Author Peter Janssen

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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Our 200th Issue! Plus, Trends 2020

Welcome to the 200th edition of Cruising Odyssey, the weekly digital newsletter that celebrates the idea of living the dream under power. Two hundred weeks. Who’d have thought? Well, when we (George Day, our publisher; Scott Akerman, our ad director, and me as editor) started this enterprise, we never really had a longevity discussion. We hoped Cruising Odyssey, the newsletter and the associated website, would catch on, but we never really considered a timeline for that. As things turned out, we hit a nerve –  the right idea at the right time. The growing power cruising audience was more than…

Cruising Life
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Expedition Yacht Cruises 500 Miles Through Arctic

Pioneer, a 151-foot-long expedition yacht with a rich history, just cruised 500 nautical miles through the Canadian Arctic for ten days, a voyage filled with icebergs, narwhals, whales, walruses, bears, and potential peril at every turn. The trip took the boat, designed by Vripack and built by Palmer Johnson in 1996, through the Canadian province of Nunavut, which is the size of western Europe but with only 29,000 people. The voyage started at the top of Baffin Island, basically across from Greenland and the start of the Northwest Passage, and then continued around glaciers and icebergs past Devon Island,…

Charter
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New Discounts on Luxury Barge Cruises in Scottish Highlands

Here’s a way to get away from it all: Charter a luxury hotel barge for a cruise through the Scottish Highlands. European Waterways, the largest hotel barging company in Europe, can help you with that. It runs two vessels, the Scottish Highlander (pictured above), which holds eight passengers, and the Spirit of Scotland, which holds 12. They both cruise through Scotland’s iconic Caledonian Canal and other areas of the Highlands with stops along the way for everything from golf to touring medieval castles to tastings at a whisky distillery. Because of the pandemic and people’s changing travel plans, European Waterways…

Cruising Life
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Williams Gives More Power to Its Minijet 280 Tender

William Jet Tenders just announced that it’s giving more power to its new Minijet 280 tenders, which are designed for boats from 40 feet and up, although they’re fun as a second boat or sport boat in their own right. Starting with the 2021 models, all Minijet 280s will be powered by a 60-hp BRP Rotax engine; previous models have been powered by 45- and 50-hp engines. Top speed with the 50-hp version was 38 mph. Williams also has upgrade kits for existing owners of Minijets who want to move up to the 60-hp version. The move to extra horsepower…

Boat Reviews
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New Lazzara LSX 85: Extra Space Everywhere

You’ve got to admit that the new Lazzara LSX 85 makes a creative use of space. It’s a big yacht to begin with – 84’ 6” LOA – but then the bulwarks fold out of the aft deck, the transom folds down into a beach club, a side door drops down from the galley for a private dining area, and gull wings (think Mercedes 300 SL) open out of the salon. Then there’s the performance. Lazzara has put three 1,000-hp Volvo IPS1350 pod drives in the new sport cruiser, giving it a top speed of 40 knots, not bad for…

Cruising Life
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Trends 2020: Solar, Electric, and Hybrid Cruising Boats

To some degree, the future of cruising is tied to the future of alternative energy – of electric, solar, and even hydrogen power or, more likely, some hybrid combination of all three. The movement toward alternative fuel is one result of the worldwide green movement, of the desire to move away from fossil fuel, to address climate change, to adopt new and renewable energy sources. And the advantages of electric- and solar-powered boats are obvious to anyone who’s cruised on them: They have no noise, no smoke, no pollution, no (or very little) vibration, and they leave behind no carbon…

Boat Reviews
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Hylas Launches New 31-Knot, 49-Foot Power Cruiser

Hylas Yachts has just launched its new M49, a two-cabin, two-head cruiser with a low  profile, a seakindly hull, and a 31-knot top speed. The company said it built the 49 as the request of owners of its 44 who wanted a larger boat. The third cruiser in the Hylas power fleet is a 58. Hylas has a worldwide reputation for building high-quality sailing yachts. It turned to Dan Salthouse, the New Zealand designer, to build the new 49 power yacht based on his successful design of the 44. Hylas boats are built by Queen Long in Taiwan. The 49…

Cruising Life
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Trends 2020: Ten Top Power Cats

All of a sudden, it seems, power catamarans are taking center stage in the U.S. cruising community. You now see them almost everywhere, and more and more people are talking about them at boat shows, on blogs, and on the docks. It’s easy to see why. Most obvious, is that power cats offer space – a lot of it. The salons resemble living rooms at home, with all the comforts of home. The decks are filled with lounging, dining, entertaining and private areas everywhere – on the foredeck, the aft deck, up on the flybridge, often even down in the…

Cruising Life
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Trends 2020: More Cruising Boats with Outboard Power

Perhaps the strongest trend in recent years has been the rapid growth of outboard power on cruising boats, even on some of the most traditional brands. The reasons are easy to understand, and they start with performance. Outboard boats are fun, they’re fast and agile, and they’re easy to drive and park. Outboards also are easier to repair, maintain, and ultimately replace, if necessary, than traditional inboards are, and they open up a lot of space inside the boat where inboards used to be. And you don’t  have to worry about a lot of through-hulls, shafts, and struts. The HCB…

Cruising Life
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Woman Thrown Into Air by Explosion at Fuel Dock

Here are some astonishing pictures of a woman being thrown into the air and then into the water in an explosion at a fuel dock in Porto di Ponza, Italy. Incredibly, she was not injured; neither were her husband and his daughter, who jumped off the burning boat into the water, or the fuel dock attendant who was blown off the dock. The pictures come from a security camera at the dock via The Daily Mail. You also can see a video of the explosion in the link below. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8673917/Woman-thrown-air-sea-violent-explosion-motorboat-Italy.html

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