Table of contents for January - February 2019 in PassageMaker

The very next day after my parents closed on their first fiberglass sailboat, a Ranger 23, I caught my dad perusing the classifieds in our local sailing rag, 48° North. I was 11 years old and pleased they had replaced the rusting steel boat that sat on a cradle in our front yard with something that actually floated. But it was clear I should not get too attached to this new boat. I got the feeling over breakfast that morning that our new family member was just a temporary fix for these serial-boat-owner parents of mine. They had already sailed and sold a 19-foot Mercury, a Thunderbird, and the aforementioned rust bucket. The new one, dubbed Murf, would eventually become known as “Little” Murf. He was, in all respects save…

As our own Steve Zimmerman wrote about recently (“Troubleshooter: Stability Concerns,” September 2018), vessel stabilization has gone through a renaissance of late. Stabilization—now considered an absolute must-have by many cruisers—has become an increasingly competitive market. With a host of new products released in both the gyro and fin marketplaces, stabilization options are becoming more accessible as the industry moves out of the exclusive domain of the superyacht and into the mainstream. One of the manufacturers leading the charge is Humphree, a Swedish company that has been working on its trim systems for years. Recently in Fort Lauderdale we had the chance to see a demo of the Humphree system, which features automated electric trim tabs called Interceptors. Interceptors work well at higher speeds, as the transom-mounted plates automatically and quickly—within…

BARNACLES Boat owners see barnacles much the same way backyard birders view squirrels or the way gardeners feel about any number of small mammals that gnaw on fresh veggies: They don’t much like them. And like feeding birds or growing vegetables entails battling with these respective pests daily and often to no avail, boat owners’ efforts to mitigate barnacles (and the other flora and fauna collectively known as “marine fouling”) is ongoing and often feels futile. Yet while rodents and lagomorphs may have a certain charm in a different context (animated films, Beatrix Potter books, internet memes, etc.), barnacles are almost universally undervalued. (Apparently “Barnacles!” is used as a stand-in expletive on the animated TV show SpongeBob SquarePants.) Even in tide pools and aquarium touch tanks, the barnacle can’t compete.…

Every forest holds a secret. Some secrets are mundane, or only important to a few people: a tree tattooed with a heart-shaped equation, a defaced rock scrawled with graffiti. Other secrets are expansive, crackling with immediate energy—like a forest trail newly discovered on an early morning run, fog lifting from its floor. Every forest holds a secret. Cumberland Island’s live oak trees seem to whisper such truths to me as I catch myself deep in thought, staring up into the tree’s web-like canopy of dense, twisted, Spanish moss–covered limbs that reach for the overcast sky as the path winds its way to the beach. How did we get here, here in this wood? It’s easy to forget that we had come by way of Capt. Bill Pike’s lovingly restored Cape…

PROLOGUE Sam Devlin is the founder of Devlin Designing Boatbuilders in Olympia, Washington, an industry leader of the stitch-and-glue method of wooden boat fabrication. We profiled Devlin’s beautiful Kingfisher design last year (“Beautiful Mind,” November/December 2017), but Devlin is unique in that he also sells his plans around the world to anyone with the heart big enough to take on a build. In this story, we turned the keys over to Devlin himself, who had the chance to visit ultimately one of his most cherished designs, the Blue Fin 54. In 2013, the boat plans were purchased by Temur Rukahya, who lives 125 miles southeast of Moscow. This is the story: In 2016, my wife, Soitza, and I were celebrating the Christmas holidays, visiting her family in Mazatlán, Mexico. It was…

Debbie and Alan Wagner are fans of music, especially the songs of legendary folk singer/songwriter James Taylor. And in the opening verse of his song “Secret of Life,” the couple found a name for their custom-built trawler. Recently they submitted their boat’s name, Passage of Time, to PassageMaker’s boat name contest. Thankfully, they also included a photograph of her. A month later, I was driving over the bridge to Davis Islands, a secluded neighborhood near downtown Tampa, Florida, to visit with the Wagners. Denise and Alan are native Floridians, both born on the Davis Islands. Boating runs in their family, and their own first boat was a typical Sea Ray cruiser common on the west coast of Florida. It was a great starter boat for their young family, but as…

Boats were a source of transportation and income long before they were a source of pleasure. So it’s not surprising to find a workboat’s DNA in the bones of many recreational boats. This is especially true of the trawlers and long-range cruisers we love so much. It only takes a brief glance at today’s popular Downeast-style cruisers to see the similarities with their lobster-fishing ancestors. It is interesting, however, to note that while this handsome design so ubiquitous in New England waters is closely associated with Maine, the style was actually derived from a seafaring land even farther “down east” in Nova Scotia. The Heritage of Cape Island For centuries the residents of coastal New England and Nova Scotia made their living from the sea; fishermen plied the rich waters…

Love or hate novelist Clive Cussler’s brand of adventure fiction, you have to admire his sheer prolificacy. Cussler, now 87, unwittingly spawned a franchise when, in 1965, his wife started working the graveyard shift. Bored and lonely after he put their three kids to bed, Cussler would spend evenings diving into fantastical worlds of his own creation—ones that would eventually turn into a long series of novels and spinoffs based on a central character named Dirk Pitt. Pitt is a dapper marine engineer and a deep-sea archeaologist who shares traits with the world’s other great fictional adventurers like Indiana Jones and James Bond. And like the others, Pitt also has a good bit of luck on his side to ease out of tight situations. There are harpoons, guns, boats, classic…

I first encountered this clever anchor chain washdown rig in the mid 1990’s. The boat owner told me he learned it from Ed Dettling. Sure enough, I recently ran across the same setup on a Dettling 51. Two short lengths of hose, two velcro straps, and a split piece of PVC hose provide all the parts you need to make your own. You will need two washdown spigots on your foredeck (or you can tee off a single spigot). Once strapped over the chain you have a nicely pressurized and contained washdown device that directs all the water flow around the chain without splashing it all over the deck. The raised dam around the ground tackle will contain the runoff and keep the foredeck clean. Simple, effective, and inexpensive—a great…