39 minute read
Waterspout Wisdom
from June 2021
TALK OF THE BAY
by Ann Eichenmuller
The headboat was anchored in the Newport News you’d come home and call a friend. That’s as far as it would Middle Ground, eager fishermen with poles out, go. Now everyone carries a smartphone with a camera all the first mate chumming off the stern. He and the the time. Nothing escapes being documented.” captain had their eyes on the northwest sky, focusing That doesn’t mean it’s good idea to chase waterspouts on a build-up of heavy, dark clouds. They watched in to get the perfect shot to share. Waterspouts may be horror as a thin funnel dipped down and touched the photogenic, but they are also dangerous. surface, then began to twist its way toward them. “We’re often talking about tornadic activity associated
The captain, with strong normally a gregarious thunderstorms,” Daniels soul, ran to the helm explains. “These without saying a word. supercells can produce He turned over the waterspouts, or they can engine and slammed the form tornadoes over land boat into gear as the that then move across mate scrambled to the the water without losing bow. The young mate got much of their strength.” his hands on the anchor A particularly line and pulled with all devastating example of his might as the boat the latter is the 2016 EF-3 catapulted forward. The tornado that ripped anchor came loose, and through Essex County in as he wrestled it aboard, Virginia, then crossed a he turned to see the mile-and-a-half-wide captain standing white- section of the faced, hatchet in hand— Rappahannock River ready, if need be, to cut before moving ashore on the line. the Northern Neck,
That first mate was leaving widespread my husband, and he damage in its wake. And realized then that any though storm-created weather phenomenon waterspouts that form capable of shaking a over water tend to be seasoned headboat weaker, they are often captain is one worth accompanied by high taking seriously. It’s no winds, rough seas, rain, wonder waterspouts are the stuff of SWIRLING SEAS lightning, and even hail. They can legends. Decade ago, sightings were If you see a waterspout, seek safe harbor, travel at up to 80 miles per hour, and considered a rarity, but today Facebook and never try to navigate through it. have a diameter anywhere from a and Instagram are flooded with photos foot to the size of a football field. of water-borne twisters on the Chesapeake. What has If that isn’t enough, Daniels says it is even possible for changed? According to Channel 6 Richmond’s chief waterspouts to form without any storm at all. “We call meteorologist Zach Daniels, it’s not necessarily the weather. those fair-weather waterspouts, akin to a ‘dust devil’ or a
“Twenty years ago, there were very few cell phones. If ‘leafnado.’ Anytime you have cooler air above a warm, you were out on a boat and you saw a waterspout, maybe humid surface, you’ve got an atmosphere that we call
buoyant. Situations like this can easily produce waterspouts in quiet conditions.”
Fair-weather waterspouts tend to be short-lived, move very little, and fall apart when they touch land—but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t capsize a small boat or cause damage to a larger vessel. That is why the National Weather Service warns boaters to take precautions whenever encountering a waterspout, regardless of origin:
• If you spot a waterspout, seek safe harbor immediately. • Avoid the waterspout by traveling at right angles to its apparent direction of movement. • If a collision is likely, take down sails, secure loose items, close hatches, and go below deck if possible. • Under no circumstances should a boater try to navigate through a waterspout.
And even though legend has it that firing a cannon into a waterspout’s path will break it up, this myth is unsubstantiated, so don’t fire your flare gun or launch your deck chairs toward one.
In terms of waterspout myths, several local watermen say they have heard tell of it “raining fish” that were suctioned up with the water in a waterspout. Daniels points out that the funnel you see is not “sucked-up” seawater, but rather a swirling mist of condensed water vapor. However, he agrees that a tornado over water does have enough suction to carry objects—including fish. According to New York meteorologist Bill Evans in his book It's Raining Fish and Spiders, all sorts of creatures have in fact been reported raining down during tornadic activity, including snakes, worms, and crabs, but fish and frogs are the most common. Worldwide, he writes, such events are reported about 40 times a year.
So next time you’re boating and see a waterspout, keep your distance—and just to be safe, you might want to cover your head.
The first in Zach Daniels’ series of children’s weather books, Walter and the Terrible Twister, was released this month. h
Ann Eichenmuller is a freelance writer and the author of two nautical mystery novels. She lives along Virginia’s Rappahannock River where she and husband Eric sail Avalon, a Morgan Out Island.
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CHESAPEAKE ALMANAC New Hope for the Elizabeth River
by John Page Williams
In 1983, when the Chesapeake Bay Program officially began working to restore the Bay ecosystem, the Elizabeth River was on its short list of toxic hot spots. On the south side of Hampton Roads, the Elizabeth’s main stem and branches lie cradled entirely within the busy city limits of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Portsmouth.
The river’s waters, its shorelines, and especially its bottom sediments have seen four centuries of heavy industry: shipyards, a key U.S. Navy base, coal piers connected to a major railroad, and a large complex of wastewater treatment plants. Bacterial contamination had closed oyster harvests. Fish and crab stocks had declined and showed signs of disease. But a well-organized group of local people managed to defeat a plan for an oil refinery on its shores. Therein lies the beginning of a hopeful story that gets better and better right up to today, with even more promise on the immediate horizon.
First, a Little Context
When the Chesapeake Bay Program got going, the Clean Water Act was 11 years old and its National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) was just beginning to improve the river’s water quality. One of the most pervasive problems, especially along the Elizabeth’s Southern Branch, was chronic spills of creosote, used for a couple of centuries to treat wharf COMEBACK STORY
The Elizabeth River (seen from the South Norfolk Jordan Bridge) has a restored river bottom and ambitious future plans.
timbers and pilings against shipworms and fouling organisms.
I remember spending a day aboard Baywatcher, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) education workboat then based in Hampton Roads. With a group of students on the Southern Branch, we pulled a trawl net along the bottom near the site of the abandoned Atlantic Wood Industries plant in Portsmouth. It came up with a handful of sickly white perch and spot, plus a strong odor of creosote. Later, I saw a study from the Virginia Institute of
Marine Science (VIMS) detailing pervasive liver damage in several fish species from the Southern Branch. Other problems included low dissolved oxygen, algae blooms, and loss of wetland habitat to bulkheaded shorelines.
A Turning Point in the 1990s
Just as local people had banded together in the 1970s to say no to the proposed oil refinery, a group of citizens formed the Elizabeth River Project (elizabethriver.org) “around a kitchen table.”
“I did not want to accept a community that would abandon its home river as dead,” recalls founding Executive Director Marjorie Mayfield Jackson. “Today I am tremendously proud of how far we’ve come as a community to bring the Elizabeth River to life.” She and others incorporated the Elizabeth River Project (ERP) in 1993 “to restore the Elizabeth River to the highest practical level of environmental quality through government, business, and community partnerships.”
From the start, ERP’s watchword has been those partnerships, which have included multiple nearby universities (Old Dominion, Norfolk State, Hampton, and VIMS) and nonprofits like Wetlands Watch and CBF. “They have always been great at community-scale planning and engagement,” said Christy Everett, CBF’s Hampton Roads Executive Director, whose team has developed a strong working relationship with ERP on several projects where the two organizations’ capabilities mesh. Watershed Action Plans and River Stars
In 1996, ERP developed the first in a series of Watershed Action Plans. It immediately bore fruit in the design and construction of the Birdsong Wetland in the back of Norfolk’s Larchmont Library. It is a restored salt marsh dedicated to the memory of Ray Birdsong, a much-loved ichthyology (study of fish) professor at Old Dominion. That same year saw launch of the River Stars Program for industries, in which participating businesses along the main river and its branches carry out wildlife habitat restoration projects. They look for “win-win” opportunities to avoid or eliminate pollution through technical assistance from ERP staff and advisors. That assistance includes finding grants,
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pollution prevention technologies, sources for native plants, and volunteers to help, especially with planting restored wetlands. To date, 131 River Star Businesses have achieved more than 1,787 acres of wildlife habitat restored or conserved and 331 million pounds of pollution voluntarily reduced. Over one billion pounds of other materials have been recycled, reduced, or reused.
Since 2011, Inside Business, the Hampton Roads business journal, has sponsored an annual River Star Hall of Fame award. For 2021, that award went to the Norfolk Southern Corp. Living Shoreline at its huge Lamberts Point coal terminal on the river’s main stem—“the thoroughbred of living shorelines.” The project also provided the Fortune 500 company with erosion protection at a significant savings over conventional shoreline armoring, while treating runoff and restoring significant habitat for oysters, crabs, fish, birds, and other critters. Not every River Star is a large corporation, however. This year’s Three Star list includes the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation, which provides kayak launches, uniquely artistic playgrounds, interactive educational signs, solar lighting, and fitness equipment along a 10.5-mile trail through Norfolk. Another Three Star awardee is the Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads/Lafayette River Annex, whose engineers and volunteers have restored a wide range of wildlife habitat around an oysterfilled living shoreline they built. Today, ERP and its partners have completed more than 50 wetland restorations.
FLOATING SCHOOL
Elizabeth River Project's innovative Learning Barge stages science lessons while moored in the river.
The Goo Must Go, the Learning Barge, and Oysters
Additional Watershed Action Plans followed in 2002, 2008, and 2016. While visible features like living shorelines and trails are critical to river restoration, ERP and its partners also began attacking the unseen but genuinely poisonous sediment in the river. Under the catchy slogan “The Goo Must Go!,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers excavated sludge from the river bottom at the Atlantic Wood Industries site, working as deep as 20 feet down. Then ERP and multiple public and private partners, including 7314 Edgewood Rd. / 410.919.9402 WWW. CAPITALSUP.COM
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Chesapeake Bay Boaters Use Argo App to Navigate and Meet Up
Bran Stisher knows that you can spend a lifetime on the water and still not discover all the best spots located along the small inlets, coves and rivers of the Chesapeake Bay.
In the past, a fellow boater might tip you off to a new tiki bar. Perhaps, a friend would extend an invite to a weekend meet up. Or maybe you happened upon a treasured anchorage while exploring the eastern shore. These days, Stisher counts on a more reliable source for his weekend water outings: Argo, the free boating app that helps you navigate, share and connect with the boating community.
“I’ve been boating the Bay for over 20 years,” says Stisher, a 50-year-old Annapolis resident who can often be found on his 34-foot Sea Ray. “My friends and I spent almost every weekend last summer on the Bay. This summer should be no different. We use the Argo app as part of our journeys, from location to location, tiki bar to tiki bar, and meet up point to the next.”
“We found a great place up off the West River where boats meet up, tie in and raft-up last year,” Stisher said. “It turns into a big party.” Argo offers charts, auto-routing, real-time hazard reports, a captain’s log, and more. But it’s the social feed that appeals to Stisher and his friends.
On a typical outing, Stisher could be heading to Kent Island for a day of festivities, but a quick check on Argo might show him that most of his buddies are hanging out at the Pirates Cove Restaurant and Dock Bar in Galesville. That’s a welcome detour to his fi nal destination.
Reviews, photos and voyages that other boaters share on Argo can also be conducive to picking the next meetup.
“I can see where my friends are going on the map,” Stisher says. “We can track where we are heading. I can identify other boaters and discover new points of interest. It’s a great way to meet up along the Bay.”
The Argo app is available as a free download on the App Store and Google Play Store. Learn more at argonav.io.
Join the Argo community at www.argonav.io
or download the FREE app several major port industries, took on Money Point (so named because of the profits gained there over many years of processing wood and dumping creosote waste overboard) at the mouth of the Eastern Branch. By 2013, 36 million pounds of “goo” had gone, and a cap of clean sand lay over the site to a depth of six feet. Since then, extensive plantings have restored oyster reefs in the shallows and salt marsh along the shore. An estimated 25 species of fish have returned to the area, while liver cancer in a test species has dropped six-fold. More creosote cleanups remain in planning stages.
In 2009, ERP christened an innovative, wind- and solar-powered 120' x 32' Learning Barge with live wetlands, an enclosed classroom, composting toilets, and a rainwater system to model and teach ecology, resilience, and sustainability. Since then, some 96,000 students and teachers in grades K–12 have participated. In addition, 180 local schools now participate in the River Star program through hands-on projects in their classrooms, labs, and campuses.
Since the start of River Star Homes, “excited watershed residents” have committed more than 5,000 of their homes to seven practices that protect the river. In addition, neighborhoods have joined the River Stars program with multiple greening projects focused on stormwater.
Oysters? Oh, yes, they have been part of the plan from the start. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC), CBF, and local volunteers have built reefs and planted oysters in the Lafayette River over the past 25 years, making that tributary the first in Virginia to have its reefs declared fully restored. ERP has been a partner there as well. More recently, ERP has taken the lead with VMRC in fully restoring the reefs in the Eastern Branch, with planting help from CBF. “ERP has been a fantastic partner for CBF to work with,” declares Christy Everett.
SKYLER BALLARD/CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM
A Resilient Next Wave
So what is next for the Elizabeth River Project? Sea level is rising and land is subsiding in South Hampton Roads, while annual rainfall appears to be increasing, bringing ever more pollution from stormwater. Building resilience to climate change has become a high priority issue. Thus, ERP’s Next Wave Campaign focuses on a (literally) groundbreaking Resilience Center on Knitting Mill Creek, a tributary of the Lafayette in Norfolk. The Resilience Center will be the first urban redevelopment project in Virginia to rebuild intentionally in the floodplain, demonstrating environmental resilience to sea level rise. The designed life span is 30 to 50 years, to match sea level predictions.
“It’s not just a case of trying to make [the center] more inhabitable for human beings, it’s also a case of making the land more friendly to the river,” explains ERP Board member Louis Ryan, who with his wife, Pru, donated the lead gift to the center. Named for the couple, it will include a laboratory open to the public for demonstration of emerging practices in coastal environmental resilience. It will also offer practical approaches to resilience that the average home or business can reasonably replicate. Many partners have been involved: the Hampton University School of Architecture, Old Dominion University, and multiple community stakeholders contributed concepts for the Resilience Lab during a fall 2019 planning charrette. Final design is underway by Work Program Architects.
The Elizabeth River has come a long way since 1983, especially since the Elizabeth River Project and its remarkable array of partners banded together to restore its health. ERP has carefully quantified that progress twice—in 2014 and again last year— with publication of its State of the Elizabeth River Scorecard 2020. Visit the organization’s website, elizabethriver.org, to see for yourself. The progress is something to celebrate, but there’s more on the way. Stay tuned. h
RISING WATER
ERP's Next Wave campaign seeks to develop resilience to frequent flooding in places like Norfolk's Llewellyn Avenue.
CBM Editor at Large John Page Williams is a fishing guide, educator, author, and naturalist, saving the Bay since 1973.
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CHESAPEAKE CHEF Crabs and Spaghetti
A little-known Baltimore favorite—by Rafael Alvarez
It makes a delicious mess—on your blouse and chin, the plate awash in red, and the tablecloth speckled crimson from end to end. And unless you were born into it— typically with a name that ends in a vowel and roots in the old Baltimore waterfront neighborhoods—chances are you’ve never tasted it.
The dish is crabs and spaghetti: blue crabs simmered in homemade tomato sauce and served over pasta. And an extra Michelin star if you do like my cousin Cindi Hemelt Gallagher of Severna Park and make the spaghetti from scratch.
“The first story I hear about crab sauce is its unique family tradition. It differs from family to family,” said Vince Pompa, a Little Italy native and former chef at Chiapparelli’s on High Street, where he prepared the meal on “no meat” Catholic Fridays.
When the meal was served at the family home, said Pompa, “There was bread for dunking along with antipasti, stuffed peppers, marinated vegetables, homemade wine, and lots of relatives.”
Bottom line, said Pompa: “It’s meant to be shared.
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That’s the heart of it.” “It was a treat
The heart of the on Fridays in the Pompa family was summertime,” Vince’s late mother, remembered my the former Lucy father, Manuel Palmere, known as (Italian on his the Ravioli Queen of mother’s side from St. Leo’s Church in old Highlandtown), Little Italy. “Miss who prepared it Lucy” Pompa died in many times with 2015 at age 96. crabs he and a
The Chesapeake tugboat buddy caught crab population has in the Wye River. declined greatly Cousin Cindi said since the late her late mother (my matriarch’s “Aunt Treesey”) made Depression-era the meal with crabs girlhood, when the caught on Back River fish market was off at the Hemelt family Pratt Street and shore home. “She’d seafood was cheap. pull open their backs The harvest, now and pretty much drop regulated, has them alive in the remained somewhat sauce,” said constant. Gallagher, noting, of
Some 70 million course, that the pounds of blue crab “lungs” were scraped were caught in the off while keeping the Chesapeake and its digestive glands tributaries in 1930, known as “mustard.” according to the With the U.S. Bureau of brackish water and Fisheries. A little “juice” that seeps more than a year from freshly caught ago, that number crabs, the sauce is was estimated at STEAMED SURPRISE somewhat thinner 61 million pounds, Ralph Sapia likes to to see dinner guests’ reactions when he serves the dish. than recipes using down a bit from meat, and, with a previous years. touch of crushed red pepper and sometimes capers, piquant.
The majority, of course, are steamed the Maryland As Vince Pompa said, every family with a tradition of way. A few turn into crab spaghetti: Females are dropped in crabs and spaghetti has its own approach. Here is the the soup pots, sometimes spiced with cabbage for a bit of interpretation of La Famiglia Sapia, longtime Ocean City tang. The least of each year’s haul takes a final swim in restaurateurs and owners of DaVinci’s restaurant on the tomato sauce. boardwalk at Atlantic Avenue.
About 25 years ago or thereabouts, attorney Ralph L. Sapia, 54, inherited the recipe from his father Giacomo, who went by James. When the elder Sapia died, the resort’s Downtown Association named their annual spaghetti dinner in his honor. Crabs and spaghetti have decidedly never been on the menu of the charitable event.
“We ate it when I was a kid, and when I asked Dad why we didn’t do it anymore, he said it was too messy—the messiest meal ever,” said Sapia, who recently made the dish in his Baltimore County home after work, still wearing his barrister’s bowtie.
“My father said it was simple. ‘You just put the crabs in your sauce and then cook the [expletive] out of them like you do tripe.’” It’s not quite that simple, though theirs is radically different from the approach used by my father and cousin Cindi.
Sapia only uses males, believing that eating the females (even though they’re already at market) is unsustainable. He steams the crabs for 8–10 minutes before stewing them for up to eight hours; until, he said, “the shells are like paper” and the taste of the crab has thoroughly permeated the sauce.
Sapia makes the dish about twice a year, always inviting friends, often without telling his guests what they’ll be eating to get the thrill of their surprise. The meal became part of his repertoire when a beach friend named Jerry Greenspan—son of a Boardwalk arcade owner and Holocaust survivor named Harold—brought up the dish one day.
The mother of one of the arcade employees had brought a big pan of the dish to the ocean one summer to feed her daughters and their friends. “It was enough to feed 10 people and I loved it,” said Greenspan, who, craving more, asked his buddy Sapia if he knew about it. No one else in Ocean City, said Greenspan, had heard of it. Sapia followed his father’s instructions (verbal, too simple to write down) and the pals enjoyed the meal together.
“The best part of that dish is sucking the meat and the sauce out of the shells,” said Sapia.
Pompa agrees. “The sweetness of the crab is absorbed by the sauce. Then you get to do what all Baltimoreans are best at—picking through the jumbo lump meat and cracking the sweet claws.” Greenspan last had the meal a quarter-century ago. He might soon be giving his buddy Sapia a call. h
Rafael Alvarez is the author of the Orlo and Leini stories. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com.
Ralphie’s Crabs & Pasta
INGREDIENTS
1/2 dozen large crabs
Sauce: 1 small/medium onion 2 Tbsp garlic (fresh or minced in jar) 1 cup Italian seasoning (McCormick or Sons of Italy) 2 cans crushed tomatoes
1. Steam crabs for about 10 minutes without seasoning, to dispatch them. 2. Make the sauce: Cover the bottom of a pot with olive oil. Add onions and let simmer; once translucent, add garlic and brown (garlic cooks quickly so watch it closely). Add tomatoes and seasoning. Cook on high heat until it comes to a rolling boil—keep stirring, so the sauce doesn’t stick. Once boiling, turn the heat down to a simmer and cover. 3. Add the crabs: Leave the claws and fins on and remove the top shell. Take off face and lungs (devil) and discard. Break the crab in half (you will have two halves with claws and fins). Put crabs in sauce, making sure to add all the fat (mustard); I also include the top shell. 4. Cover and bring to a slow boil and let it cook for about an hour, stirring frequently. Turn to a low heat for about two hours. Simmer for as long as possible (best to start in the morning so you get 8 hours). Serve and eat, being careful not to wear your nicest shirt.
Grady-White Fisherman 257
by Capt. John Page Williams
What makes a good day for a sea trial? How about 15 to 20 knots of east wind pushing against an ebb current sliding out of the Bay to meet the Atlantic at Cape Henry? That’s what Norfolk Marine President Jason Murphy ordered up for our ride on Grady-White’s Fisherman 257. We couldn’t have asked for better conditions to let this sturdy center-console fishing/family boat show off its SeaV2 hull. From Baltimore to the Virginia Capes, this is a sweet rig for folks who spend the bulk of their time on the Chesapeake’s open waters. It’s seaworthy, safe, comfortable, and well-designed for multiple assignments.
Grady-White Fisherman 257
LOA: 24′ 9″ Beam: 8′ 6″ Draft: 20″ Transom Deadrise: 20 degrees Weight: 4,300 lbs. (w/o engine) Max HP: 400 Fuel Capacity: 135 gal. Available through Tri-State Marine (tristatemarine.com), Norfolk Marine Company (norfolkmarine.com), and Taylor Marine (taylormarinecenter.com).
The storied firm C. Raymond Hunt Associates collaborated with GradyWhite’s engineers on design of the SeaV2 hulls, a hybrid deep-V shape with bottom deadrise varying continuously from a moderate V at the transom to a very sharp V at the bow. The apex of the V is rounded from the stern almost to the bow. Complementing it are two preciselyshaped strakes on each side, and wide, also precisely-shaped chines (corners where the bottom meets the sides). Grady-White’s website offers several graphics and videos that explain the design in more detail.
In practice on test day, the hull was impressive. Most dealers in the U.S. stock the Fisherman 257 with twin Yamaha F150s or F200s, but our test boat had a single F300. The F300 showed plenty of power and acceleration with four people aboard and a full fuel tank, planing off easily at speeds below 15 knots with no bow rise. In the short, 2–3' seas we encountered at the Bay’s mouth, supplemented by some larger ocean swells, that speed was very comfortable, with spray coming aboard only when quartering into the wind. A touch of the leeward trim tab
raised the windward side to damp that out, while the flared bow, chines, and strakes provided plenty of buoyancy to rise to the seas. We throttled up as high as 30 knots without the hull coming down hard, but it was clearly an 18- to 22-knot day (3,700–4,000 rpm). According to Yamaha’s performance data, this rig tops out at about 37 knots (5,900 rpm).
We slowed down to trolling speed and then drifted both into and broadside to the seas. The boat’s motion was easy, meaning it would be a comfortable platform for any job, from trolling along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to seabird-watching at the artificial island by the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Running back inside Cape Henry, the hull tracked easily up the backs of the seas and down into their troughs. Again, the bow’s buoyancy and flare sent all spray out to the side. The rugged, allcomposite construction shrugged off waves without a shake or a rattle.
Grady-White likes to stress its “exceptional attention to detail.” That shows not only in the hull design but all over the boat. The company listens DOWN TO THE DETAILS
Clockwise: Bow-bench seating holds insulated fix boxes; Holders for rods and fishing gear behind the helm; A split flip-up seat for two.
to its owners, dealers, service people, and customers, refining its existing models whenever good ideas pop up. The whole point is to build safe, comfortable boats that can fish hard but also provide families with great days on the water.
While many people opt for the company’s Freedom line of dualconsole models, there are family advantages to the Fisherman 257’s center-console layout. For one, it provides a large open space in the bow. That includes port and starboard cushioned bow-bench seating with forward-facing backrests that fold away when not needed. A recessed grab bar runs along each side of the gunwale. The benches each hold 120-quart insulated fish boxes with overboard drains. The port box has a removable divider for separating food and drink from fish and bait. An optional insert between the benches converts the whole space into a casting platform with cushions removed. For picnics, ask for the optional table that fits the space. A simple sunshade for this area is also optional.
The console’s placement in the center offers plenty of headroom (66"—we measured) and space inside for changing clothes or using the portable toilet (with deck pumpout). There are two large dedicated bins and an elastic net for storage inside, along with electronics access to the backside of the helm (chartplotter/fishfinder, VHF, stereo, and Yamaha engine management display). We would, however, like to see some natural light inside through a porthole, maybe on the port side, and a fan for active ventilation. The front of the console holds a cushioned seat for two, set over the two console storage bins.
The helm offers a compass on top, plenty of space for flush-mounting a couple of large electronic displays and a VHF, along with the Yamaha engine management display and a controller for the stereo. Standard steering is hydraulic, controlled by a tilting stainless wheel with knob. (Yamaha’s Helm Master EX Digital Electric Steering is optional.) The fiberglass T-top rests on a painted aluminum frame, with an integrated, scratchresistant acrylic windshield (wiper with washer included), a handrail, an overhead radio box, storage net, dome light, spreader light, four rod holders, a radar flat, and outrigger plates.
The trim tab controller mounts under the steering wheel, and I bumped the single-lever engine control unintentionally while reaching for it, which my crew did not appreciate. The problem might have been my own
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inexperience with the boat or overly light tension on the lever. Both would be easily remedied, but it’s worth a new skipper’s attention.
The ingenious helm seat for two includes a cushioned backrest and a split, flip-up bolster for sitting or leaning. The sides offer a pair of vertical storage compartments with nets. On the aft side are a holder for knives and pliers, tackle trays, lockable storage, and four rod holders. A 65-quart Yeti cooler beneath is an option. Each gunwale has two vertical rod holders, plus horizontal racks for three rods up to 7' beneath and a toe rail for safety. The transom bulkhead offers a well-plumbed, 32-gallon livewell to port, a 182-quart insulated fish box in the center, and a door to starboard leading to the afterdeck/ swim platform and its retractable ladder. With a single engine, the space back there makes it easy to move around, keeping a hooked fish from fouling its line on the engine. In front of the big fish box is a cushioned folding seat for two. It flips up and over the transom for access to plumbing and wiring in the bilge. Last but definitely not least, the cockpit has four drains carefully designed to free any spray or rain quickly. Efficient, systematicallyengineered drainage is a Grady-White hallmark for safety in rough water.
Fishing? Whether jigging around any Chesapeake bridge, bridge-tunnel, or underwater ledge, trolling with planer boards, chasing breaking fish around Point Lookout, running a buoy line for cobia, or bottom fishing for panfish, there’s not much open-water work in our Bay that the Fisherman 257 can’t handle. It’s built into its DNA.
There’s one last detail: the Captain Grady digital boat systems and operations guide for iPad & iPhone. It’s a standard feature to help owners understand all of the Fisherman 257’s operating systems. That’s one more reason why Grady-White consistently wins Customer Satisfaction Index awards, and why this boat is built well enough to serve multiple missions for several generations of family and friends.
MSRP for the Fisherman 257 with Yamaha’s new F300 and its Helm Master EX Digital Electric Steering is $140,215. (standard hydraulic is $735 less). For more information, visit grady-white.com.
CBM Editor at Large, educator, guide, and author of three quintessential Chesapeake Bay books, John Page Williams was named a Maryland Admiral of the Bay in 2013.
The perfect day on the Chesapeake Bay — begins & ends with Grady-White.
Come experience the Express 330 during our in-water demonstration days, featuring Seakeeper — June 10, 11 & 12.
Call 410-867-1447 to make a reservation today.
TRI-STATE MARINE
Your Chesapeake Bay Boating Connection for 50+ Years
410.867.1447 • www.tristatemarine.com
