Author Peter Janssen

Boat Reviews
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New Hinckley Picnic Boat 37 MK111: Bigger, Better, Faster. See It at the Newport Show

The newest iteration of the iconic Picnic Boat, the new Hinckley 37 MK111 is larger, faster and more comfortable than ever before. The new 37 has all the gorgeous lines of the original, but it now offers a cruise speed of 32 knots and, powered by twin 370-hp Yanmar diesels and Hamilton jet drives, it tops out at 35 knots. Hinckley launched its first Picnic Boat, Dasher, in its yard in Southwest Harbor, Maine, in 1994. It was 36 feet long, driven by a single diesel and it had water jet drives, so that you wouldn’t snag a prop 0n…

Cruising Life
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Now! Flush Your Head from Your Smartphone. Hmmmm

Here’s something you might not have thought of before. Now, thanks to Raritan, you can flush your head using your smartphone or tablet. And the new app making all this possible is up for an innovation award at the International Boatbuilders’ Exhibition and Conference (IBEX) in Tampa later this month. Raritan’s new Bluetooth Flush Control manages a toilet from up to 50 feet away using a wireless panel or free Android or Apple app. For builders and refitters, the problem is that traditional toilet control panels are often wired through parts of the boat with limited space; they’re hard to…

Cruising Life
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Fire-Fighting Seaplane Hits Tourist Boat in France. See Video

An amphibious plane that had just scooped up water from the Rhone River in France to fight a forest fire hit a tourist boat as it was taking off while passengers filmed the entire accident. The plane’s left wing clipped the boat’s mast as horrified passengers looked on. Incredibly, no one was injured and the plane managed to take off and limp to a military base nearby. The French government suspended the pilot and co-pilot. The video shows two of the fire-fighting planes, called SuperScoopers, starting to take off. The planes are Canadair CL-415 water bombers chartered by the government…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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On Watch

47th Annual Newport Boat Show: First Look at the New Cruising Boats By Peter A. Janssen The Newport, RI, boat show has always been my favorite. It’s the first of the fall show season, so almost all the new boats are there, and then, well, it’s in Newport. Enough said. This year the show, the 47th annual, runs from Thursday, Sept. 14 through Sunday, Sept. 17, with most of the docks and tents at the Newport Yachting Center, but spilling over to neighboring docks; all told, some 600 boats are displayed over 13 acres. There’s also a brokerage show at…

Cruising Life
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Digital Switching Is Moving Down to Regular Cruising Boats

Digital switching started out on megayachts, and then moved down to some large cruising boats. I first encountered it while cruising on Dirigo, hull number one of the flagship Sabre 66, about 18 months ago; the crew was managing the fuel flow from an iPad in the salon.  The system then was so new that the crew called it Hal, after the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now it’s being used on smaller boats. Basically, digital switching is a network control system that replaces conventional circuit breakers and switches with a digital power system working on an NMEA 2000…

Cruising Life
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The Prestons: Cruising Up the Bay of Fundy, Not Giving in to Parkinson’s

Bob and Becky Preston are now cruising off Roque Island, all the way up the coast of Maine, just short of Campobello Island and the Canadian border. So far, they’ve cruised 542 nm this summer on their Sabre 48, Family Ties 3, and they’re still going strong. The Prestons are certainly dedicated cruisers. But what makes their cruising remarkable is that Bob has had Parkinson’s Disease for the past ten years; he just had serious surgery this spring. And he’s still cruising. Actually, Preston has been boating since he was six months old and his father took him out on…

Boat Reviews
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Hampton Endurance 658: A Serious, Spacious, Long-Range Couple’s Cruiser

A high-quality, unusually spacious, long-range cruising boat, the Hampton Endurance 658 is designed to be run by a couple, and it’s designed with redundant systems throughout to keep them safe at sea. And if they want to cruise with a large family, or entertain a crowd back in port, there’s plenty of room for that too. Walking through the Hampton Endurance 658, as my colleague George Day and I did in Newport, RI, this summer, is a treat, because the boat offers a lot of surprises. It is essentially a three-stateroom, two-head cruiser, but it also has a crew cabin,…

Cruising Life
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Biscayne Bay National Park: A Multi-Colored Treasure Full of Reefs, Aquatic Life and Maybe Even Pirate’s Bounty

A lot of the time, it seems, we cruise to Miami and Biscayne Bay on our way to somewhere else – the Keys, say, or the Bahamas. That’s a shame, because there’s a lot to do right there. Take a look at Biscayne Bay National Park, for example, that’s alive with fish and aquatic wildlife and is the home of vast, multi-colored coral reefs. Then, when you’re off the boat, you’ll still have Miami, Miami Beach and Coconut Grove, just to mention a few highlights, at your beck and call. On the water, the Biscayne Bay park is one of…

Cruising Life
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Volunteers in Small Boats Rescue People and Pets in Hurricane Harvey

These are not the owners of cruising boats that we usually write about. Instead, they’re the owners of small fishing boats, aluminum boats, inflatable boats, jet boats, and they’re all Americans helping other Americans in trouble. As Hurricane Harvey pounded parts of Texas and Louisiana, hundreds of volunteers hooked up their boats to trailers and made their way over flooded roads to the most severely damaged areas. Some were members of the Cajun Navy, a group from southern Louisiana that has been doing this for years. Others were responding for the first time. But once they arrived on the scene,…

Cruising Life
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Now You Can Get Hurricane Updates from BoatUS App

BoatUS has created a timely feature to its free smartphone app. Now you can get storm and hurricane updates that are refreshed with every NOAA forecast. The app also features tide and marine forecasts, as well as access to your BoatUS membership or insurance information, if you’re a BoatUS member. Even if you’re not a member, you can still download the app to call for help on the water or to get its tide and weather forecasting features. But it’s the storm forecasting that’s most appealing now. “As the storm nears, you’ll get more frequent updates, or you can choose…

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