Author Peter Janssen

Boat Reviews
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New Nordic Tugs 34: A Semi-Displacement Couple’s Cruiser with Lots of Character

A couple’s boat with lots of character, the Nordic Tugs 34 is designed for the Great Loop, the Inside Passage or a summer excursion to the rocky shores and hidden coves of Down East Maine. A semi-displacement trawler, the Nordic Tugs 34 is a salty, comfortable, single-diesel cruiser that’s easy to manage and maintain, while retaining the company’s iconic tugboat lines, including the faux smokestack. The 34 is an outgrowth of the popular Nordic Tugs 32, which the company first built in 1985. (Nordic Tugs started with a 26 that was introduced at the Seattle boat show in 1980, and…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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On Watch

Aspen Power Cats Working on Two New Cruisers with Outboard Power, but Same Proa Hulls By Peter A. Janssen Aspen Power Catamarans is working on two new outboard-powered cruising boats, a first for the company, but they still will have Larry Graf’s innovative asymmetrical proa hulls. They also will be Aspen’s first twin-engine cruisers, and they join a growing trend to outboard power for cruising boats up to the 50-foot range. The new Aspens will start with a 3070 and a 3480 (pictured above). The 3070 will have a 200-hp outboard on the cat’s larger starboard hull providing the main…

Cruising Life
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Belfast, Maine: A Summer Cruising Destination with a Now-Thriving Waterfront

Once a major shipbuilding and commercial fishing center that fell on hard times, Belfast, Maine, is enjoying a revival that makes it an attractive cruising destination this summer if you’re heading Down East. Way up Penobscot Bay, Belfast seems a bit off the beaten track, but it’s well worth the detour. For one thing, the newly invigorated waterfront, centering around a public Harbor Walk and the thriving Front Street Shipyard, is worth a visit in itself. For another, because of its location, Belfast often gets less summer fog than many other Maine ports. Belfast dates to 1630, when it was…

Cruising Life
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Another Boat Crashes onto Same Government Cut Jetty where Miami’s Jose Fernandez and Two Friends Died. See Video

Another boat has crashed at night into the same rock jetty in Government Cut where Miami Marlins star pitcher José Fernandez and two friends died two years ago. This time the three people on board were rescued by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue; one was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and the other two had scrapes and bruises. The boat hit the rocks, on the south side of the cut, the large, man-made channel separating Miami Beach from Fisher Island, about 9:15 at night. A fireboat arrived, and a rescue swimmer jumped into the water and got to the stranded…

Boat Reviews
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New Nimbus 405 Flybridge: A Stylish, Sophisticated, Swedish Cruiser with Volvo Performance

The new Nimbus 405 Flybridge is the latest iteration of the popular and prize-winning Nimbus 405 Coupe, adding space, an additional helm station and lots of entertaining room to the three-stateroom, two-head, Swedish-built, all-weather cruiser. The 405 Coupe was a hit when it was introduced three years ago, winning a Best of Boats Award and a nomination for European Powerboat of the Year. Nimbus is relatively new in the U.S., and it’s represented by Essex Yacht Sales in Connecticut on the East Coast and by Seattle Yachts on the West Coast. But the brand is well-established in Europe; it started…

Cruising Life
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SSCA Starts Daily Weather Net with Chris Parker for All Atlantic Cruisers

Here’s some good news if you’re planning to cross the Atlantic this year. The Seven Seas Cruising Association has formed a partnership with Chris Parker, the chief forecaster for the Marine Weather Center, and two other HAM stations to provide a Trans-Atlantic Cruisers’ Net. The service is available to all mariners, not just members of the SSCA. The service started on April 15 and will continue through the traditional crossing seasons. Parker (pictured above) will provide weather routing for the Atlantic. He will broadcast at 2200 UTC on SSB frequencies 8.137 and 12.350. Half an hour earlier, at 2130, SSCA…

Cruising Life
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The Blackbeard Book Club? A Surprise Find After 300 Years Produces a Book from the Pirate’s Sunken Flagship

You may wonder what pirates did in their spare time, when they weren’t raiding, plundering and killing their victims at sea? Turns out, at least some of them spent their time reading. Conservators for Queen Ann’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s flagship, which sank off the North Carolina coast 300 years ago, found 16 fragments of paper with legible printing, none larger than a quarter, wedged into a chamber of a canon. After more than a year of research, they determined that the fragments came from the first edition of a book by Capt. Edward Cooke published in 1712 called A Voyage to…

Cruising Life
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Absolutely Great Video and Still Pictures of a Pod of Orcas Swimming 20 Miles Off San Diego

Here are some of the best whale pictures I’ve ever seen, both video and stills, taken by a San Diego marine photographer about 20 miles offshore on a beautiful, clear, blue day. Dominic Biagini, of La Jolla, who works for Captain Dave’s Dolphin Safaris, a whale-watching business on Dana Point, took something of a busman’s holiday when a friend was visiting recently from Chicago. He took the friend out on a private boat in search of whales. As he told Fox 5 in the story below, after an hour or so they came across a pod of six orcas, swimming by…

Cruising Life
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Lifetime Sailor and Washington Insider Starts New Chapter in His Life, on a Ranger Tugs 25

Like many of us, Craig Fuller started out in sailboats. He sailed in both Northern and Southern California before he headed to Washington, D.C., in 1981 to work in the White House for President Ronald Reagan. He then started sailing in the Chesapeake, and stayed in Washington, working for Vice President H.W. Bush and then for many years as the head of public relations firms and trade groups. But times change. As Fuller just wrote in The Talbot Spy, from Easton, Maryland, last summer he thought it was time to start a new chapter in his life. He started looking…

Cruising Life
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New Study: Ship Traffic and Fishing Boats Moving Closer to North Pole Every Year. Now Transiting Treacherous Northwest Passage in February

Melting sea ice in the Arctic means that the fabled Northwest Passage, the sea route over the top of the world linking the Atlantic and the Pacific that has trapped explorers and frustrated mariners for hundreds of years, is opening up. Now a new study using 120 million data points tracking ship traffic there over seven years shows exactly how much and how fast the area is changing. Indeed, it found that the center of ship activity in the Arctic moved 186 miles closer to the North Pole from 2009 to 2016. Researchers from Tufts University and the Woods Hole…

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