Author Peter Janssen

Destinations
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Ocean Reef Vintage Weekend: Classic Fun

The Ocean Reef Club’s annual Vintage Weekend just ended, and it was the usual high-spirited mix of classic boats, cars and planes with parties, dances, costumes and a generally good time. Founded in 1993 as a private club, Ocean Reef is one of the better yachting destinations in the world. It’s not far below Miami on Key Largo, and it has a world-class marina, two golf courses, a private airport, lots of tennis courts, a spa, and a large outdoor swimming pool and beach area. There are also several restaurants and bars. I once spent the New Year’s holiday there…

Boat Reviews
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Lyman-Morse Building Flybridge Hood 35

Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding has started work on the first flybridge version of the Hood 35 LM at its yard in Thomaston, Maine. The new 35 with classic Down East lines will be launched this summer. The flybridge will be the second Hood 35 LM; the first was an express version that was launched last summer. Like the original, the new flybridge will be laid up with cold-molded wood composite; the hull will be made with Douglas fir and western red cedar. The flybridge will be made with carbon fiber to keep the weight down and the center of gravity low. Both…

Boat Reviews
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Windy Building New 40 Camira RS

Windy, the high-end builder in Sweden, just announced that’s reviving its Camira line, starting with a sporty new 40 Camira RS with optional outboard power. Windy first launched its Camira 39 in 2014, and sold 55 of them until it stopped production two years ago. That boat was powered by diesel sterndrives, and the helm deck was protected by just a Bimini top. The new 40 Camira is offered with two 425-hp Yamaha outboards, three 300-hp Yamahas, or two Volvo 440-hp diesels linked to sterndrives. With the big Yamahas, top speed is estimated at 44 knots. The 40 was designed…

Boat Reviews
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Invictus Unveils New TT420 Cruiser

Invictus just announced that it will unveil its new TT420 at the big Düsseldorf show in January. The TT420 is created with the same distinctive style and lines as the TT460 that won a Design Innovation Award just two years ago. All Invictus yachts are designed by Christian Grande, who has won many awards himself for his innovations and designs that are often a bit out of the box. The new Invictus TT420 has the yard’s signature slightly-reverse bow, and an eye-catching windshield that blends in to the modernistic carbon hardtop. The foredeck on the TT420 carries a large sun…

Cruising Life
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Starlink Offers Fast Internet to Yachts

You now can have fast, reliable internet service to your yacht, thanks to Starlink, a new service from SpaceX. With download speeds up to 350 Mbps, it’s very fast. Right now it’s transatlantic, but it plans to offer full global coverage next year. Starlink now has 3,177 satellites in the sky, thanks to its SpaceX connection, and they fly on a scheduled pattern, meaning that some parts of the Earth are less visited than others. Since it started its launch operations in 2019, Starlink has completed 66 launches, and the company says it plans to continue launching “at an ambitious…

Cruising Life
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U.S. Sea Levels Will Rise a Foot by 2050: NASA

Sea levels along the coasts of the contiguous United States will probably rise a foot by 2050, according to a new study by NASA. The increase will be worse than previous estimates had predicted. The rising sea levels will cause increased flooding for millions of Americans living near the coasts, NASA said. (The picture above shows a flooded road in Norfolk, Virginia.) To determine the new predictions, NASA researchers on a Sea Level Change Team examined decades of satellite observations. They wanted to sharpen predictions for coastal communities that can be hit by both catastrophic and nuisance flooding in years…

Cruising Life
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Rogue Wave Kills Woman on Cruise Liner

A rogue wave hit a new Polar Class ocean liner on Tuesday off the southern tip of South America, killing one passenger and injuring four more. A passenger said the impact with the wave was so strong that she wondered if the ship had hit an iceberg. Suzie Gooding, the passenger, told WRAL News in Raleigh, North Carolina, “Everything was fine until the rogue wave hit, and it was sudden, shocking. We didn’t know if we should get our gear ready for abandoning ship.” The ship, the Viking Polaris, had been on an Antarctic cruise and was sailing back to…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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Hurricane Season Ends. Good Riddance!

The deadly and devastating 2022 Atlantic hurricane season just ended on November 30, and hundreds of thousands of people (or more) are saying none too soon. The impact from Hurricanes Ian, Nicole and Fiona in Florida and Puerto Rico will last for years. In Florida, 148 people died from Hurricane Ian alone, and the destruction was estimated at $50 billion. NOAA says the hurricane season this year produced 14 named storms (with winds of 39 mph or  more);  eight of them became hurricanes (with winds of 74 mph or more), and two became major hurricanes (with winds of 111 mph…

Cruising Life
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New Sea.ai Collision-Avoidance System

The world of long-range, anti-collision systems is growing and becoming more organized and high-tech. Oscar AI, one of the leaders in the field, is consolidating its various business units around the world and rebranding as Sea.ai, using artificial intelligence to detect and identify floating objects and then alert the boat’s crew in real time about any potential danger. The Oscar system was founded in 2018, originally for blue-water sailboat and ocean-racing use. It was based in the U.S., Austria, France and Portugal, and used several names, including BSB Artificial Intelligence and BSB Marine for its various branches. Now, all those…

Boat Reviews
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New Electric Cat with Holes in Bow

Most of us don’t want to put a hole in our boats, much less two of them. But that’s exactly what Sebastiano Canto, a very creative London-based designer, has done with his new 21-foot, all-electric catamaran named Enea. “The main feature is the combination between aesthetics and functionality,” Canto writes, with “a very original hull design” that reduces weight and lateral resistance without compromising the cat’s seakeeping ability. “Less weight and less water resistance equal greater efficiency,” he says. All that adds up to smaller engines to move the boat. Enea is powered by two Yamaha Harmo 3.4kW electric engines,…

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