Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Three Sailors Leave Anchored Ship for a Night of Drinking on Shore, End Up Next Day on a Rocky Island

If you’ve ever had a hard time finding your boat in a mooring field after a late dinner or a night out, and you realize all the anchor lights look the same – or worse yet, you don’t see any anchor lights  at all – you can relate to this story. Three men left their boat, the Russian cargo ship Alana Evita, anchored in the Bristol Channel in South West England, for a night of drinking on shore. They took the ship’s 13-foot RIB eight miles to the waterfront town of Barry. They left the bar there at 3:45 to…

Cruising Life
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Florida Officials: Now that It’s Spring, Look Out for the Alligators (All 1.3 million of Them)

If you’re in Florida in the next few months, here’s a timely warning from the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: Look out for the alligators. They’re more active in warm, spring weather, and their mating season is from April to June. The state has 1.3 million alligators, so you could easily come across them near lakes, ponds, rivers, golf courses, or just about anywhere else they want to go. Indeed, a few days ago, a 12-foot-long gator weighing more than 700 pounds was caught while it was wandering around an office park near Jupiter. The Fish and Wildlife people…

Cruising Life
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New FMC GlobalSat Provides Connectivity Worldwide with Cost-Effective Subscription Service

Here’s a new, easy, cost-effective way to stay connected almost anywhere in the world that was just unveiled at the Palm Beach International Boat Show. It’s a new subscription service by FMC GlobalSat that uses Kymeta’s flat-panel antenna for satellite communications. “We believe that our 4G solution can be a game-changer for private vessels that want full-time broadband connectivity,” Emmanuel Cotrel, the CEO of FMC GlobalSat, told me. “Our offering is self-contained and maintenance-free, has no moving parts, and it weighs less than 100 pounds.” FMC GlobalSat has just formed a partnership with Nauti-Tech to offer the service to the…

Cruising Life
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Northern Georgian Bay: A Path Less Traveled

Northern Georgian Bay on Lake Huron is a remote but rewarding cruising ground. It’s off the beaten path, which is part of its charm. But its natural beauty is another. Here’s a great story from Canadian Yachting about what you’ll find there: It’s like we’ve waved a magic wand and disappeared into a picture-perfect painting, our 28-foot Sea Ray a small maroon and cream dot plunged into the middle of an unraveling canvas of color. It’s a landscape where the only real interruptions to nature’s miracles are the navigation marks guiding a winding way through seemingly impenetrable rock scatterings. Welcome to…

Cruising Life
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Take This Boating Safety Quiz from the Coast Guard. Let’s Hope You Pass

How good is your memory? Do you remember all the basics, and the nuances, of the rules of the road from your Power Squadrons or Coast Guard boating courses a few years ago? Now that the spring boating season is here, it never hurts to brush up, to give all those brain cells a refresher course. Here are some questions about basic boating safety from the U.S. Coast Guard. See how you do. (You’ll have to click below for the answers.) 1.You’ve left the dock well before dawn on an offshore trip to fish the canyons. It’s still dark, but…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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New Zurn 60 Powercat, Filled with Light, Space and Innovation

With his new Zurn 60 Powercat, Doug Zurn has definitely stepped out of the box – again. There’s a lot going on in this boat, originally designed for an experienced ocean-cruising owner, from its innovative layout to its 23-knot top speed, but the main themes are privacy, space and light. Ever since he drew the first Shelter Island Runabout two decades ago, Zurn has designed low-profile, long-sheerline, Downeast-style boats with generous tumblehome, head-turning looks and head-snapping performance. Bob Johnstone saw that boat and had Zurn design the first MJM, a 34z (the “z,” of course, is for Zurn), in 2003.…

Cruising Life
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Sign Up Now for CUBAR Rally Next Fall from San Diego to La Paz, Mexico

Planning for next fall’s CUBAR rally, 910 nm from San Diego to La Paz, Mexico, is well underway, with a kickoff dinner on May 18 at the San Diego Yacht Club. The rally, which is open to powerboats with a minimum range of 450 nm at 8.5 knots, is one of the major events on the West Coast every two years, and includes shore parties, overnight cruises, fishing, kayaking, dinghy explorations and all the fun and challenges involved in blue-water cruising. This year’s rally starts on Nov. 4 and is expected to end in La Paz on Nov. 20, with…

Cruising Life
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New Belize 66 Sedan: Low-Profile Luxury in a Boutique Brand

The low-slung, high-end Riviera Belize 66 Sedan, with its singular looks, is now being featured at the Palm Beach International Boat Show. Belize is a boutique brand from Riviera, the large Australian builder with a 40-year history of making solid, well-performing blue-water boats. Powered by twin 1,000-hp Volvo IPS pod drives, the Belize 66 tops out at about 33 knots; dial back to 10 knots, and it has a range of more than 900 nm. Belize offers a greater level of customization than is possible in most Riviera models. The Belize 66 comes with three or four staterooms, three heads…

Cruising Life
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New Floating Bungalows: How To Downsize with a Boat/Home on the Water

Here’s something new: Floating Bungalows, built to ABYC standards, complete with a hull number and 550-square feet of living space. They cost only $225,000. Floating Bungalows are the brainchild of Warren and Cynthia Billings, who sold their large house in New Hampshire a few years ago to move to warmer weather and all-year water access in Florida. They also wanted to downsize. Once they got there, however, they suffered severe sticker shock at prices for homes on the water, even small homes on the water. So they started to design something themselves. It had to be on the water, small,…

Cruising Life
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Lyman-Morse Starts Building New, Creative, 39-Knot, Hood 57 Downeast Cruiser

The new, high-performing Hood 57, a Downeast boat with creative input from many directions, is now under construction at the Lyman-Morse yard in Thomaston, Maine. Powered by twin Volvo IPS1350 pod drives, Volvo’s most powerful, it is expected to top out at 39 knots when it is launched in 2020. The new Hood 57 has an unusual history. It is being built for a New England owner who came to Chris Hood, the head of C.W. Hood Yachts in Marblehead, Mass., to repower his 24-foot boat. They ended up talking about a much larger boat, as in 50-feet plus. Hood…

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