Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Iconic Bimini Big Game Club Opens Again

The Big Game Club in Bimini just reopened, one of the most iconic cruising, fishing and diving destinations in the Bahamas, and reachable from South Florida in five or six hours on a trawler, or about two hours on a fast boat. Take a Magnum or an Intrepid, and you can be at the Big Game Club for a relaxed lunch and get back at your dock at Turnberry or Fisher Island long before evening cocktails. (Although all the Big Game Club’s facilities – the marina, restaurants and resort – are now open, you have to abide by the Bahamas’…

Boat Reviews
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New Princess V78: Light-Filled Luxury Cruiser

Princess Yachts has launched its new V78, a contemporary, light-filled family express cruiser that’s designed for an owner-operator and reaches speeds in the mid-30-knot range powered by twin 1,900-hp MAN diesels. The flagship of Princess’ V series of yachts, the new 78 has four staterooms, all with en suite heads, on its lower accommodations deck. The full-beam, midships master is reached by a private staircase from the salon. The salon is filled with natural light all around. The side windows are almost four feet high, and the electric sun roof opens far enough to expose about half the main deck.…

Cruising Life
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Dive Boat Captain Indicted in 34 Deaths

Federal prosecutors just indicted the captain of the dive boat that caught fire last year off the Southern California coast on 34 counts of manslaughter. The captain, Jerry Boylan, 67, is expected to turn himself in to authorities within the next few weeks. A fast-moving fire broke out at night on the 75-foot dive boat Conception on Sept. 2, 2019, Labor Day Weekend, when it was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara. The boat was on a three-day chartered dive trip, with 33 passengers and six crew on board. All the passengers, and one crew…

Cruising Life
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New Study: Megalodon Sharks Grew to 60 Feet

If you think today’s great white sharks are bad news, consider the Megalodon shark (above). It lived from 23 to 3 million years ago, and some were as big as 60 feet long and weighed 100 tons. By comparison, Nukumi, the largest great white ever tagged by OCEARCH, the shark research organization, was 17’ 2” long and weighed 3,541 pounds. In recent studies, scientists have learned much more about the Megalodon, particularly after finding fossils in nurseries in northeast Spain. Researchers from the University of Bristol and Swansea University just published a new study, based on 25 Megalodon teeth they…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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The Shape of Things To Come?

By now, we all know that one of the fastest-growing trends in boat design in the past few years has been the expansion of usable space on board, particularly in cockpits, swim platforms, and the aft ends of recreational boats. The trend started in megayachts and now has worked its way down to 30- and 40-foot production cruising boats. The idea is to create extra space, and to erase (or at least camouflage) the distinction between the interior and the exterior areas of the boat. We now have “beach clubs” where the transom opens up to a new indoor/outdoor cabin…

Cruising Life
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Panama Posse, with 153 Boats, Starting in Mexico

The popular seven-month, 4,500 nm Panama Posse, a no-schedule, multi-route cruising odyssey from Mexico to Florida, kicks off this week from Barra de Navidad, Mexico. The rally was started in 2017 to promote safe cruising and to help boats navigate the Pacific Coast through the Panama Canal and up to Florida at the start of the cruising season. The first year the rally attracted 83 boats; the second year, 123 boats, and last year it had 178 boats. This year, with many cruisers worried about traveling during the pandemic, 153 boats have signed up. Initially, the rally was almost entirely…

Cruising Life
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Dramatic Video Shows Spanish Police Chasing Drug Smugglers

The Spanish police arrested five alleged smugglers after a five-hour, 100-nm chase in the Med, taking dramatic video pictures from their helicopter as the men tried to escape, throwing cubes of a white substance, thought to be hashish, into the sea. You can see the video below. “Do you want to see what the chase on the  high seas was like?” the police asked in releasing the video. “More than five hours and 100 nautical miles.” The chase started when the National Police in their helicopter saw a 45-foot speedboat, with twin 300-hp outboards, about 80 nm off the coast…

Cruising Life
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Missing Boater Rescued 86 Miles Off Florida Coast

Stuart Bee, 63, is a lucky man. He was rescued, clinging to his sinking 34-foot Sea Ray, about 86 miles offshore on Sunday morning, almost two days after he left his marina in  Port Canaveral, Florida. Here’s the story from the Coast Guard: Bee left Cape Marina in Port Canaveral about 4 on Friday afternoon. When he didn’t return Friday night, his family raised the alarm, since he usually didn’t spend the night on the water. The Coast Guard said it got a call at 11:40 on Saturday morning from someone at the marina, also saying Bee was overdue. The…

Cruising Life
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New Folding Electric Bike Goes 20 mph

Here’s a new high-tech, folding, electric-powered bike that could fit in your lazarette of your boat and then give you a comfortable ride on shore. It has a top speed of 20 mph and a range of about 50 miles on a single charge. The new bike is the Gocycle GXi, just named one of Time’s 100 Best Inventions for 2020, and in ten seconds it folds into a package that’s about two feet high and 14 inches wide. With a frame made from injection-molded magnesium alloy, the Gocycle GXi weighs just 38.6 pounds, and it can carry a load…

Boat Reviews
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Silent Yachts Building New Solar/Electric Cat with VW

Silent Yachts just announced that is working with Volkswagen to develop a new solar/electric catamaran with the electric power coming from VW’s modular electric drive matrix. The still-unnamed cat is being designed by Cupra, a high-performance brand of the Spanish car manufacturer Seat, which is owned by Volkswagen. The new cat will run on Silent’s own photovoltaic system, with the propulsion based on VW’s electric drive system. VW originally designed that system to deliver power from a bank of batteries integrated into a car’s chassis to the car’s rear axle, and later to all four wheels. VW subsequently made the…

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