Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Navy Ends Bread-and-Water Punishment: No More Flogging, Either

Good news for sailors: The Navy just ended its punishment of bread and water, dating back to the 19th Century, on January 1. Under the punishment, sailors could be confined to the brig and fed only bread and water for a period of time; it was considered a more humane treatment than flogging. Congress outlawed flogging on U.S. ships in 1862, but Navy captains could impose the bread-and-water punishment for up to 30 days at a time, and sailors could be shackled in the brig. In 1909, that period was reduced to seven days and shackles were banned; by 1951 it…

Cruising Life
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2018: A Bad Year for Manatees in Florida and Whales off California

Last year was a bad time for manatees in Florida and whales off California, with an increasing number of boat-related manatee deaths and more whales entangled in fishing nets and lines. In Florida, 2018 saw the second-highest number of manatee deaths ever. Indeed, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) reported that more than 800 manatees died in 2018, a 50 percent increase over the previous year. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission said it was the highest number of deaths in any year except 2013, with 818, a year with a long cold spell. More than a quarter…

Cruising Life
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French Adventurer Trying To Cross Atlantic in a Big Orange Barrel

Please don’t try this yourself, but you’ve got to give a lot of credit for courage and an adventuresome spirit to Jean-Jacques Savin, a 71-year-old former French paratrooper, who’s now trying to cross the Atlantic in a big orange plywood barrel, propelled only by the ocean currents that he hopes will carry him to the Caribbean. “I have the soul of a sportsman and am using my retirement to set myself a number of challenges,” he told The Telegraph, just before he shoved off from El Hierro in the Canaries. Savin has already sailed across the Atlantic a few times,…

Boat Reviews
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New Ocean-Crossing Leopard 51 PC: A Big, Fast, Family Cruiser or Charter Boat

A seakindly, large, long-range cruising boat, the new Leopard 51 PC comes in either a three- or four-cabin configuration, and is designed for either private or charter use. In either configuration, the Leopard 51, which is delivered on its own bottom from the Robertson & Caine yard in Cape Town, South Africa, is a fuel-efficient family cruiser with a nice turn of speed and enough interior volume to make a long cruise or charter enjoyable and comfortable. Designed by the Dutch firm of Simonis Voogd, the Leopard 51, with a beam of more than 25 feet, provides a stable platform…

Cruising Life
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A Climate Crisis in the Galapagos Starts To Change Life There

Climate change, a combination of warming ocean water and the storms caused by El Niño, is threatening the unique sea and land life in the Galápagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. As a result, life on the Galápagos is changing, often in ways that have not been seen before. The Galápagos, which lie 846 miles west of Ecuador, are at the intersection of three major ocean currents. They also are in the cross hairs of El Niño , one of the world’s most destructive patterns, which causes rapid and extreme ocean heating across the tropics…

Boat Reviews
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Greenline Launching New 48 Coupe with Solar, Hybrid or Diesel Power

Greenline Yachts, the Slovenia builder that’s at the forefront of the electric- and hybrid- power revolution, is launching a new Greenline 48 Coupe at the Düsseldorf show in January; it will be introduced to the U.S. at the Miami show in February. The 48 Coupe is modeled after the company’s 48 Flybridge model, and comes after customers said they wanted a large coupe-style boat. Because of its coupe configuration, the new 48 has an array of 2.4kW solar  panels on its cabintop, providing the equivalent power of a small generator running all the time. The solar panels provide enough power…

Boat Reviews
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Front Street Shipyard Building Tough New Sea Blade X with Revolutionary Hull

This wicked-looking 36-foot center console with a revolutionary hull design is now under construction at the Front Street Shipyard in Belfast, Maine. The new SBX36, hull number one of the new Sea Blade X line from Navatek Ltd. of Honolulu, will be ready for sea trials in the spring. The Sea Blade X hull is built of fiberglass with a foam core; the boat has a T-Top and an inflatable Hypalon perimeter tube. The stepped V bottom hull, with outer sponsons for stability, was originally designed for the military, and is being used by law enforcement in Hawaii. The boat…

Cruising Life
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Cape Breton Lobster Boat Captain Granted Full Parole in Bizarre Killing of a Fisherman He Thought Was Cutting His Traps

A Cape Breton lobster boat captain has just been granted full parole in the bizarre murder of another fisherman who he thought was cutting his traps five years ago. The captain, Dwayne Samson, 48, had been convicted of manslaughter and was given an almost ten-year sentence three years ago for the death of Philip Boudreau, 43. Samson, who had been described as “a model inmate and excellent worker” in prison, is now a free man. Here’s the full story, according to the court’s statement of facts, as reported on the Cape Breton Post: At 5 a.m. on June 1, 2013, Samson…

Cruising Life
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Florida’s Red Tide Killing Stone Crab Business. Crabbers Going Out of Business. Joe’s Stone Crabs Changes Its Menu

You know the toxic red tide in south Florida is serious when Joe’s Stone Crabs, the world-famous seafood restaurant in Miami Beach, starts to run out of stone crabs. But the stone-crab crisis is indeed serious, and it’s decimating the stone-crab fishing industry. “This is about the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Rick Collins, 69 and an Everglades City crabber for more than 50 years, told The New York Times. Until this year, he usually caught 400 pounds of stone crabs a day. One day recently he offloaded 73 pounds, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can stay…

Cruising Life
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FLIR Launches New Raymarine Element, A Combo GPS and Sonar with Lifelike Images

FLIR has just introduced the Raymarine Element, a new, highly advanced generation of combined sonar and GPS displays. Element uses new sonar technology to provide lifelike images for fishing or navigating the bottom, with versatile mapping capabilities of its own on a user-friendly display. The new Element builds on Raymarine’s prize-winning Axiom navigation displays. It uses new patent-pending RealVision 3D sonar technology and new 3D bottom imagery to show a more precise location of fish and structural targets on the bottom. It also incorporates new patent-pending HyperVision 1.2 megahertz sonar technology with ultra-high Compressed High Intensity Radar Pulse (CHIP) sonar…

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