Índex per May - June 2017 a PassageMaker

This young California sea lion just couldn’t get enough play time with this mooring buoy. He found great joy in grabbing the buoy and dragging it down as deep as he could before releasing it. When he released it, he would then race it back to the surface. This buoy seemed to provide him with endless entertainment as he showed off his skills to me. Photo taken off of the coast of Isla Partido in the Sea of Cortez with the X2 dive camera by Intova. Find John on Instagram: @johntguillote 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 our new section, Viewfinder. For consideration, email: editor@passagemaker.com…

Tony Bulpin has been working in the boating industry for the past 27 years. He has worked for Sea Hawk Premium Yacht Finishes for over a decade as the West Coast sales representative. Tony is also an active member in the Northwest boating community having served on multiple committees as well as on the board of the Northwest Marine Trade Association. He was involved in the NMTA’s work on legislation in Washington State to help boatyards meet the EPA Clean Water Act guidelines by phasing out the use of copper in bottom paint. As one of the only manufacturers involved in the legislative process, Tony helped the Sea Hawk family to be on the forefront of developing copper-free paints as well as low-copper paints that provide an environmentally friendly approach…

Environmentally friendly products are all the rage and plenty of them have found their way into boating. And yet being environmentally friendly is important to most boaters as they seek to do no harm, or at least minimize the harm done to their surroundings. But in a world where everyone wants to claim to be “green” many products are more environmentally friendly than others. Here are five products that get our stamp of approval for bringing a green approach to the marine world. Lehr Propane Outboard Environmentally friendly outboard motors have come a long way and there are plenty of options today, from more efficient gasolinepowered motors to fully electric ones. Lehr propane outboard motors fit right in the middle. Sure, they do burn a fossil fuel, but propane burns…

EASY BREATHING If you’ve ever snorkeled, you know the frustration of keeping the breathing tube from flopping around and staying above the water surface. There are few joys like taking a deep breath and inhaling a half-cup of seawater. Well, the new wave of snorkeling masks solves that problem, plus many others. No more masks coated in a thick layer of fog. No more limited visibility. No more painful “snorkel bite” on the corners of your mouth. The all-in-one masks of today feature full, unibody construction as you strap on an apparatus that covers your face snugly from forehead to chin. The mask’s added buoyancy will make shallow dives more difficult, but you can dive without the risk of inhaling water by accident. Views from inside are roughly 180 degrees,…

The year was 1978. My parents had just relocated us—my brother, 7, and me, 4—to Bainbridge Island, Washington, from Eugene, Oregon. They were both from the island originally, but we kids were born three hours from any self-respecting body of water. Prior to moving, the only water known to us was in the bathtub where plastic boats could reach supersonic speeds one minute only to succumb to a giant rubber squid the next. Perhaps buoyed by our new surroundings, perhaps inspired by our new island neighbors, we hoodwinked our parents into buying us our first boat. We will retroactively refer to her as SS Minnow, for her stay on earth was about as short-lived. Minnow was an inflatable canoe with the exact LOA of our bathtub. Once inflated, she was…

If a marine archeologist could resemble a thing, that person would be Nathaniel Howe: tall and lean, sporting a captain’s cap smeared with grease, a wispy beard, peacoat, and an easy manner. He is the steward for three vintage ships moored at Seattle’s Northwest Seaport, a floating maritime museum located at Historic Ships Wharf on south Lake Union. Nathaniel’s charges are old souls, including the most recent arrival, F/V Tordenskjold, a 1911 halibut schooner, and the longest-standing resident, the 1889 tug, Arthur Foss. The former is one of the oldest fishing vessels of her kind, the latter the star of the 1933 MGM picture, “Tugboat Annie.” The third ship in the fleet is perhaps the most distinctive, aided by her massive proportions, bright red hull, and 6-foot-tall whiteblock lettering. Meet…

Chatter on the docks is always fun—it’s a time to share stories about secluded anchorages, recent wildlife sightings, fishing successes (and failures), details about indulgent meals in posh restaurants, family-favorite recipes, and occasionally informative discussions about how our galleys are equipped and how we use them. Thanks to these casual conversations, I’ve become more aware that many cruising boats are not equipped with an oven, and I have been set straight on my long-held assumption that if you were fortunate enough to own a boat that was equipped with an oven you would use it. The fact is there are many vessels whose owners are enjoying tasty and healthy meals without using an oven. Recently those dockside conversations triggered thoughts about some of my favorite desserts, especially those that can…

MORE THOUGHTS ON BOB SMITH I was very sad to learn of the passing of Bob Smith. I first met Bob when I visited the Lehman facility in the company of John Newton in the mid-1960s. At the time, I was working at American Marine in Hong Kong and this was my first visit to the U.S. We used large numbers of Lehman engines in our boats and they were standard in the Grand Banks when they were introduced in 1963. I had been expecting a huge factory and was surprised to find a modest warehouse in which Lehman engines were being assembled by a handful of people using engines from Ford of Dagenham in the U.K., heat exchangers from Sendure, pumps from Jabsco, custom exhaust manifolds and other components…

NANTUCKET LV-117 Shoals off Nantucket hosted numerous lightships, most notably Nantucket LV-117, which had a close encounter in early 1934 when she was sideswiped by the 900-foot luxury liner, SS Washington. The incident was a foreshadow, as Nantucket’s bad luck turned tragic just four months later. In heavy fog around 22:00, Nantucket was emitting her usual radio beacon. Titanic sistership Olympic was steaming down on her, using the beacon to get her bearings, calculating room to spare around the lightship and the shoals she guarded. A bearing miscalculation led Olympic straight into the broadsides of Nantucket, cleaving her in half, and sinking her in 200 feet of water. Four of the eleven crew died immediately, and three more died from injuries sustained from the collision. COLUMBIA LV-50 The first ship…

Most countries document their clearance process online in some form, and noonsite.com has good information, including recent cruiser feedback. The site wasn’t as useful for Spitfire, as their data focused on importing pets rather than keeping them on board. For clarification, we contacted the officials directly in every country we visited. Contact information often was on government department websites, but sometimes we had to work through other sources such as tourism offices for the right contact. We bought appropriate-size 2x3-foot courtesy flags for each country we planned to visit from J&S Surplus (www.surplusinc.com). The flags are not very durable and didn’t last more than a couple of months, but at under $15 each, were cost-effective for countries for which we’d planned only short visits. For our longer stays in New…

Author of several children’s books, Brian Floca has a knack for celebrating his subjects by distilling their virtues down to the bare essentials. Whatever is cool about steam trains, rocketing to the moon, or working aboard a lightship at sea, Floca pinpoints and illustrates beautifully. And like any book geared toward kids, the author follows the model of the best Pixar animations by creating a story that is equally accessible to the parents (or grandparents), who have to endure the same words and outcome after a hundred readings. In Lightship, Floca paints a precise picture of the story of Ambrose, the true-enough tale of the Coast Guard-operated lightship (LV-87) that was stationed in Ambrose Channel, New York harbor’s main shipping choke point. While the words he writes are minimal, they…