Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Hobie Launches New Mirage Eclipse Pedalboard, Not Paddleboard, To Take You Farther, Faster

Hobie has been one of the most recognizable names in boating, ever since they started making sailing catamarans and surfboards in the ‘50s. And they’ve changed with the times, making increasingly popular paddleboards and SUPs for the past 20 years or so. That’s when they invented their MirageDrive, a propulsion system where you use your legs to drive fins under the boat. Here’s a story from The Manual about five new changes to Hobies’ lineup of boats and boards, but the one I like most is the Mirage Eclipse, a SUP with an improved MirageDrive that looks like a lot…

Cruising Life
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14 Best Bars and Watering Holes in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Don’t Miss the Frangi Fever

If you’re planning a cruise south, down the Caribbean to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, you might want to plan a stop at some of the best local watering holes and beach bars listed here by AFAR. Even if you’re not going that far, it’s always fun to live a little, even vicariously. Here are some pictures and writeups of 14 of the best bars and restaurants in that part of the world. AFAR says you don’t want to miss the famous Basil’s Beach Bar on Britannia Bay in Mustique or the great bars on Bequia. The Frangipani on Bequia…

Cruising Life
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Captain Cook’s Famed Discovery Ship Endeavour, Sunk During Revolution, Found in Newport Harbor

Back in August, 1768, British Navy Lieutenant James Cook left Plymouth, England, as the captain of HMS Endeavour, a 97’ 8” bark carrying a crew of 94 and 3,321 square yards of sail on a voyage of discovery. Cook, who was also a cartographer, was charged with cruising to the South Pacific to observe Venus crossing the sun and to find the continent then known as Terra Australis Incognita; we now know it simply as Australia. Cook made landfall in Tahiti in April, 1769, to record the Venus transit, and then went on to map New Zealand; he reached the east…

Cruising Life
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Irish Company Building Radical New 75-foot Boat for Transatlantic Speed Record

An Irish builder is starting work on a 75-foot James Bond-looking boat with four 650-hp Cat engines that is designed to set a new transatlantic speed record next summer. Frank Kowalski, the managing director of Safehaven Marine in Cork, says he hopes the boat, named Thunder Child 2, will make the crossing from St. John’s in Newfoundland to Killybegs in Ireland in less than four days. Kowalski and Safehaven already have established themselves at the front of radical offshore designs and speed records. Their 60-foot monohull, Thunder Child 1, made a record-breaking circumnavigation of Ireland last year. The design for…

Cruising Life
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Solar Impact Unveils Plans for 78-Foot, Ocean-Going, Solar-Powered Luxury Yacht

Solar Impact Yachts, a Swiss company, just unveiled its plans for what it calls the first ocean-going solar-powered yacht at the Cannes Yachting Festival. Solar Impact says the new 78-foot luxury aluminum yacht will be “almost self-sufficient” and could cruise indefinitely under solar power. If the sun doesn’t shine, the boat has a pair of 87-hp diesel engines as backup. An 800-kWh battery gives the boat ten hours of cruising capability, which can be extended by topping off the battery when the sun is shining. A giant solar array of 3,299 square feet covers most of the boat’s upward-facing surfaces,…

Boat Reviews
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New Sunreef 40 Luxury Power Cat Wins Second Award for Innovation

The innovative, creative and greatly expandable Sunreef 40 just won the award for the Best Power-Driven Catamaran at the World Yachts Trophies ceremony at Cannes during the yacht show there. The award recognized the Sunreef 40 Open Power Diamond Limited Edition as one of the best and most innovative yachts in the world. The Cannes award was the second for the Sunreef 40. It also won the award as the Best Recreational Boat Up To 45 Feet at the Asian Boating Awards during the Singapore Yacht Show in April. Sunreef introduced its first foiling cat at the Cannes show four  years…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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On Watch

Flag Flying Over Frying Pan Shoal Tower During Florence Becomes Popular Symbol of Resilience By Peter A. Janssen Here’s a story about how one tattered American flag, flying over a former Coast Guard lighthouse off the coast of North Carolina, became a symbol of resilience and renewal during storm Florence. The Frying Pan Shoals lighthouse was built in 1854, about 39 miles off Southport and 32 miles from Bald Head Island, at the southern end of the shoals there. So many boats had broken apart on the shoals that the area was named the Graveyard of the Atlantic. On a…

Boat Reviews
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New, All-Electric, Foiling Sea Bubble Is Built to Beat Traffic. See It In Action in Paris

Now being tested in the Seine in Paris, the all-electric Sea Bubble, a 16-foot, all-electric hydrofoil, could be the water taxi of the future. In other permutations, it also could take you around your harbor or lake, or simply give you a new, cool, eco-friendly vessel. The founders of Sea Bubble say you should think of it as “a James Bond car, available for everybody, but with zero waves, zero noise, zero CO2 emissions.” Designed by Alain Thébault, who also designed the record-setting 50-knot-plus Hydroptère, a sailing hydrofoil trimaran, the Sea Bubble is powered by two electrically driven props. You…

Cruising Life
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Coast Guard Rescues a Dozen Beagles During Florence. See the Video

Amid all the terrible loss of life and destruction that Florence wreaked in the mid-Atlantic states, it was often hard to find many signs of hope. But in this great story and heart-warming video, USA Today reports how the Coast Guard rescued a couple and a boatload of their beagles that had been trapped in a trailer in rural North Carolina. Rescuing beagles, of course, is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of what the Coast Guard does during an emergency. Charging through inlets, yes; lifting people up from sinking boats into helicopters, yes. Rescuing a…

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