https://seamarker.co The harbour, the tide table, the lamp at the end. en-US Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://seamarker.co/post/the-eight-bell-sky-mid-atlantic-thunderheads/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-eight-bell-sky-mid-atlantic-thunderheads/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer weather A retired Naval Academy sailing coach in Annapolis has spent thirty years teaching midshipmen to read summer thunderheads on the Chesapeake. The grammar she teaches is older than radar. https://seamarker.co/post/the-baltic-feeder-trade-in-winter/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-baltic-feeder-trade-in-winter/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren shipping Between Hamburg and the Gulf of Finland, the small feeder ships work an ice-laden trade that the big container lines depend on and the maritime press rarely covers. https://seamarker.co/post/raster-vector-chart-divide-coast-pilot/ https://seamarker.co/post/raster-vector-chart-divide-coast-pilot/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik charts The NOAA Coast Pilot is not a chart. It is a book, currently in 9 volumes, last fully revised between 2023 and 2025. For everything a chart cannot tell you, it is still the first thing to read. https://seamarker.co/post/rolling-hitch-and-the-art-of-friction/ https://seamarker.co/post/rolling-hitch-and-the-art-of-friction/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren knots-and-lines Per Lindgren teaches the rolling hitch to a class of four amateur sailors in Karlskrona and watches three of them fail it in the same way. https://seamarker.co/post/scarborough-in-june-the-week-before-the-cricket-festival/ https://seamarker.co/post/scarborough-in-june-the-week-before-the-cricket-festival/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran coastal-towns Two weeks before the North Marine Road ground hosts its first Yorkshire fixture of the year, the North Yorkshire seaside town finishes the long preparation that its summer trade depends on. https://seamarker.co/post/reading-a-tide-rip-on-penobscot-bay/ https://seamarker.co/post/reading-a-tide-rip-on-penobscot-bay/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren tides Standing waves, eddy lines, and the difference between a fair tide and a foul one. A morning aboard a 32-foot sloop out of Camden. https://seamarker.co/post/the-fog-signal-engineers-of-the-pacific-northwest/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-fog-signal-engineers-of-the-pacific-northwest/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik lighthouses The U.S. Coast Guard's Aids to Navigation Team at Astoria, Oregon, services fog signals at twenty-three lights along a stretch of coast that is foggy more days than not. https://seamarker.co/post/north-sea-prawn-fleet-eyemouth/ https://seamarker.co/post/north-sea-prawn-fleet-eyemouth/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran fisheries Nephrops norvegicus — Norway lobster, scampi, langoustine, prawn, depending on who is buying — is the most valuable shellfish landed in the United Kingdom. The Eyemouth fleet has fished it for decades. The 2026 season has begun under unusual conditions. https://seamarker.co/post/chart-datums-low-water-and-tide-tables/ https://seamarker.co/post/chart-datums-low-water-and-tide-tables/ Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren charts A sounding of 6 feet on the chart does not mean 6 feet of water. It means 6 feet of water at a specific theoretical low. In the Bay of Fundy in June, that distinction is worth a keel. https://seamarker.co/post/cold-water-shock-thresholds-for-coastal-paddlers/ https://seamarker.co/post/cold-water-shock-thresholds-for-coastal-paddlers/ Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair weather A volunteer kayak instructor in Lunenburg has reviewed every cold-water immersion incident on the Nova Scotia coast since 2015. The temperature line between manageable and fatal is sharper than most paddlers know. https://seamarker.co/post/a-week-with-the-suez-canal-pilots/ https://seamarker.co/post/a-week-with-the-suez-canal-pilots/ Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik shipping Three years after the Ever Given, the Suez Canal Authority has rebuilt its pilotage system, expanded the southern bypass, and added a layer of caution that the masters notice in the slowness. https://seamarker.co/post/a-week-at-cordouan-the-king-of-lighthouses/ https://seamarker.co/post/a-week-at-cordouan-the-king-of-lighthouses/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren lighthouses The tender out of Le Verdon-sur-Mer leaves at low water, an hour and twenty minutes before the lighthouse is accessible on foot across the sandbank. https://seamarker.co/post/alaska-salmon-bristol-bay-permits/ https://seamarker.co/post/alaska-salmon-bristol-bay-permits/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik fisheries The Bristol Bay sockeye salmon fishery is the largest wild salmon run on Earth. The economy that surrounds it — permits, processors, set-net sites, charter pilots, tender captains — runs on a fragile combination of biology, price, and timing. The 2026 forecast is, by Bristol Bay standards, modest. https://seamarker.co/post/stykkisholmur-in-may-when-the-puffins-come-back/ https://seamarker.co/post/stykkisholmur-in-may-when-the-puffins-come-back/ Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer coastal-towns On the north coast of Iceland's Snaefellsnes peninsula, a small harbour town begins its summer in earnest with the return of the puffins to the Breidafjordur islands. https://seamarker.co/post/isobars-as-a-skippers-craft/ https://seamarker.co/post/isobars-as-a-skippers-craft/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren weather A weather facsimile machine still hangs on the bulkhead at the Halifax sailing school where Esther Beaulieu teaches small-boat weather. She thinks every coastal skipper should read a synoptic chart, even when the apps work. https://seamarker.co/post/scale-and-generalization-on-coastal-charts/ https://seamarker.co/post/scale-and-generalization-on-coastal-charts/ Wed, 27 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren charts Every chart smooths the coastline. A close look at three NOAA charts of the same Massachusetts shore, at scales of 1:80,000, 1:40,000, and 1:20,000, shows what each one chooses to leave out, and why. https://seamarker.co/post/anchor-rode-and-the-snubber/ https://seamarker.co/post/anchor-rode-and-the-snubber/ Tue, 26 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik knots-and-lines Reidar Vik examines the anchor system on a thirty-two-foot Hallberg-Rassy in a Norwegian fjord and finds, as he often does, that the snubber is the part most neglected. https://seamarker.co/post/the-last-american-flag-tanker-out-of-philadelphia/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-last-american-flag-tanker-out-of-philadelphia/ Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran shipping On the Delaware River, where the Jones Act fleet has shrunk to fewer than ninety hulls, the crew of the Overseas Boston works a trade that nobody is replacing. https://seamarker.co/post/the-fresnel-conservator-of-portland-head/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-fresnel-conservator-of-portland-head/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer lighthouses In a small room above the gift shop at Portland Head Light, Esme Carriere unpacks a wooden crate from Birmingham, England, containing fourteen replacement prismatic elements. https://seamarker.co/post/icelandic-cod-quota-vestmannaeyjar/ https://seamarker.co/post/icelandic-cod-quota-vestmannaeyjar/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik fisheries Iceland has run a transferable individual quota system for its cod fishery since 1991. The system has rebuilt the stock, consolidated the fleet, and made a handful of families wealthy. In Vestmannaeyjar, the largest of the Westman Islands, the consequences are visible from any dock. https://seamarker.co/post/tobermory-in-march-the-end-of-the-ferry-pause/ https://seamarker.co/post/tobermory-in-march-the-end-of-the-ferry-pause/ Sat, 23 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer coastal-towns After a five-week refit shutdown of the MV Loch Frisa, Mull's largest town counts up what the ferry pause cost and what it taught. https://seamarker.co/post/a-household-tide-table-from-a-newfoundland-kitchen/ https://seamarker.co/post/a-household-tide-table-from-a-newfoundland-kitchen/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran tides On the wall above the kettle in Port Rexton, a small printed booklet has hung on the same nail for forty-one years. https://seamarker.co/post/vector-chart-update-pipeline-explained/ https://seamarker.co/post/vector-chart-update-pipeline-explained/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik charts A skipper sees a new buoy on his C-MAP plotter and assumes the chart company sent someone to look at it. The actual pipeline runs through USCG notices, Notices to Mariners, IHO S-100 feeds, and a small office in Genoa. https://seamarker.co/post/the-bay-of-fundy-lapse-rate/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-bay-of-fundy-lapse-rate/ Wed, 20 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair weather A second-generation lobsterman out of Digby Neck has been keeping an air-temperature gradient log between the deck and the masthead since 2019. The numbers tell a story about Fundy fog the forecast cannot. https://seamarker.co/post/fenders-and-the-lines-that-hold-them/ https://seamarker.co/post/fenders-and-the-lines-that-hold-them/ Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran knots-and-lines Niamh O'Halloran walks a Galway marina in late spring and counts forty-three fenders hanging from boats. Twelve of them are tied to fail. https://seamarker.co/post/the-pilot-station-at-the-bosphorus/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-pilot-station-at-the-bosphorus/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren shipping On a strait that handles forty-three thousand vessels a year, the Turkish pilots board in any weather and steer ships that often do not speak their language. https://seamarker.co/post/king-tides-and-flood-risk-in-charleston/ https://seamarker.co/post/king-tides-and-flood-risk-in-charleston/ Mon, 18 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer tides Sunny-day flooding has tripled in the historic district since 2000. A spring visit during a coefficient 92 tide at the Battery. https://seamarker.co/post/the-augers-of-st-johns-light-an-afternoon-with-the-volunteer-keepers/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-augers-of-st-johns-light-an-afternoon-with-the-volunteer-keepers/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair lighthouses On the second Saturday of every month, Charlotte Auger and her brother David drive out to Long Point Light on the Lake Erie shore of Ontario to wind the clock, sweep the gallery, and take the readings. https://seamarker.co/post/scallop-fleet-new-bedford-april/ https://seamarker.co/post/scallop-fleet-new-bedford-april/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair fisheries New Bedford has been the most valuable fishing port in the United States for twenty-four consecutive years, almost entirely on the strength of one species. The Atlantic sea scallop fishery is the most tightly managed in the country. It is also, in 2026, in the middle of a quiet crisis. https://seamarker.co/post/stonehaven-the-month-the-harbour-bar-closed-for-renovation/ https://seamarker.co/post/stonehaven-the-month-the-harbour-bar-closed-for-renovation/ Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran coastal-towns When the Marine Hotel's public bar shut for six weeks of overdue plumbing work, the small Aberdeenshire harbour town adjusted in ways that surprised everyone except the regulars. https://seamarker.co/post/tracing-1903-admiralty-chart-hebrides/ https://seamarker.co/post/tracing-1903-admiralty-chart-hebrides/ Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran charts A 123-year-old chart, found in a deceased mariner's estate in Stornoway, became the starting point for a year of cross-checking what had changed in the Outer Hebridean shoreline since the survey of HMS Research in 1898. https://seamarker.co/post/whippings-that-last-decades/ https://seamarker.co/post/whippings-that-last-decades/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair knots-and-lines Lavinia Sinclair examines a sailmaker's whipping put on by a Lunenburg rigger in 1994. The rope around it has been replaced twice. The whipping is still good. https://seamarker.co/post/gale-warnings-as-practical-literature/ https://seamarker.co/post/gale-warnings-as-practical-literature/ Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran weather The British Shipping Forecast is the most celebrated weather product in the English language. A skipper on the Solway Firth reads it the way other people read poetry, and acts on it the way they cannot. https://seamarker.co/post/ship-to-ship-bunkering-off-gibraltar/ https://seamarker.co/post/ship-to-ship-bunkering-off-gibraltar/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik shipping At anchor in the bay of Algeciras, the fuel barges work day and night to refuel ships that never enter port — and the Rock watches a trade worth roughly six million tonnes a year. https://seamarker.co/post/tidepooling-at-acadia-in-shoulder-season/ https://seamarker.co/post/tidepooling-at-acadia-in-shoulder-season/ Sun, 10 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer tides A May morning at Ship Harbor, with a thermos and a tide table. The pools are cold, the crowds are gone, and the periwinkles do not care either way. https://seamarker.co/post/decommissioning-a-1907-scottish-lighthouse/ https://seamarker.co/post/decommissioning-a-1907-scottish-lighthouse/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren lighthouses The Northern Lighthouse Board's decommissioning crew arrived at the small light at Eilean Glas on a Tuesday morning in late April, on the 09:40 ferry from Tarbert. https://seamarker.co/post/maine-herring-cooperative-year/ https://seamarker.co/post/maine-herring-cooperative-year/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair fisheries The Maine herring fleet is smaller than it has been in a century. The co-op that organises most of it has spent the past four years writing letters to the New England Fishery Management Council, and the past two years preparing for a fishery that may not exist in 2030. https://seamarker.co/post/eyemouth-at-midwinter-between-catches/ https://seamarker.co/post/eyemouth-at-midwinter-between-catches/ Sat, 09 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair coastal-towns On the Berwickshire coast a hundred and forty-five years after the disaster that took 189 men, a small fishing port keeps its working harbour, its memory, and its grip on the white-fish trade. https://seamarker.co/post/hand-bearing-compass-at-sea-taught-well/ https://seamarker.co/post/hand-bearing-compass-at-sea-taught-well/ Wed, 06 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Per Lindgren charts Astrid Pereira's brother is an offshore yacht delivery skipper. Over four days off the south coast of Brittany in May, he taught a class of six how to use a hand-bearing compass as if the plotter had quit. None of it was new. All of it had been forgotten. https://seamarker.co/post/marlinspike-seamanship-everyday-boater/ https://seamarker.co/post/marlinspike-seamanship-everyday-boater/ Tue, 05 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer knots-and-lines Mira Iyer spent a weekend with a small-craft instructor in Cochin Harbour learning the trade-name skills that working sailors call simply ropework. https://seamarker.co/post/the-tide-mills-of-the-breton-coast/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-tide-mills-of-the-breton-coast/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair tides Before electricity, Brittany ran on the tide. A visit to three surviving tide mills between Saint-Malo and Vannes, and the one that still grinds. https://seamarker.co/post/the-line-squall-as-a-sailing-problem/ https://seamarker.co/post/the-line-squall-as-a-sailing-problem/ Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik weather Line squalls kill more weekend sailors in the Chesapeake than any other weather phenomenon. A Hampton Roads sailmaker explains what to do in the eight minutes between seeing one and being inside it. https://seamarker.co/post/shore-leave-economies-of-an-indian-ocean-port/ https://seamarker.co/post/shore-leave-economies-of-an-indian-ocean-port/ Sun, 03 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Mira Iyer shipping At Salalah in Oman, a port where one in three calls produces no shore leave at all, the ship chandlers and SIM-card sellers have learned to bring the town to the gangway. https://seamarker.co/post/cape-st-marys-foghorn-at-four-in-the-morning/ https://seamarker.co/post/cape-st-marys-foghorn-at-four-in-the-morning/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran lighthouses The horn sounds for four seconds, falls silent for fifty-six, and has done so without interruption since the second week of April. It is now May. https://seamarker.co/post/aran-longliners-inishmore/ https://seamarker.co/post/aran-longliners-inishmore/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran fisheries The pier at Kilronan looks much the same as it did in 1995, except that there are now six boats tied up where there were twenty-two. The men who fish them are mostly between fifty and seventy. The fish, which are mostly pollack and ling, are coming up at depths the boats used not to bother with. https://seamarker.co/post/anstruther-scotland-in-february/ https://seamarker.co/post/anstruther-scotland-in-february/ Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran coastal-towns The East Neuk village holds the line through a cold month with the fish bar still open at noon, the lifeboat shed warm, and the harbour quietly counting down to the start of the creel season. https://seamarker.co/post/splicing-braided-line-by-hand/ https://seamarker.co/post/splicing-braided-line-by-hand/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran knots-and-lines Niamh O'Halloran sits in a Dingle workshop at a bench her uncle built in 1981 and works a Brummel splice into a five-millimetre Dyneema line. It takes her twenty-two minutes. https://seamarker.co/post/last-commercial-chart-cartographer-maine/ https://seamarker.co/post/last-commercial-chart-cartographer-maine/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Niamh O'Halloran charts In a second-floor office above a hardware store in Camden, Hollis Burnham has been drawing inshore charts by hand and by Illustrator since 1991. He is, he believes, the last person in the state still doing it as a trade. https://seamarker.co/post/peak-tides-at-the-bay-of-fundy/ https://seamarker.co/post/peak-tides-at-the-bay-of-fundy/ Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Lavinia Sinclair tides Sixteen metres of vertical water, four times a day. A late-May visit to the Minas Basin, where the world's largest tides do their ordinary work. https://seamarker.co/post/twelve-days-on-a-maersk-box-ship/ https://seamarker.co/post/twelve-days-on-a-maersk-box-ship/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Reidar Vik shipping An Atlantic crossing on the Maersk Sembawang, from Algeciras to Newark, where the work is steady, the meals are punctual, and the bridge is mostly quiet.