Author Peter Janssen

Boat Reviews
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Sealine Launches 40-Knot Sport Cruiser

Sealine just  launched its latest sport cruiser, the S335v, with a five different layouts, lots of space, and 40-knot power from twin 300-hp Mercury V8 Verado outboards. The new Sealine is designed by Bill Dixon from the UK and made by Hanse near Greifswald on Germany’s Baltic coast. It’s one of Sealine’s 12 models from 33 to 53 feet. The new S335v has an open deck layout with sun roofs over the helm deck and the cockpit. There’s seating on the foredeck and on a large  U-shaped settee aft in the cockpit with a table that can be converted to…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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Bob Johnstone: “Time To Get Creative”

If it’s appropriate to apply a boating term to a human being (and in this case it is), Bob Johnstone is a one-off, a combination of a world-class sailor, prize-winning marketing genius, and sharp-minded entrepreneur (starting two boat companies, one sail, one power, plus a highly profitable graphic arts business). Now that he’s 89 years old, Johnstone is also a published author, with the new Maverick Marketer (398 pages, Palmetto Publishing) under his belt. The book is a pleasure to read, largely because it reflects Johnstone’s wide-ranging intellect, humor and collected first-hand wisdom from both the business and boating worlds.…

Cruising Life
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Spirit of Ulysses Starts One More Ocean Crossing

Spirit of Ulysses, an ocean-crossing 2007 Nordhavn 76, just transited the Panama Canal on its way from Fort Lauderdale to Australia. The Nordhavn’s latest trip will take two months and cover almost 9,900 nm before it reaches its newest home in Perth. It left Fort Lauderdale on May 2, stopped in Key West and then cruised on to Panama. Next stops: The Galapagos, Samoa, Fiji, and then Brisbane. Hull number eight of the 76 series, Spirit of Ulysses has already cruised the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, transited the Panama Canal to the Atlantic and then made a transatlantic…

Boat Reviews
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First Sargo 45 Flagship Heading to U.S.

The new Sargo 45, the flagship of the Finnish builder’s fleet, is heading for Liberty Landing Marina in New Jersey, where it will be the first 45 in North America. After commissioning there, it will cruise up the Hudson and take the basic Great Loop route to Chicago or Duluth, where it will be put on a truck and driven to the Inside Passage Yacht Sales docks on Lopez Island, Washington (unless it’s sold along the way). A tough, user-friendly, all-season cruiser, the Sargo 45 has wide side doors opening to the pilothouse, plus a gate in the hull side…

Boat Reviews
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New, Cruiser-Friendly Offshore 54 PH

The new Offshore 54 Pilothouse is the latest iteration of a popular cruising design built for easy handling by a couple. Offshore says the 54 is the “finest Offshore yet,” and that’s saying something since the company has built more than 300 yachts since its founding in 1948. The 54 PH has a semi-displacement hull with a fine entry for parting the waves and a full keel for directional stability and protection for the props. Standard power comes from twin 715-hp Cummins with straight shafts, producing a top speed of a bit over 20 knots and a cruising speed of…

Cruising Life
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Manatees Gather for Mating Season

The Save the Manatees organization just posted a new video of a herd of the big friendly mammals gathering in Blue Spring State Park in Florida for mating season. You can see it via the link here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=964779371542876 Save the Manatees said they counted more than 30 manatees last week at Blue Spring, about halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach, for the cool water and their annual mating ritual. During mating season, a female manatee is generally pursued by as many as half a dozen males and the female (cow) will mate with several males (bulls) to provide the largest…

Cruising Life
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Suzuki Cruise Promotes New Eco-Friendly Fuel

A 26-foot Sea Pro center console just cruised 941 miles from Florida to Washington, D.C., powered by two Suzuki outboards using new eco-friendly fuel. The boat took ten days to travel from Jacksonville to the Capitol. Its Suzuki DF140 outboards burned 479 gallons of new EcoGen90 fuel, developed by VP Racing, along the way, for an average of just under 2 mpg in the deep-V boat. The boat’s arrival on Washington earlier this week was timed to coincide with the start of the annual American Boating Congress, organized by the National Marine Manufacturers Association. It then was used for demo…

Destinations
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15 Favorite Boating Spots: MarineMax

Now that boating season is starting again, we have to face the perennial question of where to go. We all have our favorite spots, but much of the adventure of boating involves finding new ones. To help with that, MarineMax, the retail giant with 125 locations (including 78 dealerships and 57 marinas) around the world, should have some expertise here, and they just put together a list of their 15 favorite boating spots. Spoiler alert, they are: The Chesapeake; Florida Keys; Mackinaw Island; Nantucket; Ogunquit, Maine; Lake Lanier, Georgia; St. Augustine; Galveston; Lake of the Ozarks; the Mississippi; Lake Tahoe;…

Cruising Life CoastGuardPhoto
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New Radar Helps with Search and Rescue

The Coast Guard just announced that it’s buying a new radar system that will improve their search-and-rescue efforts significantly. The new next-generation weather radar system, the Honeywell IntuVue RDR-7000, uses automated technology; it will be used to upgrade the radar now on Coast Guard Jayhawk and Dolphin helicopters, replacing the current manual systems with fully automated tilt-and-gain controls. With the current system, a pilot has to manually adjust the controls to direct the radar beam. The new automated system, which captures weather as far as 80 nm away, will be particularly valuable to Coast Guard crews on search-and-rescue missions that…

Cruising Life
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Up from the Depths: The Fanged Lancetfish

Most of us have never seen a prehistoric-looking lancetfish, and we probably never will. That’s just as well, because they can grow to be 7-feet long, they have fang-like teeth, enormous eyes and a long, slithery body. They’re also cannibals, eating their own kind, and they have a fairly unusual sex life, in that they possess both male and female sex organs simultaneously. Lancetfish also are extremely rare. Indeed, NOAA Fisheries reports that since 1982 they’ve only found two in the Gulf of Alaska, four near the Aleutian Islands, and ten in the Eastern Bering Sea. But now lancetfish are…

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