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1 week ago | 
soundingsonline.com | Kim Kavin
Some cruising destinations stand the test of time with generations of boaters. Among them is Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts. Surprisingly, Manhattan earns a mention in the history of this outermost of the Elizabethan Islands. “The island really began as a fishing destination for bigwigs in New York City,” says Robyn Weisel, director of the Cuttyhunk Historical Society. “Businessmen came out to the island looking for striped bass.
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1 week ago | 
passagemaker.com | Kim Kavin
Lauren Tolla was having trouble processing what she was seeing. And feeling. And smelling. It was October 2021, and her husband, Tom, had persuaded her to go check out a boat that he had seen advertised for sale on Facebook Marketplace. They’d driven from their home in Guilford, Connecticut, up to New London, where it had rained the day before. The name of the 1984 Nauset 35 Downeast was Seahorse. Clearly, it had been ridden hard and put away wet.
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1 week ago | 
yachtingmagazine.com | Kim Kavin
Mahogany, maple and aluminum are materials more typically associated with shipyards than with speaker manufacturers. Many of today’s portable speakers are plastic cubes and torpedo shapes that, when displayed on shelves, look about as artistic and distinctive as rows of water bottles at a roadside convenience store. Sure, they’ll blast out everyone’s favorite tunes, but they don’t always look or sound good doing it.
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1 week ago | 
soundingsonline.com | Kim Kavin
By far, the best-known attraction for boaters visiting Connecticut is the Mystic Seaport Museum. But it’s not just the experience of being at the museum that makes the destination so special, says Chris Gasiorek, who is vice president of watercraft preservation and programs. It’s also the experience that cruisers have getting there. “When you come into Fishers Island Sound, the view is the same as it was 100 years ago,” he says. “You see the lighthouse, the village, the Mystic River Bascule Bridge.
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2 weeks ago | 
freelancebusting.com | Kim Kavin
This must be how a kindergarten teacher feels when a recalcitrant 5-year-old keeps eating the paste and making himself sick.
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2 weeks ago | 
yachtingmagazine.com | Kim Kavin
Every December, the world’s leading charter brokers gather on the Caribbean island of Antigua for an industry-only boat show. Yachts display the best elements of their charter programs, and some enter the chef and tablescaping competitions, which highlight crews that are creating some of the best dining and entertainment experiences afloat.
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2 weeks ago | 
sailmagazine.com | Kim Kavin
The way that sailors now can get corrected, printed-out charts from the federal government is causing some frustration, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration saying the next big fix for the system won’t happen until November. This past December saw a full transition to the NOAA Custom Chart (NCC) program for providing paper charts for U.S. waters.
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3 weeks ago | 
soundingsonline.com | Kim Kavin
For a guy who takes such captivating photos of boats and coastal maritime settings—especially during ferocious storms—Benjamin Williamson has a surprisingly limited amount of experience being out on the water when the waves kick up and there’s a nasty blow. He grew up in Mississippi, where he spent a fair bit of his childhood paddling around a lake in a canoe. When he was 16, his family moved to Maine, where he would go out on his father’s 23-foot catboat about 10 or 20 times a year.
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3 weeks ago | 
yachtingmagazine.com | Kim Kavin
Grotesque. That’s what Paul Lavoie thought as he sat outside a cabin in the Canadian mountains, sipping a coffee and watching the loons. “I was enjoying nature when this pedal boat goes by,” he recalls. “This yellow-and-blue plastic thing that looked like Tupperware.”His aesthetic sensibilities sufficiently jarred, he began a search for a classic wood version, one more like his 42-foot Matthews Grace that was built in 1958.
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3 weeks ago | 
soundingsonline.com | Kim Kavin
In 1894, when William Francis Gibbs was 8 years old, his father brought him to see the launch of the SS St. Louis in Philadelphia. William stood with his younger brother, not far from President Grover Cleveland, awestruck by the sight of the 550-foot-long vessel. William became obsessed with great ships, not in the way that little boys grow out of, but with a passion that would change his life, along with the U.S. military itself.
