Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Weems & Plath SOS Distress Light: Making Emergency Signaling Safe and Easy

The new Weems & Plath electronic flare just seems like such a good idea. It can replace the pyrotechnic flares on your boat (the ones that have expiration dates but that you have trouble getting rid of when they expire) and it meets the Coast Guard requirements for a night or day visual distress signal device. The SOS Distress Light runs on three household C batteries that you should replace every year, and its LED light flashes the traditional SOS signal for up to 60 hours. The company says it is visible for up to ten nm; if you’re worried…

Cruising Life
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Second Towboat Capsizes and Sinks in Lower Mississippi Floods, but This Time Crew Survives

A second towboat capsized and sank during floods on the Lower Mississippi, although this time the crew was rescued by another towboat. Four days earlier, in the first sinking,  one crewman was rescued but two others were not found after a 43-hour search. The second boat, the 59-foot-long Vincent J Eymard, capsized near mile marker 175 in a rural area near the town of Donaldson, Louisiana. It was pulling an empty barge at the time. The crew was picked up by another towing vessel, the Ellysa. No one was injured, and the Ellysa took the barge under tow. The Vincent…

Cruising Life
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Rising Sea Levels, Erosion, Threaten Easter Island and Its Mysterious Past

Easter Island, some 2,200 miles off of Chile in the South Pacific, has been on the bucket list for a lot of serious blue-water cruisers for many years. The main attraction (other than getting there) is the mystery surrounding the 1,100 monumental statues, built from the 13th to 16th centuries, of human figures with oversized heads, resting on enormous stone pedestals. How did they get there? And what happened to the people who built them? Now, a new report from UNESCO says that rising sea levels and erosion around the island threaten many of the statues, burial grounds and other…

Boat Reviews
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New Carbon Delta 60 Open: Smart, Sophisticated and Sunny Swedish Import

You probably aren’t going to take a new carbon fiber Delta 60 up the Inside Passage (although I once drove a 35-foot Donzi from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska, and back), but it certainly would be nice to cruise down to the Florida Keys over to the Bahamas on one. You – and a lot of your friends – will be comfortable enough on board. The Delta 60 has three staterooms and two heads below, and there’s room for a crowd up on the main deck with sunning and lounge areas that seem to go on forever. And you can carry…

Cruising Life
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Martha’s Vineyard Ferry Dead in the Water for Five Hours After Engines Fail

It’s been a bad week for the Martha’s Vineyard ferries. First, the MV Woods Hole ran aground and was taken out of service for repairs. Then the MV Martha’s Vineyard lost its engines and was dead in the water for five hours, with 78 people on board, before it returned to Vineyard Haven at 1:30 in the morning. No one was injured in the Martha’s Vineyard affair, although one passenger told The MV Times that “some kids got scared when life jackets were handed out.” The Steamship Authority, which runs the ferries, said the Martha’s Vineyard left Vineyard Haven at…

Cruising Life
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Garmin Introduces Powerful New Sonar Going Down to 200 Feet

Garmin just introduced a new Ultra High-Definition scanning sonar that uses a higher frequency range to deliver clear, detailed pictures of fish and anything else that are as far as 200 feet under your boat. The new sonar, called Ultra High-Definition ClearVü and Ultra High-Definition SideVü, operate on sonar frequencies from 0.8 to 1.2 MHz. Garmin said the range of 200 feet was more than any other system to date. The new Ultra-High Definition sonar puts more power on targets with a higher frequency range than ever before, scanning with a downward-facing element that provides clear images at greater depths. It…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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On Watch

Legendary Alaskan Long-Range Cruisers Staging a Comeback By Peter A. Janssen Alaskan yachts, the legendary, long-range, Art DeFever-designed trawlers, just got a shot in the arm. Seattle Yachts announced that they bought the Alaskan brand and hired Phil Friedman, the former CEO of Palmer Johnson, to modernize and reintroduce the lineup, starting with a new 66-footer. Friedman, who just finished construction of a semi-custom 80-footer in Taiwan, where the new Alaskans will be built, said the cruisers will embody “value engineering” by concentrating on things that are core to the boat’s mission. “Our primary objective is to deliver a rugged,…

Cruising Life
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Warning To Mariners: Stay Clear of Kick-’em-Jenny

If you’re thinking about cruising in the Caribbean, you’ll want to keep an eye on Kick-‘em-Jenny, an underwater volcano five miles off Grenada that’s threatening an eruption. Indeed, the government of Grenada just imposed a three-mile exclusion zone around the area because scientists believe an eruption could take place in the next day or so. One of the most active volcanoes in the eastern Caribbean. Kick-‘em-Jenny rises about 8/10 of a mile above the seafloor. It has erupted at least a dozen times since it was discovered in 1939, when it shot a 900-foot-high cloud of steam and debris up…

Cruising Life
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Police and TowBoatUS Rescue Disabled Boat with Nine People in Jupiter Inlet. See the Video

Jupiter Inlet in Florida has a well-earned reputation for getting a little rough at times. That was particularly true last Sunday afternoon, when the ocean swells were up to ten feet and the inlet was not a happy place to be. It definitely was not the time or place to run out of gas, but that’s exactly what happened to a boat with nine people on board. Someone on the boat called the Coast Guard, and a local Tequesta Police Department boat and another boat from TowBoatUS responded, as the crippled boat was drifting toward the rocks on the jetty.…

Charter
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Now You Can Take a Tropic Ocean Airways Seaplane to Your Moorings Charter in the Bahamas

Now it’s going to be a lot easier to get to your charter in the Bahamas. The Moorings has joined with Tropic Ocean Airways for a new ‘Fly & Sail’ program where charter guests can fly directly to their Bahamas destinations from the Tropic Ocean Airways lounge at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport private FBO, or from the Miami Seaplane Base on Watkins Island. When guests arrive, their Moorings’ power or sail charter yacht will be prepped and ready in the Abacos or the Exumas. The Moorings is the world’s premiere charter yacht company, and Tropic Ocean Airways is the…

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