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Cruising Life
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New Holiday Gifts for Safe Boating from BoatUS

It’s that time of the year again. What to give your favorite boat owner, or crew? Here are some great ideas about holiday gifts that will keep everyone on board safe for years to come.  ANNAPOLIS, Md., Nov. 12, 2021 – Bulky, square orange life vests have given way to more comfortable belt- or harness-style inflatable floatation devices, yet many recreational boaters still carry only the former aboard. Are boaters up-to-date on today’s newest technology-inspired boating safety gear? With the holidays around the corner, the nonprofit BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water offers a buying guide for technology…

Cruising Life
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End of the Season in “Stormy Sitka”

For the past few years, we’ve been following John and Kathy Youngblood as they’ve cruised around Alaska on their 2004 Selene 54 Mystic Moon. They previously cruised more than 35,000 nm on Mystic Moon in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Now they’ve posted their latest blog, about their fall cruise out of Sitka, or “Stormy Sitka” as John calls it (see Mystic Moon at the dock there in the picture above).   Of the 16 days they were in Sitka, John writes, they had two days of partial sun, while it rained the rest of the time and every few…

Cruising Life
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NOAA: La Nina Coming Again. More Hurricanes

NOAA is predicting a second winter influenced by La Niña in the Pacific, leading to drought in the southern  U.S. and heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest. It also means a more severe Atlantic hurricane season. Read the NOAA story here: A La Nina has developed and will extend through the second winter in a row, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center — a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service. La Nina is a natural ocean-atmospheric phenomenon marked by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator and is translated from Spanish…

Cruising Life
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Anatomy of a Disaster in Pictures

Here’s a great recap by gCaptain of the wreck of the container ship Rena that hit a reef off New Zealand and eventually broke apart in that country’s worst maritime disaster: The MV Rena was traveling at a speed of 17 knots when it grounded on Astrolabe Reef off the coast of New Zealand on October 5, 2011, during a voyage from Napier to port of Tauranga. At the time, the ship was carrying over 1,300 containers and 1,733 tonnes of heavy fuel. What resulted became the country’s worst maritime disaster which took years to clean-up. Investigators eventually found that it was…

Cruising Life
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Harbor Pilots: High Pay, Higher Risks

Here’s a great story about harbor pilots, their risks and their jobs, from Business Insider: The average harbor pilot at the Port of Los Angeles makes $434,000 a year, but also faces a one in 20 chance of dying on the job, according to a new book out Tuesday from The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims. The book, “Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door — Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy,” breaks down the complicated dance that brings a shipment from Asia to US buyers in a matter of days. Harbor pilots are some of…

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Winterizing Facts & Myths from BoatUS

SPRINGFIELD, Va., Sept. 27, 2021 – Recreational boat owners are preparing their boats for a long winter’s nap, but sugarplums aren’t dancing in their heads. What may keep them up at night is hoping cold temperatures won’t damage their boats. Freshwater expands in volume by about 9% when it freezes and can push outward with a force of tens of thousands of pounds per square inch, cracking engine blocks, damaging fiberglass, splitting hoses and waterlines, and destroying refrigeration systems. Boat Owners Association of The United States’ (BoatUS) marine insurance provider, GEICO, shares that boaters often don’t become aware of the…

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The Moorings Reopens Charters in the Abacos

The Moorings just announced that its is starting power catamaran charters in the Abacos, one of the best cruising destinations in the world, on December 1. Two years ago, Hurricane Dorian devastated the low-lying islands, the marinas and the charter fleets there. But now The Moorings will start power charters from their marina in Marsh Harbour, while sail charters are scheduled to start in April. Here’s more from The Moorings: Resting in the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast of Florida, the Bahamas have become a sought-after destination for travelers seeking an intimate paradise. The chain of more than 700 islands,…

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Top Ten Boating Towns from BoatUS

Here’s a list of the top ten boating towns from BoatUS Magazine. You may not agree with them, or you may have favorites of your own, but it’s fun to see which towns made the list. Spoiler alert; the picture above is of the Cape Ann Marina in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Read on: SPRINGFIELD, Va., August 30, 2021 – With many wage earners now freed from the daily commute, which towns might score high in the eyes of recreational boat owners looking to relocate? In the just-released September/October 2021 issue of BoatUS Magazine, Contributing Editors Fiona McGlynn and Tim Murphy offer plenty…

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For Some New York Liveaboards, the Party’s Over

The party may be over for a  group of liveaboards on Newtown Creek, a now toxic piece of waterway between Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. The federal government declared it a Superfund site in 2010, and about 13 million gallons of oil have been removed since then. Now the cleanup may go at a faster pace. But the 130-foot Schamonchi, a former ferryboat operating between Martha’s Vineyard and New Bedford, Massachusetts, is still there, as are a handful, or more, of other boats, with liveaboard owners. There’s no marina. The city owns the land, and they don’t pay…

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Candela Unveils New Electric Drive With Long Life

Candela, the Swedish boat builder, just unveiled its revolutionary new electric C-Pod drive unit with two motors, each one driving a counterrotating propeller. The company says this electric drive will have “an almost unlimited life.” In this story, Electrek says the drive is “an engineering work of art.” Read about it here: Swedish electric boat manufacturer Candela has just unveiled a revolutionary new electric drive unit known as the C-Pod for its premium electric boats, and it’s an engineering work of art. Candela claims that these are the highest-efficiency and longest-lasting boat motors ever. The company’s patented C-Pod consists of…

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