in her oven to dry out. When she unfurled it later,…

The remains of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, which was sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, 1942, has been found two miles under water by a research team led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The Lady Lex was found about 500 miles from Australia by Allen’s Research Vessel Petrel, which located 11 of the carrier’s 35 planes on board, and took a close-up picture of a Grumman Wildcat, top. The Lexington was hit by Japanese torpedo planes and dive bombers during what has been considered the first battle between aircraft carriers in the world. After a massive…

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