Author Peter Janssen

On Watch with Peter Janssen
By

Boat Sinks in Marlin Tournament. See Rescue Video

The 48th annual White Marlin Open, the world’s largest billfish tournament, started on Monday morning in Ocean City, Maryland, with 421 boats competing for a record $9 million in prize money. At 10:30, Knot Stressin’, a 34-foot Pursuit and one of the competitors, sent out a Mayday call saying its engine room was flooding and all six men on board were abandoning ship. It was about 60 miles offshore. The Coast Guard heard the call and sent out an 87-foot patrol boat and a 47-foot lifeboat. But Bill Chapman, the captain of Fishbone, a 65-foot fishing boat that also was…

Boat Reviews
By

Vicem Offers Restyled 65 Classic in Fiberglass

Vicem, the highly regarded Turkish builder, is reintroducing its restyled and re-engineered 65 Classic yacht, but this time owners have a choice of building it in cold-molded wood (per the 2018 original) or in fiberglass. The company says it has moved to the fiberglass option for a faster build time, as well as for lower maintenance costs. It now has three of the new 65 Classics under construction, two in fiberglass and one cold-molded. The latest version of the 65, with its low profile, long sheerline, beautiful tumblehome and timeless Downeast-style looks, has a new full-beam master stateroom amidships. It…

Boat Reviews
By

Sessa Launches Innovative Fly 68 Gullwing

Sessa has launched its innovative, open Fly 68 Gullwing, with original glass doors that fold up from the sides of the salon. If they remind you of the iconic Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing (produced from 1954 to 1963), that’s not an accident. The Sessa gullwings create a large opening in the salon; they fold  up and out of the way, providing immediate access to the wide side decks while flooding the salon with light and fresh air. With its raked-back windshield, low, open flybridge, windows all around and enormous sun pad on the foredeck, the new Sessa flagship is a…

Cruising Life
By

Linssen Launches New 50 Coastal Cruiser

The brand-new Linssen 500GS is the largest open-cockpit boat the Dutch yard has built since it was founded in 1949. Although it was designed for cruising the inland waterways of the Netherlands and France (and anywhere else in Europe), the 500GS would be equally at home in coastal cruises in the U.S. or on the Great Loop. With its air draft of just 10’ 8,” the newest Linssen could easily slide under most of the bridges in Florida and the Southeast. The Linssen has a feature that could appeal to owners in colder climes, as well (not surprising, with its…

Cruising Life
By

SpaceX Alums Build 40-mph Electric Boat

Arc Boat Company, a new high-tech company with heavy duty Silicon Valley funding, is now selling a 24-foot, 40-mph, all-electric boat powered by a 200kWh battery. The company is taking orders for the new Arc One, costing $300,000, with the first boat scheduled for delivery by the end of the year. So far, Arc, based in Los Angeles, has ten employees. All but one of them, CEO Mitch Lee, have worked for SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration company. Lee founded the company with Ryan Cook; they studied mechanical engineering together at Northwestern University, and then went on to work at…

Cruising Life
By

Amphibious Luxury RV Hits 7 Knots in Water

Just in case you’ve ever thought of driving your luxury motorhome into the water, take a look at the amphibious Terra Wind by CAMI that travels 80 mph on land and 7 knots when it’s floating. The Terra Wind is 42’ 6” long with an 8’ 6” beam; it weighs 33,000 pounds, or a bit more than a school bus, and it has a draft of 3’ 5.” It’s driven by a single 330-hp Cat turbo diesel, with an automatic transmission for the road and a marine gearbox for the water. It has two 19-inch bronze props. It comes with…

Cruising Life
By

Boaters Camp Out Waiting for Slip Space

Here’s a sign of the times. Boat owners in Scituate, Massachusetts, on Boston’s South Shore, camped out in their tents next to the harbor master’s office for as long as four nights waiting for a slip to open up there. Boat sales soared during the pandemic, particularly among first-time buyers. Now many of them are discovering the unpleasant truth: They don’t have a place to put them. Across the U.S., last year was a 13-year-high for boat sales (and 9 percent above 2019), according to the National Marine Manufacturers Association. The number of first-time boat buyers rose for the first…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
By

John Hauck, 82, Completes Great Loop Again, Alone

John Hauck, 82, just completed the Great Loop, again, by himself. Hauck finished the Loop, crossing his wake, 132 days after he left Demopolis, Alabama, on his Rosborough RF-246 named Grumpy. For Hauck, the second Loop came almost two years after he completed it the first time, on Aug. 2, 2019, after he had cruised 6,303 miles in 110 days. He spent most of the time by himself on that trip, although a lady friend joined him for a short spell. A retired Army special forces major who flew Cobra helicopter gunships for the 101st Airborne in the Vietnam war, Hauck…

Destinations
By

Salt Spring Island: Pacific Northwest Gem

Now that Canada is starting to open up again, Salt Spring Island, in the Canadian Gulf Islands, is an appealing destination for U.S. cruisers. The largest of the Gulf Islands,  Salt Spring is just above the popular San Juan Islands in Washington State and off the east coast of Vancouver Island. It’s easy to get to, and hard to leave, as I can attest from personal experience. Salt Spring is 17 miles long, nine miles wide, with a year-round population of 12,000 people, including large groups of painters, writers, musicians, retirees, and farmers: it’s home to more than 200 farms…

Boat Reviews
By

New All-Electric 20m Eegle: “Perfect Coastal Cruiser”

The creative, all-electric 20m Eegle trawler-like cruiser is being completed in a yard in the south of France. BYD, the Spanish naval architectural firm that drew the yacht, says that it is “designed to be the perfect coastal cruiser,” combining “the space and comfort of a beach apartment with the effortless mobility and seaworthiness of a highly capable motoryacht.” The new Eegle is 65’ 6” long with a beam of 16’4” and it’s powered by four 150-kW motors to give it a top speed of 20 knots and a range of 80 nm.  An optional larger fuel tank and genset…

1 … 124 125 126 127 128 … 390