Design and Technology

When students enroll at The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School on Governor’s Island in Manhattan, 50 percent don’t know how to swim, but by graduation day they’re experienced sailors. That’s just how it goes when you attend a maritime high school.

In July 2014 when the Charles W. Morgan lowered her whaleboats onto rippling blue waters for the first time in nearly a century, her crew wasn’t hunting whales for profit, but instead unearthing her own historic past during her 38th voyage.

One of the new generation of small boats coming out of Europe, aboard which aesthetics are as important as performance, the Tofinou 8 is also packed with interesting features that allow you to do a lot more than just go for a spin around the harbor.

There’s a new 52-footer on the way from Island Packet, along with new models from Fountaine Pajot, Hanse and Salona

US Watercraft, the Rhode Island-based boatbuilder—which also manufacturers Alerions and a variety of models for J/Boats—purchased C&C Yachts, and promptly unveiled the hot-looking Mark Mills-designed C&C 30: a flush-deck, reverse-sheer sportboat with a wicked-looking sprit and over 610 square feet of working sail.

Hobart “Hobie” Alter, the creator of both the Hobie catamaran line and an entire sailing subculture, passed away peacefully at his Palm Desert home on March 29.

The Croatia-built Salona range now has a new importer in the United States, who showed three boats at the Miami Strictly Sail show last month: a powerful-looking 44-foot sports cruiser, and a 38-footer and 33-footer along the same lines.  

Away from the docks at last October’s U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, the buzz was all about the just-announced Hinckley Bermuda 50. This is the first new sailing boat from Hinckley since 2004, when the venerable builder got in right at the forefront of the daysailer movement with its DS42.