Boatline.com Blog

One of the great things that happens after you buy a boat online is that you get to have fun sailing with your friends and family. For some people part of the fun is looking forward to getting on a boat because they don’t get to sail all the time. It is a chance to something out of the ordinary.

One father and son pair has joined a crew that is participating in this year’s Transatlantic Race, so they will be on a boat together for weeks at a time.

The Associated Press gave a history of these races:

“This year’s Transatlantic Race, part of the Atlantic Ocean Racing Series, will be the 29th since 1866, when the first was held. Several members of the New York Yacht Club, which is still a co-host of the event, wagered $30,000 each that year and set out to cross the ocean. There was tragedy, though: Six crew members from one boat died in a storm. Since then, all but one of the races has been from east to west. The exception was in 1870, when the boats traveled to New York from Cork, Ireland.”

Boats and boat racing have come a long way since these races first began. Now each boat in the race has a tracking device. This way family, friends and people who are interested in the race can keep up with the boat’s journey.

Are you thinking that you want to sell your boat online so that you can buy a larger boat? Have your friends and family outgrown the space on your boat? If you can, you should take advantage of the opportunity to get a bigger boat to give yourselves more room.

Imagine spending 21 days aboard the same ship as participants in the Transatlantic Race that starts next month will.  And this is no pleasure cruise. You have to enjoy sailing to embark on such an adventure because there will be both fun and work involved.

Teenager Dirk Johnson is competing in the 3,000 nautical mile sailboat race and being with family goes along with the territory. Johnson is concerned about spending a great deal of time with the same people, especially since one of those people is his father, Dirk Johnson, Sr.

Dirk Johnson, Jr. will be the nipper on the crew, taking care of things like washing dishes, making repairs in the wee hours and packing the spinnakers.

The father in this pair has already participated in a Transatlantic Race, although in 2005 he was in a bigger boat–the 117-foot vessel he sailed in then offered much more space than the 48-foot vessel he and his son and other will be on this year. However, the father noted that this year’s boat is ‘small but powerful.’

If you already know that you plan to buy a yacht online to sail the waters in the Miami area, you will be glad to hear that the Merrill Stevens Dry Dock has been purchased by a new owner and that the new owner has big plans for the facility.

Merrill Stevens was an actual person who started working with boats out of Jacksonville. In the 1920s he opened a yacht yard in Miami. In its most recent heyday, Merrill Stevens Dry Dock was where people like Ivana Trump brought their mega yachts. However, the economic difficulties in recent years brought layoffs and a reduction of services. The specter of a foreclosure or of a complete shutdown cast a cloud over the dock that had been an important place for the area’s boating community.

The new owner will spend two years renovating the 5.9 acre yacht yard. It can accommodate about 20 yachts now, but who knows if the new owner will expand its capabilities to allow room for even more yachts.

The new owner, David Marlow, chairman of Marlow Yachts, told The Triton:

Merrill Stevens has played an important role in the development and maintenance of America’s yachting and commercial vessel scene.” “It is Marlow’s firm plan to restore that dignity and proud heritage to its proper place as perhaps the most iconic yard in our nation.”

When you buy a boat online so that you can enjoy waterways, it is important to remember that you are a part of a community. At the very least, owning a boat means keeping up with repairs and not littering or doing things to damage the waters your vessel passes through.

If, however, you want to follow the example of boaters in West Virginia and do more than that and volunteer to clean up waterways in your area, even better.

According to The Charleston Daily Mail:

For the first time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has informed a community group of plans to release a buildup of trash behind the Morgantown Lock and Dam.

That lets the Upper Monongahela River Association and other groups plan a response: They’ll be on the water in time for the release Wednesday and will pluck out as much garbage as they can.

One volunteer says without the efforts of himself and others to clear this West Virginia waterway, the garbage would be found near the banks or it would end up downstream. And another was of the opinion that the excess of trash was connected to the heavy rains the area has had recently.

This is certainly not a haphazard effort. Volunteers will be instructed to pick up certain kinds of debris (cigarette lighters, beverage containers and tires) but they are not to pick up wood.

An online news source for Bermuda recently reported that “Yacht visitors can take their time to enjoy Bermuda up to 90 days.”

This is great news because before this announcement people sailing to Bermuda were allowed to stay 21 days. The island’s government hopes that the generous extension of the time that people traveling by yacht are allowed to stay will bring in more visitors and that these visitors will spend more money on the island and boost Bermuda s economy.

An official from Bermuda’s cabinet stated:

“Visiting yachts and crews spent over $10 million in Bermuda in 2010. Extending the permitted length of stay will increase this contribution to the local economy and do more to further the positive image of Bermuda as ‘open for business’.”

The change will take effect June 1. The longer stays are not free; there is a $250 fee for each person. Visitors how sail into Bermuda by yacht will need to verify their citizenship and prove that they have health insurance as well as declare that they do not intend to look for of procure work in the country. These requirements are for yacht owners traveling to Bermuda as well as people on the boat’s crew.

Boating enthusiasts in New Jersey have found that boat racing is a great way to multitask. The Laurel Lake Property Owners Association has racing groups use its waters “to raise money , along with membership dues, to help the association take care of Laurel Lake and the nearby Beach Club Lake, and maintain local dams.” (Boat racing is fun way to preserve lake, dams)

This is a great example of a community finding a way to fulfill a need to get work and also meet the need for recreation using the resources it has at hand. Of course the people in the boats and those on the shore are not focusing on the conservation part of it. They are in it for the fun.

“It’s such a wonderful family sport, and it just brings all the families together,” said Kelli Pomphrey, an Eatontown resident watching the races that included her brother and cousin. “This brings everybody together for the whole entire weekend.”

In a time when we have all kinds of pastimes and amusements, people are still getting a kick out of “seeing boats go so fast.” It is just as simple as that.

During the races, competitors take three mile-long laps around the lake. These laps do not just involve speed; they also require dexterity since they boats must also weave in and out of floating markers.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida has added four new floating docks to its downtown area for boats that travel on the New River. Prior to the installation on these new docks, smaller boats were not really able to gain access to the city’s downtown. The city wanted to give people boat owners with small recreational boats a chance to make their way downtown by boat and get to shops, restaurants and other venues.

As is often the case with changes to a city, everyone does not agree that this is a good thing. Some people don’t think it was an attractive addition to the downtown area and others are concerned that it will not be used enough to justify the expense.

However, you can see that city meant well. The downtown area had formerly been dominated by yachts, tour boats and chartered boats. Even when these boats were not taking up most of the space, there was a high seawall and this was not exactly something that small boat owners would find welcoming.

One boat owner told the Orlando Sentinel, “What is exciting to me is that you can now take a small boat, run up the river, enjoy a show at the performing arts center, have dinner, get back in your boat and go home.”

As any boat owner can tell you, when you have a boat, you cannot simply get rid of waste anywhere you want. It is not like having a house where it is likely that the local government has some sort of trash pick-up. You have to dispose of sewage properly and carefully in designated places.

New England area boaters will want to pay attention to where they discharge boat sewage because “the Environmental Protection Agency is considering a proposal to ban discharging boat sewage in the coastal waters of six Cape Cod towns.”

State marine waters in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire already have “No Discharge” zones. This new proposal, if it does indeed become law, will affect an area of 43,500 acres within Cape Code National Seashore.

However, the passing of this measure is contingent upon the state to provide evidence that there are a sufficient number of places where boat owners can have their sewage tanks pumped out. If there are restrictions placed on large swath of the Cape Cod National Seashore, people will still need alternatives. If the measure becomes law, there will be hopefully be clear communication about were to discharge sewage.