Índice para October 2023 em PassageMaker

Adventure company Arksen recently launched the first 85-foot vessel in its Explorer Series, Project Pelagos, from the Isle of Wight. The privately owned Arksen 85 hit the water ahead of her sea trials and handover to the client. The Arksen 85 is an efficient, long-range expedition vessel capable of taking on global adventures or weekend cruising with family and friends. According to the builder, the 85 cruises at 9 to 12 knots, will hit a maximum speed of 14 knots, and has a 7,000-nautical-mile range at displacement speeds. Three state-rooms, including a master and two VIPs that can accommodate up to five guests, are in addition to quarters for four crew. Project Pelagos was designed with family life in mind. The vessel has the same efficient hull design and three-deck…

At 36 feet long with 8½ feet of beam, the SeaPiper 35 is a pocket trawler with surprising features for boaters who understand the importance of a yacht having a specific mission. The SeaPiper 35 was the brainchild of Ritzo Muntinga, a California-based electronics engineer. His vision was to create a reliable, small trawler that was simply outfitted for affordability. He also wanted to make the SeaPiper trailerable, for easy moves between cruising grounds. The earliest couple of builds were undertaken in California, before production moved to China. After about a dozen or so builds there, the pandemic arrived and construction stalled. Enter the dealer and brokerage firm Seattle Yachts and its subsidiary, Marine Manufacturing Group, which builds Tartan sailing yachts and Legacy motoryachts near the shore of Lake Erie…

Early in the ownership of one my boats, I meandered down to the marina and found a most-unpleasant sight. A crook had been aboard. This crook took, of all things, a satchel with owner’s manuals for the onboard equipment. Truth be told, he didn’t have much to target, as I’d only had the boat for a few weeks and had not provisioned it with any personal equipment. I was smart enough (or lucky enough) to have removed the various electronics arrays. Still, it was reminder that even in marinas with security personnel and gated access to the slips, crooks can and do find a way on board. The following three rules are some easy ways to deter the bad guys, and can go a long way toward protecting our boats.…

Recently, I helped a dockside neighbor tighten a flush rod holder to the covering board in his boat’s cockpit. He had landed a nice tuna, but the fight had loosened the fitting. Often, rod holders or other deck hardware benefit from a reinforcement plate on the underside, but his relied on screws biting into the teak and going into the fiberglass substrate below. I removed the flush rod holder and noticed there was no sealant on the underside of the face plate. I knew that every time he washed the boat, the teak near the rod holder’s base always seemed to take longer to dry than the rest of the wood. Now, I understood why. Without sufficient sealant lining the base to repel the water, the moisture would remain until…

As excited as I am by modern, sleek design, a classic boat will always steal my heart. My passion for traditional style, particularly former workboats converted to a life of leisure, led me to base this design, Husk, on the classic trawlers that spend the warmer months plying the expansive waters of the Pacific Northwest and southern Alaska. I wanted to imbue the design with a touch of modernity, so, from a distance, Husk has the unmistakable lines of a classically styled trawler. Upon closer inspection, the boat has modern details. Seen in profile, Husk has the bona fides of a classic trawler, with a high bow, reverse-raked windshield and beefy bulwarks. The mast doubles as a radar arch and can launch the dinghy from the boat deck. An exterior…

Times change. Tastes change. People change. In the boating world, change can be viscous, especially when you’re talking about a model that has seen great success since it was introduced 21 years ago. But after ferrying cruisers long and short haul for two decades, the Outer Reef 650 Classic’s number has come up for a refresh. As it happens, Jeff Druek, Outer Reef’s president, CEO and Classic series designer, found himself considering feedback from existing and potential 650 customers. Earlier, he had gathered feedback on the brand’s 700 series. Among its many appealing attributes, that yacht offered a wealth of volume and storage, ease of owner operation and strong bluewater performance. He noted customer interest for those qualities in a smaller yacht, whether due to slip size, itinerary restrictions, handling…

Being a safe boater is really quite simple. All you have to do is have an answer for the question, “What if?” Most conscientious boaters do a pretty good job with the big “what ifs”: What if someone falls overboard? What if there is a fire? It’s lacking an answer for the less-obvious “what ifs” that has gotten more than one boater into trouble. Today’s modern, long-distance power cruising gives us the means and reliability to explore distant islands and harbors. But every time we go out, we are still placing ourselves at the mercy of Mother Nature—a force capable of challenging the seasoned crew and most stoutly built vessel. Only when you’ve determined what you would do in any “what if” scenario are you truly safe handling your passagemaker.…

On a recent run from Charleston, S.C., to the Chesapeake Bay, a low-voltage alert flashed on the multifunction display. The 12-volt power supply was slowly dropping. The crew went to the tender, stripped its battery and charger, and used them to replace the failing battery as a temporary solution, but the smaller charger could not keep up with the big boat’s demand. As night approached, voltage slowly dropped until the system crashed. This failure took out the chartplotters, depth, speed, radar, AIS and VHF radio, leaving the crew flying blind. Here’s what happened, how they handled troubleshooting, and how they repaired the system to add redundancies for the future. HIGH VOLTAGE There are many excellent reasons for utilizing higher voltages in a DC system. With 24 volts rather than 12…

Liveaboard dependence on electrical appliances has increased enormously on yachts. So have the headaches about how best to provide sufficient onboard electrical power to satisfy the ever-growing demand. At one time, the primary solution was a generator or alternator mounted on the vessel’s engine(s) to charge a house battery underway, and on a shore-power connection to charge and provide electricity at a dock. When the average yacht’s hotel current draw began to exceed what a shore-power connection could provide, the use of onboard gensets steadily gained in popularity, eventually becoming a mainstay. The problems with standalone gensets are that they’re heavy, they occupy a lot of space, and they’re noisy. Truth be told, they are often oversized for the loads they are required to meet, which means they tend to…

New Journeyis Hull No. 18 of Nordhavn Yachts’ second-largest model, the N96. She was recently delivered to her owners at Nordhavn headquarters in Dana Point, Calif. New Journey immediately cast off lines for her maiden voyage—a six-week, 1,500-nautical-mile trip exploring the Sea of Cortez before heading north up the Pacific coast. New Journey then spent the summer in Alaska as the first installment in a six-year, around-the-world trip that will commence in the spring. For exploring remote anchorages, the boat carries a custom 18-foot tender powered by a diesel outboard, and an electric-powered personal watercraft (each served by a separate davit). The owners are avid scuba enthusiasts, so the vessel also is equipped with a dive locker in her transom and an air compressor to fill tanks. A full-time crew…

During my tenure with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and Royal Navy, I’ve savored the thrill of riding aboard an array of swift vessels, each engineered to withstand the unforgiving whims of the sea. The sense of security that these boats instill in turbulent waters is remarkable. I had the same feeling aboard the North-Line 42 Wheelhouse. This low-slung, oceangoing cruiser—designed by Arthur Mursell of TT Boat Designs and built in Harlingen, Netherlands, on the Wadden Sea—combines classic aesthetics with the practical needs of a modern mariner. When I boarded via her swim platform through a transom door on centerline, I immediately noted that her cockpit is encircled with a high, stainless steel railing, granting protection and a sturdy grabrail underway. L-shape settees flank the after section of the cockpit.…

Every sea trial is a way to gather evidence. Feeling how the trawler you’re thinking about buying travels through the water and behaves at different speeds is an essential part of your evaluation. In a different world, you might spend all day, or even a long weekend, covering dozens of miles to learn as much as possible. In reality, the sea trial is part of a busy pre-purchase survey, and it is often a simple jaunt from the marina to the haulout yard and back to the home slip. The seller does not want to put the trawler in bad sea conditions, so the weather during your survey may also limit where you can run. If you want to head out beyond protected waters, this needs to be agreed upon…

• It must open on deployment, and stay open.• The hardware must withstand high loads while maintaining shape and points of attachment.• It must stay submerged below the surface.• It must resist spinning in the water, which stresses and weakens the towline. Swivel devices can be placed in line to accommodate this, but they can also make the assembly weaker.• It must be towed on a line long enough for it to be pulled through the water at a constant depth, and not be affected by the boat’s rising and falling with the waves. This is typically a line at least three times the boat length. To stay submerged, most drogues are weighted by a length of chain, by weights or by a small mushroom anchor attached to the end…

It was just past dawn on a midsummer morning in Heusden, Netherlands, and I was wide awake with jet lag. I went for a stroll around the fortified town, ready to pounce on the first bakery or espresso bar that showed signs of life. At the two marinas just off the Maas River, I found that nearly every vessel, both recreational craft and converted workboats, was a traditional, full-displacement steel boat. Fiberglass was as uncommon as hen’s teeth, and quite a few of the steelies were from a builder I was on my way to visit: Linssen Yachts. A few days later, I followed that same river southeast to the tiny municipality of Maasbracht, sandwiched within a thin strip of Dutch land between Belgium and Germany. The manufacturing facility of…

I leaned casually against the airline ticket counter, trying to look nonchalant. I hoped the ticket agent wouldn’t notice that, in addition to my two suitcases, I was trying to slip in a cardboard box filled with tortillas, cheddar cheese and zip-top bags for my expatriate sisterin-law in Italy. The clerk looked down at the box, bemused, as if to say, “How dumb do you think I am?” He then smiled and asked, “What kind of boat do you have?” Always quick on the uptake, I managed to reply, “Huh?” He looked down at the taped and roped box and said: “Well, I see a bowline on the top, and there’s a clove hitch on the side, but I’m surprised you’re giving up a good piece of Dacron braid.” We…