Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Elegant New Avionics Electric Bike Hits 36 mph

You probably won’t want to throw the new Avionics electric bike in your lazarette, or take it on the Great Loop. But it sure would be fun to ride down to your local marina or yacht club. The elegant Avionics VM, handmade in Poland in a vintage retro style, combines a steel frame with Jatoba wood for contrast, and it uses state-of-the-art electric power to hit a top speed of 36 mph. A sine-wave controller lets you choose a “force mode” for maximum speed, or a “street mode” for a walk-in-the-park experience. In the street mode, the Avionics has a…

Cruising Life
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New Safety Measures Proposed for Northwest Passage

I’ve been following boating traffic on the harrowing Northwest Passage ever since my friend Sprague Theobald cruised 8,500 miles from Newport, Rhode Island, to Seattle, on his Nordhavn 57 Bagan in 2009 (see photo above). Theobald, an award-winning documentary film maker, wrote about that trip in his gripping book, The Other Side of the Ice. His crew included his son, stepson and stepdaughter. At one point, when Bagan was trapped in ice that threatened to crush the hull, Theobald asked himself, “Have I brought my family together only to lead them to their deaths?” Since then, with global warming and…

Cruising Life
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Hodgdon Building Two New Electric-Powered Tenders

Hodgdon, the historic Maine builder, just announced that it’s building new all-electric tenders, on the same hull as its diesel-powered 10.5-meter and 12-meter Venetian line of luxury tenders. The new tenders will use Vita Power’s high-performance powertrains with dual-prop stern drives. The 10.5-meter (about 34 feet) will use a single electric motor and three Lithium-ion batteries. The 12-meter (abut 39 feet) will have twin motors and four batteries. The range for both boats is about 20 to 50 nm, depending on speed and sea conditions. The batteries on both boats can be charged from the mothership, using AC or DC…

Cruising Life
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Wind Farms Coming for New York Bight

The Biden administration just announced that it’s starting the process of selling leases to develop wind farms in the New York Bight area between Long Island and New Jersey. The Bight is a triangle in the ocean between Montauk Point at the end of Long Island and Cape May at the southern tip of New Jersey. A total of eight leases will be for sale there, in what the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (part of the Interior Department) calls “a priority offshore wind farm.” The area is about 14 miles off the coast of New York and 26 miles…

Cruising Life
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Whale Swallows Cape Cod Diver, Spits Him Out

A lobster diver in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was swallowed by a humpback whale recently but he survived with just minor injuries. “I was completely inside,” the lobsterman, Michael Packard, 56, told the Cape Cod Times. Packard, a veteran diver from Wellfleet, was on his second dive of the day just before 8 in the morning. He was working from the boat Ja’n J, off Herring Beach Cove. A fleet of other boats were fishing for striped bass nearby. A commercial lobster diver, Packard dove down. When he was about ten feet from the bottom, he said, “All of a sudden, I…

Cruising Life
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New Zealand Developing Hydrogen-Powered Chase Boats

Team New Zealand just gave a big boost to the development of hydrogen power in recreational boating when it announced it is developing hydrogen-powered foiling chase boats for the next America’s Cup campaign. For years, RIBs have been the standard chase boats for most America’s Cup campaigns. But now Team New Zealand is working with AFCryo, a Christchurch company, to develop a hydrogen chase boat. They just released renderings of a prototype, a radical foiling catamaran with four hydrogen tanks in each hull and electric motors built into the foils and rudder. The hydrogen-powered boats will be built at the…

Charter
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Luxury Canal Barges Starting Up Again in Europe

As parts of Europe are recovering from the Covid pandemic and starting to open up their borders, luxury hotel barges are resuming their voyages down the canals and waterways on the continent and the UK. European Waterways operates the largest fleet of canal barges. They usually hold no more than a dozen passengers, and they offer a slow, leisurely and immersive vacation through some of the most beautiful, and historic, countryside in Europe. The barges cruise at only 3 mph, often just feet from shore, and often cover just 70 miles on a six-night trip. That slow pace, say Derek…

Cruising Life
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Riva Making New 68 Based on Iconic Hull

Riva, the iconic Italian builder, just announced that it’s making a new 68 Diable, based on the classic Riva Super America hull. Riva, now part of the Ferretti Group, plans to launch the 68 Diable in September. With Riva’s unmistakable lines, the 68 Diable has three staterooms, all with en suite heads,  and a 40-knot top speed from optional 1,650-hp MAN diesels. Standard 1,550-hp MANs produce a cruising speed of 33 knots and a top speed of 37 knots, with a range of 260-nm. The new 68 Diable was drawn by Mauro Michell, the co-founder of Officina Italiana Design, with…

Cruising Life
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Back Cove Delivers 1,000th Yacht

I remember testing the very first Back Cove, a 29, in Biscayne Bay off Miami, in 2003 with Bentley Collins, the company’s vice president of marketing and sales. I was the editorial director of both Yachting and Motorboating then, and I wrote in my notebook, twice, the words “I like this boat.” So did a lot of other people. Indeed, Back Cove, the sister company to Sabre Yachts, just built its 1,000th boat, a 39O, and it was a long way from the original 29 that I liked so much. The 390 is the fastest and quietest Back Cove yet. Instead of…

Cruising Life
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Florida’s Manatees Dying in Record Numbers

Florida’s manatees are dying in record numbers, and it seems that some of them are malnourished and even starving. “If this continues through the rest of the year, this is going to be one of the highest mortality years ever,” said Jon Moore, a marine biologist at Florida Atlantic University. A new report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recorded 761 manatee deaths from January 1 to May 28, representing more than 10 percent of the entire manatee population, and more than the total number of deaths for all of last year. Scientists say the total deaths could…

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