Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Ferry Captain Lost Situational Awareness: Report

The captain of a Washington State ferry lost situational awareness before his vessel hit a dolphin near its terminal in southwest Seattle at its cruising speed of about 15 knots, according to a newly released internal investigation. One car was damaged and one passenger suffered minor injuries in the allision (a collision with a stationary object) at 8:13 a.m. on Thursday, July 22 last year. The weather was clear with negligible wind at the time and the investigation, by the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Transportation Board, and Washington State Ferries, determined that the MV Cathlamet, a 328-feet-long ferry, did…

Charter
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Solar-Powered SILENT 64 Starts Mallorca Charter

The charter season starts at the end of April in Mallorca, Spain, one of the most beautiful spots in the world, and SILENT Yachts announced that it has a SILENT 64 there for a crewed charter. The SILENT 64 is a sister ship to what the Austrian company says is the first solar-powered production yacht to cross the Atlantic. Charters on the 64 start and end in Port Adriano, on the southwest coast of Mallorca, and offer cruises through the Balearic Islands, with beautiful bays and turquoise waters. On the luxurious SILENT cat, you can enjoy all this without any…

Boat Reviews
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New Neptunus 650E: Luxury Blue-Water Cruiser

Made in Canada, just over the border from Niagara Falls, the new Neptunus 650E is a sleek, solid cruiser with some big-yacht touches and blue-water capabilities. The Neptunus 650E is a three-cabin, three-head cruiser that comes with a CE Category A Ocean Certified pedigree, meaning it’s built to handle winds over 40 knots and wave heights over 13 feet. It’s powered by twin 1136-hp CAT C18 diesels, giving it a top speed of 32 knots. At a cruising speed of 26 knots, it has a range of 282 nm. Dial back to 10 knots, and the range jumps to 713…

Boat Reviews
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New 41-Knot, 65-foot Innovative Dutch Cruiser

The Van der Valk yard in The Netherlands is making a new 65-foot, 41-knot, luxury cruiser with an exceptional aluminum hull and the ability to navigate the shallow waters of the Bahamas and cut through rough water offshore. With a low profile, an aft-set flybridge, a massive 111-square-foot aft deck when the terraces are deployed, post-modern European lines and an Art-Deco styled interior, the new EDGE 65 will turn heads on both sides of the Atlantic. And that’s before you get to its performance. Van der Valk worked with Cor D. Rover, the Dutch superyacht designer, and Studio Delta Naval…

Boat Reviews
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New 64-Foot Cat with Hydrogen Power

Swiss Sustainable Yachts AG in Zurich has sold the first hull of its solar/electric/hydrogen-powered 64-foot catamaran, AQUON One. The new luxury catamaran can hold up to 10 passengers and theoretically can have an unlimited range by combining all of its renewable emissions- and noise-free power sources. The AQUON One has 64 square meters of photovoltaic solar panels on its roof to charge its lithium-ion batteries. From there on, the cat’s green-power solution seems fairly elegant. For the short term, the batteries provide power for twin electric motors, one in each hull, for propulsion, and to run the yacht’s systems. But…

Cruising Life
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Volunteers Rescue 8 from Chesapeake

A volunteer crew from Northern Virginia rescued eight people after their 50-foot Carver sank in the Chesapeake last weekend. The eight people had huddled together in the 49-degree water while the all-volunteer Smith Point Sea Rescue crew and the U.S. Coast Guard searched for them. After the rescue, the Coast Guard said the three women and five men were “in states of mild to moderate hypothermia” but they all were released in stable condition after treatment by local EMS crews. The rescue started when someone on board the Nauti Dream, a 50-foot Carver, placed a 911 call on their cell…

Charter
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The Moorings Offers a Sale on Bareboat Charters

The Moorings just announced a summer special offer with up to 20 percent off on bareboat power and sail charters. To qualify, you have to book the charter by May 1, and take the charter by June 30. And the offer is good for The Moorings destinations around the world except for Brazil, Tonga, and St. Pete and Key West in the U.S. The Moorings has charter operations in the Caribbean, the Americans, the Med, the Indian Ocean, the Far East, and the South Pacific. The Moorings power cats are all built by Robertson & Caine in South Africa, and…

Cruising Life
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Why Boats Fail Safety Checks: BoatUS

Over the years, I’ve been driving boats that have been boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard (on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts), and once even by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who flew overhead in a helicopter and ordered us (via Channel 16) to follow them to the nearest dock in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia. (They suspected us of smuggling drugs, since our new boat had Florida numbers; they started off being very efficient, and ended up, once they determined we were on a recreational cruise up to the St. Lawrence, being…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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ChatGPT: Best Boat for the Great Loop?

ChatGPT, the latest major iteration of Artificial Intelligence, has been getting a lot of attention recently, becoming the subject of front-page articles in leading newspapers, on blogs, even in casual conversations at the Palm Beach show. Founded by a Stanford dropout and funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from Microsoft, ChatGPT was launched just last November as an AI chatbot. Its parent company, OpenAI, was then valued at $29 billion. ChatGPT is nothing of not versatile: It can write computer programs, compose music, create short stories in the voice of Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald, do your kid’s…

Boat Reviews
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StellarPM Planning New Line of Explorer Cats

The worldwide fleet of large power catamarans just keeps growing. Indeed, StellarPM, the Vietnamese builder, just introduced a new line of luxury explorer power cats that are designed to be as much as home in the fjords of Norway as they are cruising around Sardinia and Corsica. StellarPM now joins the ranks of builders in Europe, Turkey, Australia and other parts of the world who have been launching big, luxurious power catamarans lately. And expedition or explorer yachts are a growing subspecies in that category. There are two yachts in the new StellarEXP fleet, a 32-Meter (about 105 feet), and…

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