Author Peter Janssen

Boat Reviews
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Highfield Launches New 360 GT Console RIB

The new sturdy and lightweight Highfield Classic 360 RIB with a GT Console would make a great companion on the Great Loop, your next cruising vacation, or just for running around your favorite harbor or anchorage. The new Highfield has an aluminum hull, with a 15-degree deadrise and a full-length keelguard for protection if you’re running up on a beach or sandbar. The boat itself is just 11’ 10” long, and weighs 285 pounds. Highfield recommends that you use a 25-hp outboard on the 360GT (although you can go up to a 30-hp model). A 25-hp Yamaha weighs 126 pounds,…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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Prestige Building New Line of Power Cats

Prestige, the high-end French builder, just announced that they’re launching a new line of power catamarans, starting with the M48. Prestige has been making yachts from 40 to 70 feet since 1989, but they’ve all been monohull motoryachts. The new M-Line, starting with the 48, will change all that. Part of the Beneteau Group, Prestige will have the new cat ready for the Cannes Yachting Festival next September. Powered by twin 320-hp Volvo diesels with V-drives, the M48 is projected to have a top speed of 20 knots and a range of 600 nm at 8 knots. At any speed,…

Cruising Life
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Shackleton’s Endurance Found in Antarctic

Here’s a terrific and extremely thorough story from the BBC about how a team of British researchers found the wreck of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, a 144-foot, three-masted wooden ship that was trapped in the ice in Antarctica and sank in 1915, stranding Shackleton and his 27-man crew. Here’s the complete story, with pictures, video and a map: Scientists have found and filmed one of the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks 107 years after it sank. The Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. The ship was…

Destinations
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CUBAR Rally All Set for Next Fall

The iconic CUBAR powerboat rally from San Diego to La Paz, Mexico, next fall has already filled up with its 50-boat capacity, and is now just putting names on a waiting list. One of the premiere cruising events on the West Coast, the rally will leave the San Diego Yacht Club on October 30 and arrive in La Paz, 910 nm later, on Nov. 13. CUBAR, standing for Cruise Underway to Baja Rally, is sponsored by the San Diego club, and Nordhavn, which has eight boats in this year’s event, just signed on as another sponsor. Nordhavn set the bar…

Cruising Life
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Winners of Underwater Photographer of Year Awards

The Underwater Photographer of the Year organization just announced the winners of its annual worldwide competition. The British organization started the awards seven years ago. In 2020, before the pandemic, the competition drew 5,500 pictures from 500 photographers around the world. This year, because of travel restrictions, the entries were down a bit, with 4,200 images from photographers in 71 countries. Here’s a look at some of the winners: The picture at top, Sunset Ray, was taken by Andy Schmid, a Swiss photographer. It won second place in the wide-angle category. The overall winner was Rafael Fernandez Caballero’s shot, Dancing…

Cruising Life
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Lazzarini’s Latest: 65-Foot Royal Alpha One

You can’t say that Pierpaolo Lazzarini, 40, the head of the Lazzarini Design Studio in Rome, doesn’t have an active imagination. Indeed, in the past few years he’s designed yachts that like Ferraris, like airplanes, and one unlike anything else because it had a hole in the middle. The one thing these projects had in common is that none of them ever got off the ground. The only Lazzarini yacht design that has been built is the egg-shaped Jet Capsule. Now, Lazzarini has taken that basic concept to its logical conclusion (for him): A futuristic 65-foot, $4 million Royal Alpha…

Boat Reviews
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Helmsman 37 Sedan: An Affordable Cruiser

The Helmsman 37 Sedan is an affordable single-diesel, comfortable trawler with everything you need for a liveaboard or coastal cruiser. It comes with one or two cabins, and you also can use the second cabin as an onboard office. The Helmsman fleet ranges from 31 to 54 feet. The 37 is a slightly simpler version of the popular 38 Pilothouse model. Standard power is one 250-hp Cummins diesel; the boat comes with both bow and stern thrusters to make maneuvering easy around a dock. Helmsmen are built in Fuzhou, China, and are designed for owners who want a quality cruising…

Boat Reviews
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Grand Banks 85 To Debut at Palm Beach Show

Grand Banks will introduce its new 85 flagship at the Palm Beach show, starting March 24. The 85, with three times the volume of the popular Grand Banks 60, will be available for private viewing. Like the Grand Banks 60 and the 54, the new 85 has the company’s patented V-Warp, semi-displacement hull that results in a highly efficient performance that leaves only minimal wake behind. Powered by twin 1,000-hp Volvo IPS1350 pod drives and carrying 2,650 gallons of fuel, the 85 has a range of 1,000 nm at 21 knots. Hull number one of the 85 has three large…

Cruising Life
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Faulty Assumption Caused Collision: NTSB

A faulty assumption and poor communication resulted in a collision between an offshore supply vessel and a Coast Guard cutter on October, 2020, in the Sabine Pass between Texas and Louisiana, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Actually, the supply vessel managed to hit the cutter twice. The NTSB just issued its report after investigating the accident, basically saying the captain of the supply vessel made an incorrect assumption about the location of the cutter and the buoy it was working on that caused the first collision, and then both captains were involved in a lack of communication that…

Cruising Life
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Oligarchs Saying Do Svidaniya to Yachts

The U.S. and many European nations are seizing Russian oligarchs’ megayachts as part of the sanctions imposed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So far, authorities have seized (or tried to seize) oligarchs’ yachts in France, Italy and Germany, among other places. They are acting under both European Union and American sanctions. Addressing the oligarchs in his State of the Union speech, President Biden said “We are joining our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-gotten gains.” The French Customs Service made one of the first seizures,…

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