Dockmares have a way of burrowing into the psyche. As a kid, Michelle Hildyard was cruising England’s southern coast with her family aboard Storm King, their Kings Cruiser 29. As they tucked into Langstone Harbour, waves were heaving Storm King—and the dock—while Hildyard’s dad made his approach. Then Hildyard’s sister, impatient to debark, leapt from the moving boat and blew her landing. Hildyard’s mom grabbed the helm, and her dad scooped her sister back aboard. “She could have gotten squished,” Hildyard recalls.

Jump to 2024, and Hildyard, who was recently promoted to vice president of operations at Raymarine and FLIR Maritime, has the opportunity to help make boating a better, safer experience for everyone.

Hildyard joined Raymarine 20 years ago. Since then, the powerboats that she and her husband have owned have grown in size and complexity, as have her job responsibilities. Now 47, she grew up in Southampton on England’s southern coast, a short distance from Southampton Water, a tidal estuary that spills into the Solent. This is one of the world’s great boating areas. The Isle of Wight is nearby, as is the storied English Channel.

“I started sailing dinghies when I was 8,” Hildyard says. “I enjoyed racing, and I did that competitively for a number of years.”

For college, Hildyard moved north to the landlocked University of Reading, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in pathobiology. Next came a move to London, where she worked in the cable TV business, first as a strategy and network development manager for Cable & Wireless Communications, and then as a procurement manager for Sky TV.

Yet, the sea’s gravity was never far from her mind. “I always had friends back home on the south coast, and I always used to come and do a lot of boating,” Hildyard says.

Her entry to the marine industry involved some serendipity. Hildyard met her future husband racing dinghies as teenagers. By the mid-2000s, they were a pair. “He didn’t want to move to London, so we decided that I’d finish my stint in London,” she says. “A job came up at Raymarine, along with a couple other supply-chain jobs. What swayed me to Raymarine was because it was in the marine industry.”

Hildyard began in 2005, at the height of the industry’s pre-Great Recession boom. She was a supply-chain manager, a position that she held for 18 months before getting promoted to commercial director. She and her husband took up power cruising in 2007 when they purchased a Fairline Phantom 40.

The Great Recession began later that year, and “things weren’t brilliant,” Hildyard recalls. Raymarine was still an independent company at the time. “I learned a lot because I was working with the bankers, with the financial advisers, about how to support Raymarine in restructuring to be sold.”

By May 2010, FLIR Systems, the US-based thermal-imaging giant, had purchased Raymarine. “One of the things we took on at Raymarine was FLIR’s marine thermal-imaging cameras, growing that business and incorporating it into Raymarine’s portfolio,” Hildyard says. This coincided with her promotion to director of global customer service, a position that she held for more than eight years.

Around that time, anticipating the arrival of their first daughter, the Hildyards upgraded to a Fairline Phantom Targa 44. “Our eldest daughter was 10 months old when she did her first Channel crossing,” Hildyard says, “but she was on the boat at five days old.”

In 2011, Hildyard enrolled at University of Southampton Business School, where she earned her MBA. This program took three years. With graduation approaching, the family upgraded again in 2013, this time to a Fairline Targa 47 GT. “It’s a really good cruising boat,” Hildyard says, describing the layout and well-used RIB.

Today, the Hildyards are a family of four who live in Southampton, about a five-minute walk from their marina. From there, Hildyard says, it’s a 25-minute ride at 6 knots to the Solent, a route the family knows well. “On the weekends, we can go to Lymington, Beaulieu, and Cowes and Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight,” she says. “A little bit farther afield and we can go to Poole or Weymouth, or across to the Channel Islands and France.”

In fall 2018, Hildyard was named vice president of customer service before becoming vice president of product management and development. One of her responsibilities in the latter role involved developing a clearer understanding of market needs and driving new product to fill niches. Layered on top of this came two major macro-level changes: the pandemic, and Teledyne’s acquisition of FLIR and Raymarine in May 2021.

“We hunkered down,” Hildyard says. “Then 2021 hit, and aside from the supply-chain shortages, it was great because the marine industry came back to life. People couldn’t travel, but they certainly wanted leisure time.” This translated to boat sales and the acquisition.

While Hildyard describes Teledyne (an American technology firm) as a great parent company that has natural synergies with FLIR and Raymarine, the marine electronics market is competitive. “To continue growing the business, we need to continue a good cadence of product introductions,” Hildyard says. “You’ve got to understand what your customers’ problems are, and you’ve got to solve those problems.”

Obvious problems, she says, involve lowering boating’s barriers to entry while engaging more experienced boaters.

“For most people, docking is horrendous. It’s the worst part of the experience,” she says, pointing to DockSense, which is Raymarine’s camera- and GPS-based assisted-docking system. “You can create [air] bumpers around your boat, and no matter how much you bring your [helm] over, it’s not going to get within a half a meter of that pontoon or hit another boat.”

While Hildyard sees DockSense and other AI-based technologies as crucial, she’s aware of the coin’s other side. “A lot of people buy a boat for the pleasure of sailing or driving it,” she says. “Automation and AI must enhance that experience, rather than take over.”

One example of this, Hildyard says, is advanced technologies that help anglers find fish faster while reducing their time and fuel burn.

Looking ahead, Hildyard expects several important waypoints that need to be met as the boating world catches up to the digital age. The first involves connectivity and digital switching.

“When you go out cruising or fishing, you want to know that your boat is ready; you want to be able to check things in advance,” she says. While these home-type technologies are finding their way aboard, Hildyard says the sea change will take another few years.

On the three- to five-year horizon, Hildyard expects automation and AI to play increasingly bigger roles. But as a lifelong boater, she understands there’s a fine line involved. “I think it’s how you apply it in the industry that’s going to be very interesting, and how people want to use it,” she says.

Looking five to 10 years down the course, Hildyard expects to see fully autonomous yachts. “Making the right decisions on what sensors to develop and what technologies to prioritize is going to be critical,” she says, noting that this task, along with fostering in-house innovations and outside partnerships, is a big part of her role.

There’s no question that technologies like DockSense would have added serious safety margins the day that Hildyard’s sister fell overboard. A lifelong boater with decades of industry experience may have precisely the right combination of expertise to guide Raymarine and FLIR through the evolutions that will decide boating’s future.

Side Rides

In addition to their Fairline Targa 47 GT, the Hildyards recently acquired an e-foil board, giving the family the chance to experience the boating world’s coolest craze. Also, the Targa 47 GT carries a Williams Jet Tender, which they use to get ashore and to support their watersports habit.

The post An Interview with Raymarine’s Michelle Hildyard appeared first on Yachting.

The traditional doctor’s advice is, “Take two, and call me in the morning.” After Willie Urbieta sold his family’s petroleum company in South Florida in 2021, the veteran boater found cruising to be just the right medicine for transitioning into semiretirement. In fact, he liked the Sirena Yachts 68 he’d purchased for cruising in the Mediterranean so much that he decided to trade up his Sirena 58 in Fort Lauderdale for a second Sirena 68. He’s now able to call on exciting ports in the Eastern and Western hemispheres in Sirena 68 style. Sold On Sirena’s Spaciousness Urbieta, 65, bought his first boat, a 29-foot Cruisers, when he was 24. “I made many, many mistakes in Biscayne Bay,” he says with a chuckle. During the following decades, he owned a half dozen increasingly larger boats, a mix of Sea Ray, Hatteras and Greenline models.

When he saw the Sirena 58, “what attracted me was how roomy and spacious a Sirena is inside,” he says. It also had a large flybridge, a requirement for him. “We have such beautiful nights here in Florida. You go out to dinner and can see the skyline or the stars from the flybridge as you’re cruising back.”

With greater freedom in time and travel on his hands, Urbieta also wanted to base a boat in the Mediterranean. He ordered a Sirena 68, not only to accommodate the necessary crew, but also to provide more room for him and his family: his wife, Maria; his daughter, Mariah; his son-in-law; and three grandchildren ages 10 and younger. In 2022, the family took delivery of Willma (a combination of his first name and his wife’s first name) in Turkey. They explored the Turkish and Greek coasts, and cruised all the way to Mallorca, in Spain’s Balearic Islands.

“That’s when I fell in love with the Mediterranean,” Urbieta says. “Such beautiful beaches, beautiful waters, beautiful marinas. Everywhere you go has so much history. I’ve been to Europe many times before, but seeing it from the water gives you a whole different perspective.” The Perfect Size For Urbieta, the 68 is the perfect size. “You can get into most marinas without having to reserve too far ahead,” he says. His family likes the spacious interior, especially the long dining table next to the galley. Urbieta’s favorite spot is the desk next to the helm, where he can keep one eye on business matters and the other eye on the beautiful scenery ahead.

There is even room on board Willma for Urbieta’s extended family. He hosted a reunion in 2022 of around 30 relatives at the marina in Sitges, Spain, where he keeps the boat.

In 2022, he cruised the Balearics and the mainland Spanish ports of Denia and Valencia. In 2023, Urbieta and a cousin cruised the whole Iberian Peninsula and up the Guadalquivir River to Seville. “Seville is special, but it’s even better when you arrive by water,” he says. A pro at navigating the many bridges in Fort Lauderdale, Urbieta took over from the captain and nosed the Willma under Seville’s bridges, with about 6 inches of clearance to spare.

To make all kinds of maneuvers easier, he loaded up Willma with a variety of technical extras: fins, gyros, a Yacht Controller, dynamic positioning, and an extra helm station on the outside. The optional 1,000 hp Volvo Penta engines (900 hp Volvo Penta diesels are standard) “navigate so well,” he says. “Even in 6- to 8-foot seas, you’re doing 18, 19 knots, and it’s steady going.” That ride is aided by a high freeboard, and a seakindly and semidisplacement hull form from naval architect Germán Frers. Additionally, the Sirena 68 is a solidly built yacht that displaces about 103,600 pounds.

Thrilled with Willma, Urbieta ordered a twin Sirena 68 with a lighter interior to keep at his 105-foot dock at his home on the New River in Fort Lauderdale. “Sirena has been excellent,” he says. “It’s not just about buying a boat, but who stands behind it. That makes the biggest difference in the world.”

Urbieta plans to cruise Valentina (named for his grandmother) throughout the Caribbean, with St. Martin topping the list. And he’s frequently conferring with his European captain, his service team near Barcelona, and the Sirena dealer in La Palma about maintenance priorities so that Willma is in prime shape for the upcoming summer season. “I always feel happiest on the water,” he says.

The post Two Sirena Yachts Are Better Than One appeared first on Yachting.

The roaring sound of antique airplanes filled the skies as Legend, Hull No. 1 of the Wheeler 38, rolled gently at the Ocean Reef Club in early December. Inside this classic yacht’s salon, I stepped between two worlds, present and past. Legend is a near-perfect replica—from its exterior, at least—of Ernest Hemingway’s Pilar, a 38-foot Wheeler Shipyard fishing boat from 1934.

This one boat epitomized the purpose of the 26th Vintage Weekend at the club: paying homage to the tradition of vessels, vehicles and aircraft, and to the owners who pour countless hours into restoring and preserving them.

The event showcased nine vintage yachts, 70 classic cars and 16 antique aircraft. Legend was there courtesy of Wes Wheeler, president of Wheeler Yacht Co. and great-grandson of Howard E. Wheeler Sr., who founded the Wheeler Shipyard Corp. that produced Hemingway’s boat. In order to properly maintain the tradition of both Pilar’s heritage and his family’s work, Wes and his wife, Marianne, traveled to Cuba to acquire Pilar’s exact original dimensions so that they could mimic the exterior lines.

Legend’s interior is less the type of an angler’s reprieve that Hemingway favored and more a comfortable cove for the cruising couple. Down three steps from the cockpit, the head is immediately to starboard, and the galley is to port. Forward is U-shaped seating surrounding a wooden dinette to port, and there are two free-standing armchairs and a nightstand opposite, with shelves for books and pictures. Farther forward is the stateroom, with an offset berth to port.

“We spent about two years designing this boat from scratch,” Wes says. “The idea was to have the boat [be] an exact copy, dimensionally accurate—except the bottom is flat so that it can go fast. The idea was to make it as close to the original as possible, including the hardware, and then have the boat technically really advanced.”

“It can go fast, and it’s very comfortable,” he adds. “Then my wife did a lot of the interior work to make it comfortable to live on, and she’s also my crew, and the two of us can handle the boat pretty easily. She’s now done 6,000 miles up and down the coast.”

Steve White of Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine headed the responsibilities of building the 38. Since 1960, White’s company has been converting classic yachts into modern cruisers. White was awarded Vintage Weekend’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the closing ceremony.

Bill Prince Yacht Design is responsible for Legend’s topsides, machinery and interiors; Bruce Marek of Marek Yacht Design handled the 38’s hull design; and Capt. Ryan Doyle helped deliver Legend, having taken on at least 2,000 nautical miles from the helm.

“The challenges really were to keep the aesthetic of the original boat as it is, but to incorporate the modern amenities that [the Wheelers] wanted,” White says. “So, we’re trying to hide or conceal the modern amenities, like the modern electronics, the Seakeeper, engine, things like that. Hiding all of that within the structure that was defined by the Wheeler Co. when they designed the boat was the real challenge.”

As fascinating as Legend is (I could have spent days on board learning more), the boat was just one of many head-turning experiences at Vintage Weekend. There were two aerobatics shows, a parade of classic cars, and an automobile showcase filled with gleaming paint, chrome, and detailing. Attendees could participate in a Wild West-themed dinner and dance party. I saw inflatable horses strapped to cowboys, and even one gentleman wearing a corset and wig.

But for boat nuts, the docks were the place to be. A Trumpy and a classic Feadship were among the other vessels to be admired, each one brimming with different aspects of yachting history. The owners of these boats understand their true value better than anyone and are proud to display them to help their stories live on. Mike Turner, owner of the 1962 Huckins Linwood Missy, summed up the thinking that led him to own the 53-footer: “I love the history; I love the architecture. [Vintage boats are] part of our past,” Turner says. “Owning something like this is an opportunity to keep it relevant today, as opposed to letting it go, so I’ll be a good steward, and whoever has it next will have a nice boat.”  

The post Vintage Weekend Is an Ode to the Past appeared first on Yachting.

Rick and Lesley Chanin had always been sailing people, cruising the Bahamas in the summers on their Lagoon 400 catamaran and their home waters around Key Largo, Florida, on their Nonsuch 36.

But after reading the book The Great Loop Experience—From Concept to Completion, the duo decided to tack. Rick knew just the boat he wanted for this exciting new chapter: Resolute, a Krogen Express 52 he’d been eyeing at the Ocean Reef Yacht Club for two years. In 2019, the Chanins sold their catamaran, purchased Resolute, and pointed its bow north for adventures along the Intracoastal Waterway and Northeast coast—something Rick never thought he’d do.

“To me, a trawler was something that signified you were too old to continue sailing and you needed something simpler,” he says. But as a fast trawler, Resolute could cruise at 16 to 18 knots, and it had beautiful lines.

“I’m hesitant every time Rick says he wants a new boat,” Lesley says. “But the Resolute was gorgeous all around. The interior is classic, really chic. It has an amazing amount of storage for a boat that size. The kitchen is set up so you can really cook in it. It’s very comfortable to be in, and it was immaculate. When we told people it was a 10-year-old boat, no one believed us.”

Rick especially appreciated Krogen’s lifetime concierge service, the boat’s full-height, walk-in engine room and the flybridge. “Being a sailor, I wanted to be outside and have wind on my face,” he says. On his return from a shakedown cruise to the Abacos in June 2019, he took the wheel on the flybridge, opened up the throttle, and shot across the open water at the boat’s top-end speed. “I had never experienced anything like that when sailing,” Rick says. “It was great.”

Lesley is passionate about history, and the Chanins’ logbook reflects it. Resolute started its 2019 Northeast sojourn at Safe Harbor Stirling in Greenport, New York, where a friend updated the marine electronics. As the couple cruised along Long Island Sound, Lesley relished stopping at historic sites—especially Mystic Harbor—along the coast of her native Connecticut as well as in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

They docked for a week at Constitution Marina in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. “It was a short walk to the North End, where Paul Revere’s famous [Old] North Church is located and the Freedom Trail begins,” she says. They liked the location so much that they returned to the same marina after a week along Maine’s coast.

Their trip home to Florida along the Intracoastal Waterway included a stop at Shallowbag Bay Marina in Manteo, North Carolina, so they could visit nearby Roanoke Island, site of the famous “Lost Colony.” They also docked for several weeks at Georgetown, Maryland, so they could explore the Eastern Shore. “The area is rich in colonial history, with homes dating back to the early 1700s,” Lesley says.

For the 2020 cruising season, they anchored at Nantucket and Hyannis in Massachusetts and took advantage of all that Cape Cod has to offer. “I’ve never been anywhere that the colonial architecture has been so well-preserved and in such abundance,” Lesley says.

The birth of their first grandchild in June 2021 kept them closer to home for the season. The Chanins rented a slip on Marco Island, Florida. They cruised Everglades National Park and the state’s west coast, checking out such “Old Florida” spots as Everglades City for its stone crabs and its history. Their first mates were on board for the ride: Tige, their standard poodle, and Dublin, their son’s “newfypoo,” which is a cross between a Newfoundland and a poodle. “The dogs love the boat,” Lesley says. “They stand on top of the stern on dolphin patrol for hours at a time.”

For 2022, the Chanins intend to explore the Down East Loop—a concept sparked by the Great Loop book that launched this rewarding new chapter of their cruising lives. The Down East Loop can include spots as far south as the Statue of Liberty in New York and as far north as the St. Lawrence River and Nova Scotia in Canada.

“It is still on our bucket list to complete the entire Great Loop,” Rick says of the course that covers the US East Coast, Erie Canal, Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, and that’s a bucket-list cruise for many boaters. “We’re excited to do so aboard the Resolute.”

The post The Cruising Life on a Krogen Express appeared first on Yachting.

It’s a breezy night in the warm gulf stream, and I am wide awake with anticipation. Dawn, my wife and ever-capable mate, is off watch and fast asleep. I brace against the cockpit coaming and stare out into the darkness; starlight defines a wave-tossed horizon. The distant lights of Florida appear every time we crest a big roller, then they disappear in the troughs.

This is an exciting sight after nine days and 1,300 nautical miles at sea, yet it stirs mixed emotions. We’ve spent the past three years cruising the Bahamas and Caribbean aboard Windbird, our Tayana 42, and I don’t want this adventure to end.

Our journey began with a remarkably casual decision. We had been enjoying bareboat charters for a few years and occasionally toyed with the notion of cruising full time. I’d come to dread the long, brutal Minnesota winters and often fantasized about escaping to tropical waters. Dawn was ready for a break from her job as a middle-school math teacher; as an airline pilot, I had an unusual degree of work flexibility during the winter. When I floated the idea of going cruising for a few years, we decided to go for it.

For the next 12 months, we worked, saved, researched, bought gear and took classes. We sold our house and downsized to an apartment. Dawn quit her job, and I transferred to an airline fleet and base with seasonal flexibility. After looking at a dozen boats, we made an offer on a 42-foot Taiwanese cutter whose previous owners had sailed it around the world. We soon found ourselves the slightly anxious owners of a 34-year-old 15-ton yacht.

Our planned monthlong refit in Charleston, South Carolina, that fall turned into three months of boatyard hell thanks to Hurricane Matthew and our own inexperience with marine contractors. But in early January 2017, we cast off the dock lines and, hearts aflutter, pointed Windbird’s bow south.

Making our way to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, we realized that sailing offshore is far easier and more efficient than motoring down the Intracoastal Waterway. Fortunately, Dawn turned out to enjoy sailing at night and proved a capable watch stander, a skill that allowed us to make several long offshore passages.

Our first overnight crossing of the Gulf Stream was calm, and our morning arrival to the Bahamas’ cerulean waters was exhilarating. A fantastic cruising destination right on America’s doorstep, the Bahamas has enough active weather, tidal anchorages and shifting shallows to hone novice cruisers’ skills. We spent three months exploring the Berry Islands, the Exumas, Long Island, Eleuthera and the Abacos, and fell in love with the country and its friendly people. We also enjoyed becoming part of the tightknit international community of wandering sea nomads. Despite being significantly younger than most cruisers, we formed many close friendships while hiking, snorkeling, sharing potlucks, attending bonfires, and enjoying sunset jam sessions on the beach.

Cruising wasn’t the never-ending vacation we’d envisioned, though. It’s a lot of hard work, filled with uncertainty and occasional discomfort. Plans change constantly with the weather and mechanical breakdowns. Chandleries and mechanics are rare in the Out Islands; you find yourself tackling daunting repairs with only the help of a few books, spotty internet and perhaps a sympathetic fellow cruiser. It’s quite rewarding when you succeed, but it’s discouraging when something else breaks the next day.

Tropical cruisers’ long-term plans are largely driven by the inexorable approach of hurricane season. Options are to retreat to the United States, head for the far southern Caribbean, store the boat ashore, or continue to live aboard while being prepared to haul out or run for cover on short notice. We spent summer 2017 on the Chesapeake Bay while upgrading Windbird’s canvas, electrical system and solar panels, and we were grateful to be out of the path of Category 5 monsters Irma and Maria as they dealt a one-two punch to the northeastern Caribbean.

That November, we sailed offshore to Abaco, spent several more months in the Bahamas, and then continued down the “thorny path” via Turks and Caicos and the lovely Dominican Republic. After crossing the infamous Mona Passage and cruising the south shore of storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, we spent several months lolling around the battered but still beautiful US and British Virgin Islands before hauling out in a protected Puerto Rican boatyard. Fortunately, it was a quiet storm season for the Caribbean to recover while we visited family and worked full time to rebuild the cruising kitty.

Upon our return to Puerto Rico that fall, we discovered that an undetected deck leak had turned our trusty diesel engine into a rusty hunk of junk. Thus began our biggest project yet: re-powering with a new Yanmar diesel in St. Thomas.

It went surprisingly smoothly, and a month later, we continued on our way down the island chain. The sailing was superb, with most landfalls an easy daysail apart. All the islands are lush and volcanic, yet each has its own unique history, culture and vibe; together they form a brilliant West Indian kaleidoscope.

We particularly liked swashbuckling Antigua, wild Rastafarian Dominica and the cruisers’ paradise of the Grenadines. We spent five beautiful months in the Lesser Antilles before heading to breezy Curaçao for the summer. The ABC Islands would make a convenient jumping-off point to cruise the western Caribbean the following season.

But then our plans changed, which is why tonight, after a long passage from Bonaire, we are almost back to the United States. I curl up in the cockpit and watch the eastern horizon brighten with streaks of deep purple, pink and orange. Majestic swells flash in the sunrise as they sweep under our stern, our sturdy boat digging in and riding each wave as it races by with a melodic hiss.

These past three years have given me so many fond memories, but even more, they’ve given us the lifelong skills and the confidence to explore our beautiful watery world. Our time cruising the Bahamas and Caribbean was made possible through a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but these things fade while the results endure. On balance, I have found the cost to be a worthy price of admission.

The post Living Aboard in Paradise appeared first on Yachting.

The U.S. Coast Guard officers patrolling Panama City Beach’s Grand Lagoon in Florida late this past August didn’t realize what was in store when they stopped a brand-new Boston Whaler 130 Super Sport for a spot inspection. The boat’s captain, 84-year-old Delores “Deon” Neighbors, and her 93-year-old first mate, Dot Vines, were only 10 minutes into their maiden voyage of their boat, and they didn’t appreciate the interruption.

“They just looked at us and grinned,” Neighbors says. “I guess they thought two old women like us shouldn’t be out there on the water in the first place.”

Neighbors and Vines have been getting into grand adventures together for 70 years. By the time the duo from Birmingham, Alabama, met in a softball league in 1949, Neighbors was already an old hand on the water. When she was 12, a family friend trained her to race his Feather Craft boat with a 10 hp Mercury motor. “I was winning races—it felt wonderful to beat the guys,” she says.

“The guys” represented Johnson Motor Co., who were none too happy she was besting their product. “They got me voted out of the racing club on the grounds I wasn’t 16 yet,” she says.

Some of the ladies’ fondest memories from the earlier years of their friendship are of their time spent together at Lake Martin, about 90 miles southeast of Birmingham. “My husband, Richard, and I had a little cabin on Lake Martin and kept a small aluminum boat,” Neighbors recalls. “Dot and her husband, Louis, would come down to visit. That’s where I taught her to water-ski.”

Neighbors also shared her lifelong passion for fishing with Vines, who became her housemate after their husbands passed away. “My favorite part of fishing is when Deon catches the fish and cooks them,” Vines says with a laugh. “We eat very well.”

Vines has benefited frequently from her best friend’s skill with the rod and reel and accompanied her on fishing outings to the pier in Panama City Beach, where they caught king mackerel, pompano, blackfin tuna and redfish. But as much as Neighbors enjoyed the pier, as well as fishing expeditions on a friend’s boat, she missed having her own fishing boat. She’d long had her eye on a Boston Whaler.

“I’ve always liked them for their stability,” she says. “Dot and I are both small. We didn’t want to worry that when you stand up on one side, the boat would flip you over. Boston Whalers are the safest boat I could think of—they’re unsinkable. When they redesigned the front of the boat, I was ready to buy.”

Neighbors reached out to MarineMax in Buford, Georgia, to dial in her specs. The 13-foot Boston Whaler 130 Super Sport was the one. She appreciated how the redesigned, modified-V hull would cut down on the spray coming off the bow. The dimensions felt comfortable, with a 5-foot-10-inch beam and deeper interior.

“The depth of this little boat caught my eye,” she says. “So many boats are too shallow. With this one, my bottom half and Dot’s are completely in the boat—that’s really nice.”

She added GPS navigation and a fish finder. “I already know how to fish and where to fish,” she says, “but I don’t know a thing about this technology, so I’ll have to figure that out.”

Even though the boat’s cooler and stowage make it easy to entertain on board, Neighbors and Vines have no plans to do so. “Dot and I decided to get a 13-foot boat because we didn’t want a bunch of folks joining us,” she says. “You can’t fish with a bunch of folks in the boat.”

Another benefit of the 130 Super Sport became apparent when Neighbors and Vines towed the boat with their Acura RDX on the three-hour drive from the dealership home to Birmingham, through Atlanta traffic. “When you’re towing the boat on the interstate, you don’t even know it’s back there,” she says. “You just forget it’s there. It’s beautifully trailered and well-balanced.”

The duo wasted no time getting on the water. They headed to Panama City, put in at the lagoon above Capt. Anderson’s Marina, and opened up the 40 hp Mercury four-stroke outboard. “I never open a motor up all the way; I don’t think it’s good for the motor,” Neighbors says. “But I wanted to crack that throttle a bit and see what the boat could do. It was a ‘wow’ moment. I told Dot, ‘This damn thing will fly.’”

Soon after, the Coast Guard intervened.

“I was annoyed,” Neighbors says. “But it was a hoot.”

The post Friendship on the Water appeared first on Yachting.

You and your friends just arrived in Bimini on your 52-foot Viking Convertible. After cruising all morning, you can feel your stomach growling. You ease the boat down the channel toward the marina, and everyone points to a shack leaning out over the water. It is next to a wall of conch shells standing nearly 8 feet high and 30 feet long.

Ashore, in a rented golf cart with a friend, you head into town for lunch. A mile or so up the road is that same shack — with a lot of golf carts parked out front. The aroma of seafood on the stove hits your nose, and the scent of citrus juices pulls you toward the front door in a trance-like state.

Before walking inside though, your friend stops to take a smartphone video of a guy cracking conch shells and pulling out the muscle. Fabien Stuart and his daughter are hard at work, but they make sure to put ice-cold Kaliks in front of you before you’re seated. You sit at the bar so you can watch how they make some of the world’s best conch salad.

They dice the conch, tomatoes, onions and bell peppers with authority, then pile it up and hand-mix it all into arguably the best bowl of melt-in-your-mouth seafood goodness you’ve ever tasted. They top it with garlic salt and freshly squeezed limes. “Not lime juice,” Stuart insists. “Limes.”

How many conchs do you go through in a day? We can go through 200 to 300 conchs in a day, depending on the time of year and how many people come through. How do you keep up with demand? I have a few guys bringing in fresh conch. One guy brings 100, another 50 and so on. How many conchs does it take to make a bowl? I’d say two or three large conchs will make four bowls, or four to six medium to smaller conch. How do you keep them fresh? We have a pen attached to the small dock off to the side that holds them.

The post Where Conch is King appeared first on Yachting.

Charles Cenac runs a taxi and tour company on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia called “Charles in Charge,” after the ’80s American television show. The nickname started with his mother’s observation of his leadership as the oldest of his family’s 11 children, and it has since spread around the island. “Everything that had to be done was done by me,” Cenac says of his childhood years in Soufrière. Today, he uses that take-charge mentality in his work, leading tours throughout St. ­Lucia. After 30 years of telling other people where to go and what to do, Charles remains in charge.

St. Lucia is, as we call it, the heaven of the west. Barbados has beautiful beaches, but St. Lucia has so much more. We have white-sand beaches and black-sand beaches from the volcano, banana plantations, many waterfalls and rainforests. My tours are involved in the culture. For lunch, I will take them to this local restaurant called Fado’s New Adventure. It’s where all the locals and many taxi drivers eat. Get the fish curry or chicken curry in a local sauce. If I have tours from the city or to the city, I stop at Plas Kassav bakery. Right now [the owner] has created something called the Kassav drink. It’s made from root plant. It’s very common in St. Lucia. I sing our local songs to my people, tell them about our culture, share jokes with them, stop for a drink of Piton beers, local juice and local spiced rum. In 1992, I drove Prince Mahvi from Iran. He was a small, simple man. He was about 70 when I knew him. I had an old man and his son on a mud-bath tour, and the son and myself had to hold on to him down the steps to the bath. After entering the bath, the son went to the changing room. By the time he came back, the father was up the steps by himself — the son could not believe it. The mud bath makes you 10 years younger.

The post Charles In Charge appeared first on Yachting.

After a lot of reading about bonefishing legend Ansil Saunders, I’m finally walking up to his quaint shop on Bimini. It’s painted green, and the front doors are wide open. A custom Saunders flats skiff is in progress. Sitting in a beach chair by one of his other skiffs, Jewel, is Saunders, now 84. There’s a quick ­hello, and he leads me to a picture nailed to a wooden shelf. “[Jerry Lavenstein and I] couldn’t get Bonefish Willy out of the picture because he held the record with [pro golfer] Sam Sneed for 18 years with a 15-pound bonefish. We broke it that day with a 16-pound bonefish. You see how he looks like he wants to cry?”

Do you still fish?
I still go out and fish. I went bonefishing yesterday. We always catch fish. I have a reputation to live up to, which is bad for me. I was in the Miami Herald one time saying if you go with me and don’t catch a bonefish, I’ll [take you] the next day for free. It’s only backfired on me once. Bonefish was easy for me to catch. I caught them every time I went fishing. The most I’ve caught in a day was 50, twice. I remember one time, bonefish was so thick over the flats that we averaged over a hundred a week, fishing every day.

What’s the best part of going out?
To see the sun rise out there, sometimes it’s so quiet your ears start to ring. There’s nothing else out there but the splash of a bonefish tail. To go out there, you get paid to do what you love the most.

How many skiffs have you built, and what’s the biggest to date?
I think the one I’m building makes 34. I built six boats, starting at age 15, before I started to bonefish. Then I didn’t build a boat for 30 years. This one is a 15-foot boat. Usually, all I build is a 16-foot boat. The one I build for people normally has a console up front, but I don’t want that [in mine] because I pole up here. That console’s in my way. What I call ideal for bonefishing. I once took Dr. [Martin Luther] King out, but not in this boat. Another boat, not quite as pretty as this one.

Speaking of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what was it like fishing with him?
We went through the mangroves. Dr. King really didn’t fish with me. He came here in 1964 to write the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and again in 1968 to write the Sanitation Workers Speech. We went to ­Bonefish Creek. I have a deck about 12 feet long, 12 feet wide in the mangroves. I carry people there now to say my Creation Psalm I recited for Dr. King that day. When we reached the mangroves, there were birds overhead, the tide was trickling by and a stingray was burying and reburying. He said: ‘There’s so much life all around us. How can people not believe in the existence of God? Ansil, what do you do when you bring people out here and there’s all this life around them?’ I said I wrote a psalm that poses serious questions, and I leave them to ponder those questions. He said he’d like to hear it, and I said, “Dr. King, you’re the spokesman, people want to hear you talk.” He said: “I’m tired of listening to myself. I want to hear somebody else sometimes.” So I read him what I called the 151st Psalm at the time. Now I call it the Creation Psalm.

Who are some other people you’ve met?
I met [British prime minister] Margaret Thatcher twice, the queen twice and Muhammad Ali twice.

The queen of England?
Yes, I met her twice. Made a necklace for her, of shells from Bimini. All the islands gave her some sort of present when she came to ­Nassau once. She asked, “What do you do?” I said, “Well, I build boats, and I’m also the bonefish guide.” She asked, “What is a bonefish?” I said: “They’re small fish. The world record is 15 pounds [at the time]. Pound for pound, it’s about the strongest fish around. A 10-pound bonefish can run off 200 yards of 8-pound-test line. People come from all over to catch them because of the fight. You have to stalk them like you do a deer because they’re frightened of noises.”She said, “Oh, I’d love to come back and catch me a sailfish.” I said to myself, Who’s talking about sailfish?

The post Ansil Saunders: A Tale Of Tails appeared first on Yachting.

Mark and Marilyn Boyd just got their dream boat: a Hinckley Talaria 48 Flybridge. Mark grew up in a boating family in Texas, and he and Marilyn are taking their voyaging to a new level, moving up from a Hinckley 29. Lifelong boaters, the Boyds say they would rather be on the water than anywhere else.

What made you realize the on-the-water lifestyle was for you?

All during the 1980s and 1990s, my business friends and family used to come with me to Belize for scuba diving and fishing vacations. In June 1999, I was fishing off the coast with a business friend when Cotton Ranch motored by in the distance. She was a 110-foot Feadship captained by Phil Richards. At the time, I did not know the boat or who captained it. I did tell my business associate/ best friend that if he did the legwork, I would pay to charter the boat or one like it. I had never entertained chartering, and I did not even know if it was possible. A month later, my business associate called and said he had the details — it was possible. My first charter was a November 1999 cruise from Belize City up the Rio Dulce to Guatemala. We were hooked. Since then, we have chartered 16 or 17 times all over the world.

How have your boating interests progressed over the years?

Since 2000, Marilyn and I have attended the boat show in Fort Lauderdale and shopped and dreamed of owning a yacht. The more we chartered, the stronger the dreams became. But I couldn’t get past the cost of owning a yacht versus the cost of chartering. We came close several times.

How did you discover Hinckley?

We have always had a boat, and our Grady-White was more than Marilyn could handle comfortably by herself. It was time to trade. She went to work researching the next boat, keeping in mind grandkids and taking the boat herself when I was traveling for work. The Internet brought her to Hinckley. Hinckley’s ace salesperson, Jennifer Richards, did the rest. A jet boat with no props, a “jet stick” that literally made it easy enough for anyone to drive, along with the unmatched workmanship and quality sold us.

Moving up to a 48 Flybridge is a big step.

Marilyn and I have always dreamed of owning our own yacht, but we did not want a crew. After owning the 29, we became aware that Hinckley boats could make our dream come true. We could own a yacht that we could easily drive and navigate safely. Our plans have changed from chartering to planning our own trips down the East Coast, over to the Bahamas, Cuba and Belize. Of course, we are keeping the 29 Hinckley for our weekend and evening boating on Galveston Bay.

The post Finding Paradise appeared first on Yachting.