Friday, March 29

Browsing: On Watch

He probably didn’t start out wanting to be a bother, or an international media star. Most likely, Wally the Walrus was looking for a place to rest. But when Wally, who’s about 10 feet long and weighs a ton, started climbing on boats in the U.K., France and Spain, he got some attention. In the past few weeks, he’s been trying to climb on so many boats in the Scilly Isles off the UK that local officials built him a soft float for him to sleep on, while urging boat owners to “gently deflect” his presence with an oar or…

The popular lobster boat races are underway again Maine this summer, after some of them were cancelled last year because of the pandemic. So far, the fastest lobster boat, winning races in Boothbay and Rockland, is Blue Eyed Girl; it was clocked at 51 mph, which is a bit faster than it travels on its everyday working life picking up lobster pots in Southport, just west of Boothbay Harbor. Blue Eyed Girl is a Northern Bay 38 with a 900-hp Scania V8 owned by Andrew Taylor (pictured below), who makes his living as a Maine lobsterman. In his spare time,…

Safehaven Marine just held the rough-water sea trials off the entrance to Cork Harbour in Ireland for its new 41-foot Barracuda Search and Rescue vessel. The Safehaven 12.5 Barracuda is fully self-righting; it can recover and keep going even if it capsizes, and it’s made to handle all weather conditions anywhere in the world. Safehaven has sold some to the U.S. government. The 12.5 Barracuda has a deep-V hull, with a 24-degree deadrise at the transom, for performance in heavy seas. Power comes from twin 650-hp Cats working with two-speed ZF gearboxes and France Helices surface drives. Top speed is…

Around the world, more than seven million people (including readers of Cruising Odyssey) watched the terrifying video showing a larger powerboat bearing down on three fishermen in a small boat near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon on Aug. 12, 2017. In the video, the owner of the fishing boat, Chris McMahon, waves his arms and yells, “Hey, Hey, HEY,” as the larger boat, a 31-foot Bayliner Trophy, gets closer and closer. The video (below) shows one angler, Roni Durham, jump into the water. McMahon also dove in just before the Bayliner climbed up the transom of his…

More than 20 years ago, I often commuted to work in midtown New York from Norwalk Cove Marina in Connecticut on a variety of boats, depending on which one my magazine was testing for the summer. I remember a Sea Ray, a Formula, a Fountain, a Donzi, a Phoenix and a Pursuit at different times. (There was no way I could commute back and forth in the same day on my own Grand Banks with its 8-knot top speed.) But those commutes, morning and evening, going down Long Island Sound, the East River past the U.N., around the tip of…

Scott Akerman, our Cruising Odyssey partner, ad director and a professional captain, is on an epic delivery of a 2018 Coastal Craft Concord 65 named Indigo from Midland, on Georgian Bay in Canada, to DiMillo’s Yacht Sales in Portland, Maine, with Captain Eli Bliss. Here’s his latest report on their journey from the end of the Welland Canal that connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario down to Montreal and then Quebec City (see picture above).  From the end of the Welland Canal, we crossed Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence River and then past the Thousand Islands. Some of the…

After four years of cruising in Europe, James and Jennifer Hamilton (and their cat, Spitfire), are back home. Earlier this week, they tied up Dirona, their 2009 Nordhavn 52, in Charleston, South Carolina, after a 2,922-nm , 19-day leg from Horta in the Azores. “It’s great to be home,” James wrote on their blog, mvdirona.com. They cleared customs, got their first Covid vaccinations two hours after landing, and picked up dozens of Amazon packages that were waiting for them. The Hamiltons, who had already completed a circumnavigation, left Newport, Rhode Island, in May, 2017, and cruised through northern Europe for…

A father and son team are heading 1,000 nm up the Inside Passage from Bellingham, Washington, to Juneau, Alaska, and back, on a 27-foot solar-electric boat. They say they will be on the first totally solar-electric boat to make the trip. The boat is a Solar Sal 27, built by Sam Devlin at Devlin Boat with the father and son team, David and Alex Borton; the electric power was designed by BRJ Solutions. (David is a retired professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.) The boat, named Wayward Sun, has a 4kW Torqeedo electric motor, an array of…

Silent Yachts just launched its first new 60, and it comes with a sail-kite to give the solar-electric cat an extra 5 knots or so of speed. The new 60 was built at the company’s yard in Thailand; eight more are under construction there. The basic boat is powered by two 50kW electric motors with a 143kW lithium battery and a 100kW generator, producing a cruising speed of 6 to 8 knots and a top speed of 14 knots. The boat’s most advanced power comes from two 340kW electric motors, a 268kW lithium battery, and a 150kW generator, with the…

After cruising in northern Europe for the past four years, James and Jennifer Hamilton are heading back home to the United States on their Nordhavn 52, Dirona. They’re now in mid-Atlantic, about half way between their last stop, Horta in the Azores, and their final destination, Charleston, South Carolina. The Hamiltons already have a circumnavigation and two Atlantic crossings under Dirona’s hull. A high-tech couple from Seattle, they bought Dirona new in 2009 and have been living aboard and cruising since 2012. On this latest venture, they left Newport, Rhode Island, in May, 2017, and have been cruising in the…

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