Author Peter Janssen

Boat Reviews
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New Hylas M44: Lots of Light, Classic Looks and Cruising Comfort

With its low profile, long straight sheer and more than a hint of clean, classic Down East lines, the new Hylas M44 was just introduced to the United States at the Palm Beach show. Hylas collaborated with the New Zealand builder Salthouse for the new high-end, two-stateroom cruiser, designed for maximum comfort, seakeeping ability and functional use of space. Inside, the new Hylas is filled with light, with large side and front windows, two long overhead sliding hatches in the salon, and a large glass door that separates the salon from the cockpit. The galley is aft, on the port…

Cruising Life
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984-Foot-Long Container Ship Hits Docked Ship in Pakistan. See the Video

So you think you have trouble docking? Or you worry about other boats hitting yours when you’re tied up at the dock? You have reason to be concerned. Take a look at this video of a huge, heavily loaded container ship clipping the side of another container ship that was docked inside the Port of Karachi in Pakistan, with several dozen containers tumbling into the water. The collision was caused by the MV Tolten, a Hapag-Lloyd ship that’s 984 feet long with a 150-foot beam. It sideswiped the MV Hamburg Bay (which is only 961-feet-long) as the Tolten was coming…

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…

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