Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Here’s What to Look for in New Binoculars, from $99.99 to $5,858.99

Talk about buying a new pair of binoculars and a lot of people’s eyes glaze over. Too many choices (including many that truly are not easy to see); too many pairs of numbers. But even if you just pick a pair off the shelf, you’re ahead of the game. In my opinion, no cruising boat should be without a decent pair of binoculars – for both safety and enjoyment reasons. You use them to pick up buoys and breakwaters, to see other boats, to tell whether that white thing you spy on the horizon is a low-lying cloud or a…

Cruising Life
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New, Prize-Winning RIB that Flies on Two Adjustable Foils

Here’s a first: A flying RIB, or more precisely, a RIB that is able to fly on two foils built into the hull. Developed by SEAir on a Zodiac Pro 5.5 hull, the flying RIB just won the 2017 Innovation Award at the Nautic Paris Boat Show. SEAir has been working for two years to perfect the foils, which are full integrated into the Zodiac’s deep-V, fiberglass hull and move up and down in a shaft, with an adjustable angle of attack. The Zodiac Pro 5.5 is 18 feet long with an 8’4” beam and powered by a Yamaha F115-hp…

Cruising Life
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What Does It Cost To Buy – and Keep – a Hatteras 58? One Owner’s Video Report

What does it really cost to own a boat, to buy it, to maintain it, and to use it for coastal cruising? Ask this question of 1,000 boat owners, and you’ll probably get 1,000 different answers. But here are the real-world actual costs of a 58-foot motoryacht, put together by Ed and Lyn of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He’s a tax accountant, who works from Jan. 1 to April 15 and she’s retired, so they have a lot of time to spend enjoying their boat. Here’s what it costs them. They previously had owned a 35-foot Carver for two years to…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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On Watch

Cruising to Remote but Beautiful Stuart Island in the San Juans on a Ranger Tug 29 By Peter A. Janssen One of the best things about cruising is that no matter how long you’ve done it, there’s always someplace new to go – a new island, a new cove, a new destination somewhere. Exploring places, seeing new things, having new experiences is basically what it’s all about. All this is particularly true for Jim and Lisa Favors, from Traverse City, Michigan, who’ve already done the Great Loop and trailered their Ranger Tugs 27 pocket cruiser across most of the U.S.,…

Cruising Life
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Ships Collide. One Thought They Would Pass Starboard to Starboard; the Other, Port to Port

Here’s a story about a collision between a tanker and a ferry in Sweden that didn’t have to happen; it basically was the result of a total miscommunication (or lack of communication) between the captains of the two ships. And the lessons learned, a result of an official investigation, apply to recreational boats as well as to larger commercial vessels. This is what happened: At 2 am the tanker was outbound from a port at nine knots; its captain realized that an inbound ferry only 0.7 nm away was closing at about 20 knots. He called the ferry on VHF…

Cruising Life
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For a New Cruise Off the Beaten Path, Try Norway Next Summer, a Land of Deep Fjords and Endless Daylight

For a real cruise next summer, think about Norway, the high-latitude Scandinavian country with prehistoric glaciers, deep fjords, thousands of islands and about 20 hours of sunlight a day. It’s not particularly easy to get to for a recreational powerboat – you have to go across the North Sea from the UK, the Netherlands or Denmark – but once you’re there, the rewards are immense. As one captain quoted in this story from Superyacht Times says, you’ll find “silky smooth cruising grounds within the endless network of fjords, each with their own set of snow-capped mountains melting in the summer…

Cruising Life
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How To Care for Your Seacocks: Ignore Them at Your Peril

Nothing is more vital to the integrity of your boat than its seacocks. Have a problem with one of them, and you literally could be sunk. Depending on the size and type of your boat, you could have a few, or quite a few, down in your bilge, but you’ll certainly have them for your engine(s), genset, head(s) and other equipment. It’s also a good idea to have a mallet and tapered plugs, sized to fit, ready to go in case one of them totally fails. Here’s a good story from Sea about how to care for seacocks and how…

Cruising Life
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NOAA: Second Warmest Arctic Year Ever. See Video

The Arctic is getting warmer each year, according to NOAA, and 2017 is the second warmest year in history (just behind the record-setting year of 2016). Not only is the air temperature heating up, but so is the average ocean temperature, resulting in an increasing loss of sea ice. Indeed, a new NOAA report said the current rate of decline of sea ice and the rise in temperature are higher than any time in the past 1,500 years. All of this is in NOAA’s Arctic Report Card, now in its 12th year, that is reviewed by 85 scientists form 12…

Cruising Life
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Master Seaman and Multiple Record-Holder Dag Pike Writes 50th Nautical Book

It would be hard to find a better, or more experienced, seaman than Dag Pike, a salty Brit with a great sense of humor but who’s all business when he’s behind the wheel of a sailboat, a powerboat or a RIB. Pike first went to sea in 1950 as an apprentice in the Merchant Navy when he was a teenager. In the years since he’s made more trans-Atlantic record attempts, power and sail, than anyone else (six, if anyone’s counting); he’s won the Offshore World Championship once and the Round Britain Powerboat Race twice, the last time when he was…

Cruising Life
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NTSB Releases Chilling Video Recreating El Faro’s Final Hours Before It Sank, Killing All 33 on Board

Here’s an absolutely bone-chilling video (below) from the National Transportation Safety Board, recreating the sinking of the container ship El Faro in a hurricane off the Bahamas in October, 2015, with the loss of all 33 people on board. It shows the drama of the ship’s last 26 hours, with the hurricane’s track, the ship’s track and the real-time decisions by the captain who overruled his mates who asked him several times to change course. In releasing the video, NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said the captain failed to change course “despite three calls to his quarters indicating that the El Faro…

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