Features

Belongs to The Triton. Uploaded on March 5, 2010 - 11:39am.
March 8, 2010

Politics aren't Clyde Rawls' cup of tea. Customer service is his passion and the area he hopes to employ his skills in the near future.

Rawls, who in the spring of 2008 was appointed general manager of Camper & Nicholsons' Port Louis in Grenada, left his position at the end of the year.

“I enjoyed working in Grenada; Port Louis is a wonderful project,” Rawls said. “But I was uncomfortable being on the nightly news and in the hot spot on behalf of a foreign company.”

Belongs to The Triton. Uploaded on March 1, 2010 - 6:33pm.
March 1, 2010

If looking at a world map, Tahiti and her islands – officially called French Polynesia – are a long way away from the usual superyacht destinations like the Mediterranean and the Carribean.

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February 8, 2010

Gerry Navas is the dockmaster at Yacht Club Palmas del Mar Marina on the eastern side of Puerto Rico about 40 minutes from San Juan.

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January 18, 2010

The island of Elba is Italian, and has been so for much of the past three or four thousand years, but it is inextricably linked with French history. It was, of course, the place where Napoleon was banished for his first period of exile.

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January 11, 2010

Sander Vellinga can’t get far from the water. The dockmaster of Renaissance Marina in Aruba lives on the island, which is 20 miles long and five miles wide.

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December 14, 2009

The Equatorial Indian Ocean spreads endlessly blue before us, hiding Addu Atoll just over the horizon. With landfall just hours away, we stared ahead, searching for a sign of land. Finally, we made out a few buildings, coconut palms and the white crest of waves breaking on the fringing reef.

October 27, 2009

If you talk to people about the northwest of Italy, most folk will think you mean Tuscany, or Toscana as the Italians would have it. They have heard of Tuscany mainly because of Florence, with its plethora of churches and arty things, and Pisa, with its ubiquitous tower, yet few seem to have heard of Liguria, which lies to the north and west of Tuscany.

Belongs to The Triton. Uploaded on October 26, 2009 - 10:24pm.
October 26, 2009

Marina manager Brad St. Coeur’s job is a puzzle. Each day he and dockmaster Mike Voelker draw little yachts on the marina map at Sunrise Harbor Marina in Ft. Lauderdale. “The only way to do this is to hand-write it,” St. Coeur said. About 2,500 linear feet of dockage is divided among four docks at this Westrec marina on the Intracoastal Waterway a few miles north of Port Everglades. The docks range from 100-420 feet and with dockage on both sides, the configurations seem limitless.

September 30, 2009

Because David Rogers likes to go fast in a good, strong breeze, he took a sailing course in college. And because it was where the classes were held, he hung out at Charleston City Marina. So when it became time for a summer job, he simply asked the people he knew, and he was hired. Now he’s harbormaster of the marina in charge of 40 acres of water, 425 slips and the 1,530-foot MegaDock fueling station.

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September 30, 2009

Standing in his new pizza restaurant on Southeast 17th Street in Ft. Lauderdale, former Mate Fabio Cracco is home again – sort of.

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September 30, 2009

I first went to Japan in 2001 to deal with a 37m yacht being bought from a Japanese owner. We organized a freighter to ship it to the United States, but we would have more than two months before it left Kobe.

“How often are you going to have a yacht in Japan?” I said. “Let’s go cruising.”

I joined the yacht in Japan; however yachts generally approach from two directions. From the north, the first port of call is Hakkodate on the northern island of Honshu or an extra day and a half down to Yokohama and Tokyo.

September 27, 2009

I first went to Japan in 2001 to deal with a 37m yacht being bought from a Japanese owner. We organized a freighter to ship it to the United States, but we would have more than two months before it left Kobe.“How often are you going to have a yacht in Japan?” I said. “Let’s go cruising.”

August 26, 2009

Gibraltar is a place of contrasts; history vies with the modern life at every corner. Many people consider that the brash Main Street with its duty-free shops is all that Gibraltar has to offer, yet with the minimum amount of effort, an interesting history awaits.

July 22, 2009

Bequia, (pronounced BECK-wee) is a sailor’s island. Indeed, until relatively recently, the only way to reach Bequia was by boat; the island had no airport until 1992.The island lies a few miles southwest of St. Vincent in the Windward Islands, and forms part of the nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It is a small island, just seven square miles in total.

June 24, 2009

A swath of blood red sky bathes the morning horizon as the brooding hulk of Pitcairn Island emerges from the Pacific.

As the M/Y Turmoil pushes into a heavy swell, the somber red sunrise is a fitting backdrop to a bloody and tumultuous history for this small wind-battered rock that lies at 25 degrees south.

May 22, 2009

The Isles des Saintes are universally known as the Saintes. They are a group of small islands a few miles south of the French island of Guadeloupe. Although they are administered by Guadeloupe, they have a unique charm, and they seem to have avoided the worst of modern development. Indeed, not much has changed since I first went there in 1972.

April 29, 2009

The M/Y Turmoil spent five weeks this spring in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. We cleared into the Sollies at the capital, Honiara, after the long haul down from Hawaii. Our local agent was Gerald Stenzel from Tradco (tradco@solomon.com.sb ).

Clearance was straightforward, though we did notice that most officials down this way ask for lunch when they come onboard.

April 29, 2009

The hot topic at the 2009 St. Thomas Yacht Show in April was plans for a proactive future for the island’s charter industry in the face of economic woes.

March 25, 2009

One of the vagaries of European law allows many yachts to stay in the European Union without paying VAT, provided they leave European waters at least once every 18 months. It used to be that such vessels would visit Malta, often on their way to or from Greece. The visit would clear the VAT status for another 18 months and allow the boat to fill up with duty-free fuel.

Malta went and spoiled this easy option by, rather selfishly, joining the EU.

February 23, 2009

Port Louis is a new full-service marina that has emerged from the ruins of the old GYS, in the lagoon of St. George’s.

Even when GYS was in its heyday in the 1970s, it always seemed to have a ramshackle, tumble-down air. As the years passed, the wooden docks began to disintegrate, to the point that last time I was at GYS, one had to leap across gaps in the wooden decking to get ashore.

Belongs to The Triton. Uploaded on February 23, 2010 - 9:38am.
January 21, 2009

Of more than 60 inlets in Florida, Bakers Haulover Inlet is one that requires clear local knowledge or just plain avoidance, say local captains.

This man-made inlet was dug in 1925 to connect Biscayne Bay with the Atlantic Ocean. Known as Haulover, it is located at statute mile 1080 on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), and is the only inlet between Miami’s Government Cut and Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale.

January 21, 2009

After two years of logistics and planning, a megayacht delivered more than $16,000 worth of donated medical supplies to the Belize Emergency Response Team in December, courtesy of the efforts of YachtAid Global.

Founded by Capt. Mark Drewelow in San Diego, YAG puts donated items on yachts heading to Third World countries to deliver to the coastal communities they visit.

January 21, 2009

Captains and crews of two British Virgin Islands’-based charter yachts spent Christmas transporting gifts and supplies to residents of Ile a Vache, an island off the southern coast of Haiti.

December 26, 2008

Eight years ago, Kathy Parsons published "Spanish for Cruisers" and made communication history amongst the charter captains, cruisers, marina and boatyard workers, marine technicians, mechanics and others who work on, live on, repair, maintain or have anything else to do with boats – and who speak only English or only Spanish.