Sommaire pour January - February 2016 de PassageMaker

My wife and I were slowly heading back to the States after a six-week cruise of Nova Scotia and Bras d’Or Lake. Our Selene 53 trawler, Big Smile, was anchored in Lunenburg Harbor for three days and we were enjoying the spectacular weather. We had endured lots of overcast skies and no shortage of fog during our trip, so the brilliant sunshine, lovely people, and nice shops and restaurants of Lunenburg were a wonderful respite. The mid-August sun had set and the night lighting of town was beautiful. I grabbed my Nikon D3s and a fast lens and captured an enchanting array of lights. LOVE TO SHOOT PICTURES? Want to share your adventures? Send us your favorite high-resolution photos and a short description, and we’ll showcase our favorites in this…

Christened and launched in Holland on October 31 to eager onlookers, the 100-plus-meter Greenland cargo ship will serve the somewhat banal purpose of carrying and delivering cement for Norwegian-based KGJ Cement in a joint venture with JT Cement. Of significantly greater interest is that Greenland will be the first dry cargo ship ever to be propelled exclusively by LNG, or liquefied natural gas. LNG is the most environmentally friendly fuel known today that will also meet the stringent, greener emissions criteria of the near future. Greenland is equipped with an automated cement loading and offloading system, “based on the principle of fluidization of cement with compressed air.” This system allows the cement to flow through a closed, dust-free piping system when traveling to and from shore facilities. And since watching…

You never truly know your boat’s range until you start to make substantial ocean passages. Theoretical range in flat water with no current and little wind can be surprisingly optimistic so we probe the bounds conservatively. Our 19-day, 3,023-mile Indian Ocean crossing from Dampier, Australia, to Rodrigues, Mauritius, is the farthest we have ever gone between fuel stops. Still, it’s only a small and fairly safe extension of our previous longest run when we trekked 2,600 miles between Hawaii and the Marquesas Islands. On that run we stopped and visited both the Palmyra Atoll and Fanning Island, so the actual open ocean crossing distance wasn’t longer than previous trips. Prior to our Indian Ocean crossing, the longest unbroken offshore run we have completed was 2,000 miles from San Francisco to…

Atender is the workhorse of every yacht, carrying people ashore, bringing provisions back, taking out the garbage, and putting the dog ashore for a walk. There is an old (politically incorrect) Abacos saying, “Some women, most mules, and all dinghies are nothin’ but trouble.” I dare not comment on the first two, but tenders pose, well, a challenge in finding just the right one. Over five decades on the water, I’ve used and been abused by perhaps 25 or 30 of these land liaisons. Many I loved, some I hated, and one sank under me. I know tenders. I can tell you this: Choosing a mule (or a spouse) is not nearly as complicated as picking the right tender. Let’s look at what I’ve learned. FOUR QUESTIONS TO ASK UP…

Mooring Retriever If you or your crew has ever struggled to quickly run a line through a mooring ring, this piece of hardware may be just the solution. The Grabber mooring retriever easily fits onto the end of your boat pole, and is available in both threaded or snap-pole versions. Tightly affix the bitter end of your mooring line to the Grabber’s spring arm with the Velcro strap, and push the open end of the jaws onto the mooring ring. Pull back and, snap, watch the line magically thread through the ring and return to you on the end of the pole. $109/each; To see how it works, watch a demonstration video online at: www.goldendovemarine.com. Racor Filter Change Gauge When Rob Finley’s engine shut down while steaming back to his…

Many of us have seen the reality TV series, “Deadliest Catch,” which describes life aboard commercial fishing vessels working the Bering Sea. Scenes of 40-foot waves crashing over the decks of these 100-footers as the crew wrestles with 700-pound crab pots make one wonder why would anyone want to work, much less live, in this part of the world. I was about to find out, as I was headed west along Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on the way to Dutch Harbor with Tony Fleming and crew aboard his Fleming 65, Venture. SPIRIT OF VENTURE Tony’s yacht certainly lives up to its name, as it now has over 50,000 miles under its keel, many of which have been far-away, remote destinations. For 10 years Venture has served not only as Tony’s personal…

Mini Sausage Quiches DIFFICULTY HOW HEALTHY TOTAL TIME: 35 minutes MAKES: 10 quiches The Okeechobee Waterway cuts across the state of Florida at the northern edge of the Everglades, going from the ICW at the Port Lucie Inlet west to Fort Myers. Populated by herons, eagles, manatees, and the occasional alligator, it’s a nature-lover’s delight. An excellent safeguard against hurricanes, this area is about as far from the coast as you can get in southern Florida and there are several yards that offer dry storage. We chose to leave our boat in the water over the summer while we returned to Illinois to sell our house and become full-time liveaboard cruisers. Leaving the boat yard and heading down the Okeechobee toward Fort Myers last fall was a special time. I…

ROS BOROUGH RF-246 Although a quarter century and 500-plus hulls past its “maiden voyage,” the ever-popular Rosborough RF-246 has undergone a citizenship change and a heavy redesign to suit today’s power boaters. Before jumping into what is fresh and new, perhaps the best characteristic of the Rosborough is what remains the same. Originally born in Nova Scotia, the 25-foot cruiser is rooted in one of the saltiest places in this hemisphere and her classic, eau de workboat lines more than capture her heritage. Founded by James D. Rosborough towards the middle of the 1900s, the company’s original focus was on building compact commercial boats for Canadian fisherman. In the 1980s, the company decided to make the shift toward pleasure boats, without sacrificing their rugged pedigree. The pocket trawler was a…

WheelHouse Underway In the middle of the ever-changing world of yacht management tools such as Vessel Vanguard and the recently merged The Boat Village/DockMaster (rebranded as MyTaskIt Pro), it is hard to keep up with the myriad changes. In 2006, WheelHouse Technologies was one of the early providers of online vessel maintenance programs, yacht documentation, and other cloud-based task lists. In order to augment these services to users, WheelHouse has developed a mobile application called “WheelHouse Underway” that is scheduled to be available for download in December 2015. Like any cloud-based tool, WheelHouse Underway will perform best when connected to the internet, as it will automatically sync to data, documents, and tasks that are stored on the cloud. But what makes Underway particularly helpful to fleet managers or yacht owners…

THE WALKER STREET BRIDGE IS THE GATEWAY TO LAKE ERIE FOR BOATS DEPARTING PORT DOVER, ONTARIO, CANADA. On a sunlit Sunday morning the east leaf was raised at 0900, as a procession of six steel trawlers steered a course out of the channel and into the lake for a fleet photo shoot. The colorful hulls were unique but every boat shared a common thread: The owners all had a heavy hand in their construction. Several of them had been renovated from relics of a variety of commercial vessels, fish boats, tugs, and charter boats, while others had been designed and built as recreational trawlers, resembling the hard-working hulls of yesteryear. Each boat is a unique and personal rendering of the builder’s vision of the perfect cruising trawler. I first traveled…

Florida was almost left out of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway project. In 1913, when the Army Corps of Engineers asked for a continuation of their inland route, linking Beaufort, North Carolina, to Key West, Florida, the request was denied. Congress saw no reason to create a national canal for sparsely populated Florida. A counter-proposal was later approved—but only from Beaufort southward to Florida’s border at the St. Johns River. Well, as they say, the rest is history. Florida’s population exploded during the 1900s. And recently the state officially eclipsed New York to become our nation’s third most populous. No surprise then, it now boasts a busy and well-maintained inland waterway, managed by its own state agency, the Florida Inland Navigation District (www.aicw.org). Florida is so big, and so diverse, it…

Equipping your cruiser with the right stuff doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. The owner of this Krogen 52 asked the builder to install mirrors made of polished stainless steel on the fuel tanks in the vessel’s engine room. Doing so provides a simple and effective way to keep an eye on the outboard sides of both John Deere engines. Maybe it’s not a new idea, but it’s still a good one. Twin engines (yes, this Krogen has two) often present maintenance and access challenges. The combination of white paint and large mirrors will enable the owner to see problems, should they develop. Additionally, the battery box in the lower-right is well secured and clearly labelled. Just outboard of the battery box you will find a fuel tank inspection…