I have been playing with boats a long time—more than 41 years. Boating has taken me all over the world. I’m lucky to have been involved across the spectrum of the sport.

I cruised and raced sailboats for 11 years before switching to a Grand Banks 42, primarily because a crewmember fell out of the mast and landed on my head, causing me a long period of recuperation from a neck injury that ruled out the physical aspects of sailing. Thereafter followed a series of powerboats including Drummer, an 85-footer from Broward Marine, a long-range cruiser and even a sportfisherman from Hatteras. I tried all the various facets of boating I could.

Stanley Bey’s ShowBoats International Award-winning Pegasus graced the January 1992 cover of the magazine. (Click image to enlarge)

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After trying our hand at restoring a 116-foot Feadship, we were introduced to displacement vessels by way of Campbell Bay. By then, we had cruised on our own and on friends’ yachts along the Great Barrier Reef, Tahiti, the Panama Canal, and in the Caribbean and the western Mediterranean. Denison, who still represents us in our boat dealings, introduced us to the Hakvoort Shipyard in Monnickendam, the Netherlands. The Dutch yard built us Campbell Bay (44 meters) and then Perle Bleue (38 meters), our current boat. Perle Bleue received this year’s ShowBoats International Award for Best Full-Displacement Motor Yacht Under 50 Meters.

Things really have changed in yachting in recent years. The electronics today are the kind of things we dreamed of as we navigated with compass and depth sounder through the fog in 1978 from Block Island, Rhode Island, to Plum Gut, in New York’s Long Island Sound. I remember the most important reality check was using our ears to listen to the bell buoys and to check and re-check the depth. Navigation systems are what have advanced most in the last 40 years, especially the plotter systems and overlays on the radars and collision avoidance systems. And then there are satellite communications. ...Who would have thought it all possible 40 years ago?

Until Sept. 11, the yachting world had a very free spirit. People roamed where they wished in the United States and most of the world. Advance notice of arrivals did not exist, and in most places dockage was readily available. For those fortunate enough to have a larger vessel today, pilotage is an issue in all the major ports. The logistics and planning aspects of operating today’s yachts has its good and bad points. We are forced to better plan our adventures as we travel the world. We can’t just pick up and go everywhere we’d like, whenever we’d like.

I do see as a positive improvement the required training of yacht crew. However, there is still a great deal of regulation that will have to be sorted out that is not practical or doable for smaller yachts, such as severe restrictions on duty hours. It is my own experience that professional crew know how to pace themselves during long ocean passages, following very strict watches. I do not feel safety is in any way reduced because of a small crew, provided proper rest is included in the watch program and documented. And on the subject of crew shortage, captains and owners have to give the newbies a chance on their boats. We can’t have only experienced people and expect the pool of available crew to expand to meet the demands of the growing yacht fleet.Yachting has grown very expensive over the last five to 10 years. We have to deal with four-dollars-a-gallon fuel and the rising costs of raw materials and labor to build these boats. Some of us old-timers see this as a grim picture that will not benefit yachting in the long run.

Yet yachting is not just about super-rich people. It really does trickle down to the little guy with the 25-foot Boston Whaler. How else would we have that wonderful Raymarine plotter system that does everything, including take the owner home at the end of the day?

Dock space is another problem. The usual supply-and-demand curve is rearing its ugly head as the various state and federal agencies make it tougher and tougher to have a marina that is worth having for the operator.

I still love best knocking around in small boats. That is why I recently purchased a Sabre 38 that I named Black Pearl. She has all the bells and whistles one could want. My wife Peg and I spent seven days on Long Island Sound not long ago visiting old haunts I haven’t seen since my sailboat days. I hope my nine grandchildren can enjoy knocking around in small boats just the way I did and have all the fun and adventures I remember so well. Then they, too, can grow up with the passion to expand their yachting horizons.

Stanley Bey has owned a number of well-known yachts, two of which have won ShowBoats International Awards.