Cruising Life

Starlink Offers Fast Internet to Yachts

By Peter Janssen on December 5, 2022 Cruising Life, Electronics

You now can have fast, reliable internet service to your yacht, thanks to Starlink, a new service from SpaceX. With download speeds up to 350 Mbps, it’s very fast. Right now it’s transatlantic, but it plans to offer full global coverage next year. Starlink now has 3,177 satellites in the sky, thanks to its SpaceX connection, and they fly on a scheduled pattern, meaning that some parts of the Earth are less visited than others. Since it started its launch operations in 2019, Starlink has completed 66 launches, and the company says it plans to continue launching “at an ambitious…

U.S. Sea Levels Will Rise a Foot by 2050: NASA

By Peter Janssen on December 4, 2022 Cruising Life

Sea levels along the coasts of the contiguous United States will probably rise a foot by 2050, according to a new study by NASA. The increase will be worse than previous estimates had predicted. The rising sea levels will cause increased flooding for millions of Americans living near the coasts, NASA said. (The picture above shows a flooded road in Norfolk, Virginia.) To determine the new predictions, NASA researchers on a Sea Level Change Team examined decades of satellite observations. They wanted to sharpen predictions for coastal communities that can be hit by both catastrophic and nuisance flooding in years…

Rogue Wave Kills Woman on Cruise Liner

By Peter Janssen on December 3, 2022 Cruising Life

A rogue wave hit a new Polar Class ocean liner on Tuesday off the southern tip of South America, killing one passenger and injuring four more. A passenger said the impact with the wave was so strong that she wondered if the ship had hit an iceberg. Suzie Gooding, the passenger, told WRAL News in Raleigh, North Carolina, “Everything was fine until the rogue wave hit, and it was sudden, shocking. We didn’t know if we should get our gear ready for abandoning ship.” The ship, the Viking Polaris, had been on an Antarctic cruise and was sailing back to…

New Sea.ai Collision-Avoidance System

By Peter Janssen on November 30, 2022 Cruising Life, Electronics

The world of long-range, anti-collision systems is growing and becoming more organized and high-tech. Oscar AI, one of the leaders in the field, is consolidating its various business units around the world and rebranding as Sea.ai, using artificial intelligence to detect and identify floating objects and then alert the boat’s crew in real time about any potential danger. The Oscar system was founded in 2018, originally for blue-water sailboat and ocean-racing use. It was based in the U.S., Austria, France and Portugal, and used several names, including BSB Artificial Intelligence and BSB Marine for its various branches. Now, all those…

New Electric Cat with Holes in Bow

By Peter Janssen on November 30, 2022 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Most of us don’t want to put a hole in our boats, much less two of them. But that’s exactly what Sebastiano Canto, a very creative London-based designer, has done with his new 21-foot, all-electric catamaran named Enea. “The main feature is the combination between aesthetics and functionality,” Canto writes, with “a very original hull design” that reduces weight and lateral resistance without compromising the cat’s seakeeping ability. “Less weight and less water resistance equal greater efficiency,” he says. All that adds up to smaller engines to move the boat. Enea is powered by two Yamaha Harmo 3.4kW electric engines,…

Navis Pro 34: A Rugged New Cruiser

By Peter Janssen on November 30, 2022 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The Navis Pro 34 Alpha Cruiser is a new boat from a new company based in Lithuania, and it’s a sturdy vessel meant to tackle the waters of the Baltic, where sea conditions often range from bad to terrible. Navis Pro was started in 2020 by owners who had spent 40 years in the commercial shipbuilding business and wanted to enter the recreational boating market. The 34 Alpha Cruiser is the result. It was designed by naval architects from Strahlmann Yacht Design in Finland, where the sea conditions also can be fairly gnarly. The Navis Pro 34 Alpha has an…

All-New, High-Style, Electric Runabout from Italy

By Peter Janssen on November 29, 2022 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Persico Marine and Zagato, the Italian automotive design house, just announced that they’re building a Persico Zagato 100.2 all-electric, limited-edition runabout with a state-of-the-art pod drive. The new boat will be 26 feet long and weigh just 5,511 pounds, since it’s built with advanced composites. It could fit on a trailer, although you probably won’t see many at your local launch ramp. It was unveiled at a video presentation at Zagato’s Milan headquarters, where Andrea Zagato, the company’s CEO, said, “The project started from a shared concept: the idea that the boat should be a collector’s item,” and it would…

SILENT Launches New All-Electric Tender

By Peter Janssen on November 28, 2022 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

SILENT-YACHTS, the innovative Austrian company, just launched its first all-electric, 13-foot Tender 400, the start of a new series to serve the company’s solar-powered catamarans and anyone who wants a tender that’s totally quiet and leaves no carbon footprint behind. The Tender 400 is designed to the same standard as the company’s 60- and 80-foot catamarans, and is meant to be light, fast, and silent, just like the motherships. It can be connected directly to the larger yachts for recharging. The tender comes with either electric outboard or electric waterjet drive propulsion with up to 30kW of power and a…

New Ocean Sport 30 with Outboard Power

By Peter Janssen on November 28, 2022 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The new outboard-powered Ocean Sport 30, from the makers of Nordic Tugs, is a no-frills, ocean-going boat with a turn of speed and long legs with some hard-to-categorize appeal. The Ocean Sport 30 was originally launched with sterndrives until Nordic beefed up the transom and introduced it with twin 350-hp Mercury Verado outboards. It also was meant as an offshore fishing machine. To my mind, at least, it now could serve just as well as an adventure boat or even a couple’s cruising boat. It has a standard V-berth forward to sleep two adults, a convertible dinette opposite the helm…

VisionF Building Wide-Beamed 60-Foot Cat

By Peter Janssen on November 28, 2022 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

VisionF Yachts, the relatively new Turkish builder, just announced that they’re working on a new VisionF60 catamaran, designed in house and built of fiberglass. VisionF was started in 2019 and launched its first boat, the VisionF 80 cat, in November, 2020 with an aluminum hull. The new 60 has the same clean, sporty lines as the original, and carries its 33-foot beam all the way from the bow to the stern, creating supersized living and entertaining spaces on the main deck and even up on the flybridge. The company says the 60 has a draft of just 2’ 1”, fully…

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