Author Peter Janssen

Cruising Life
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Rescue Boat Sinks, Crew is Rescued

Here’s something you don’t see very often: A fire department rescue boat sank during a training exercise in the Chesapeake and the crew had to be rescued themselves. All four people on board, who were wearing life jackets and survival suits, were back on duty that evening. The Anne Arundel County Fire Department says they don’t know why their boat sank. It was refloated a few days later. The problem started when Fire Department Boat #1, based in Shady Side, Maryland, started to take on water off Gibson Island and the crew had to abandon ship. The Coast Guard and…

Boat Reviews
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Eastport Growing, Moving to Florida

Eastport Yacht, the boutique builder in Annapolis, is moving to Florida, and launching a flybridge version of its classic Chesapeake Bay deadrise 32 at the same time. Eastport started in 2006 in the Eastport section of Annapolis, basically a boater’s haven, and they made a practical, no-nonsense 32 with inboard diesel power and a transom that dropped down to open the cockpit fully for loading dinks, diving gear, large fish, whatever. It was a true original of the SUV-of -the-water style that had the looks of a working bay boat. The original Eastport 32 (pictured at top) had a shallow…

Boat Reviews
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SAY Launches 40-Knot Electric Boat

The new SAY 29E is a sleek, lightweight, state-of-the-art electric runabout with a top speed of 40 knots, a performance that the German builder says makes it the fastest electric boat in the world. Weighing just 3,900 pounds, including batteries, the SAY 29E is built with a carbon-fiber sandwich construction. It offers the acceleration of a sports car and virtually silent cruising, while leaving no emissions behind. The boat has a range of 25 nm at 22 knots. It’s powered by a 360kW Kreisel electric motor, a 120kWh battery, and a 22kW on-board charger. It takes just six hours to…

Boat Reviews
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Lynx Launches 90-Foot Expedition Yacht

Lynx Yachts in The Netherlands just launched the first of its Crossover series, a 27M built for an experienced owner in California. The 89’ 9” displacement expedition yacht, powered by two 850-hp CATs, has a range of 1,800 nm at 12.5 knots. The company says the Crossover designation means the yacht “embraces the qualities of a graceful superyacht and the versatility of a support vessel in one fully customizable expedition yacht that delivers more than meets the eye.” They say it’s a long-range SUV on the water. The name of the new Crossover is Avontuur (Dutch for Adventure) and that…

Cruising Life
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Bumfuzzle: After Covid, Cruising Again

When we last wrote about the Schulte family (Pat, Ali, and their daughter, Ouest, 11, and son, Lowe, 9) a year ago, they were heading for Aruba on their 1984 Grand Banks 42 Bumfuzzle. They had been cruising in the Caribbean ever since they bought the boat in Florida in 2017. After Aruba, they planned to head for Colombia, and then…who knows. But Covid intervened. As nation after nation shut down, or adopted protocols not exactly welcoming to foreign cruising families, they left the boat in Aruba and flew home to the U.S. Now, they’re back in Aruba, and they’ve…

Cruising Life
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Tugs Try, Fail, To Budge Grounded Container Ship

The 1,095-foot-long Ever Forward container ship, which draws more than 42 feet, is still hard aground in the Chesapeake in 24 feet of water despite the efforts of five tugs earlier this week to refloat it. The Ever Forward ran aground on March 13 after it left the Port of Baltimore with a pilot on board. AIS data says the ship was running at 13 knots when it left the dredged Craighill shipping channel and stopped suddenly outside the Patapsco River. The Coast Guard has not yet determined what caused  the ship to leave the channel. In an effort to…

On Watch with Peter Janssen
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New Northern Marine 57 with 5,000-Mile Range

Northern Marine has just launched its latest 57 pilothouse long-range expedition yacht, designed for an owner-operator to cruise anywhere in the world. Stuart Archer, the general manager of Northern Marine in Anacortes, Washington, wrote me that the 57, powered by a single 325-hp John Deere, has a range of 5,000 nm at 8.75 knots. The boat holds 2,600 gallons of fuel and burns 4.2 gph at that speed. Top speed is over 10 knots. Northern Marine has a rich heritage of making commercial fishing boats, working trawlers and long-range expedition yachts. It was bought by Seattle Yachts in 2019, with…

Boat Reviews
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Sweden’s J Craft Torpedo Ready for U.S.

If you really want to make an entrance, or just turn heads everywhere you go, take a look at the J Craft 42 Torpedo that just made its U.S. debut at the Palm Beach show. Made in Sweden and powered by Volvo IPS drives, this Swedish beauty is a combination of meticulous craftsmanship and modern technology. Each boat takes 8,500 man hours to make; the mahogany deck has 18 coats of lacquer and varnish before it leaves the factory floor. J Craft boats are made on the island of Gotland, by descendants of Vikings of ancient lore. King Carl XVI…

Cruising Life
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New Partnership Strengthens Electric Boating in U.S.

Aqua superPower and X Shore have joined forces to electrify American boating. Indeed, the two companies had one of X Shore’s Eelex 800 electric boats plugged into an Aqua superPower fast charger last week at the Palm Beach boat show. The idea behind the collaboration is to promote electric boating in the U.S. by creating a fast-charging infrastructure. “Electric boats and watercraft are here now,” said Alex Bamberg, the CEO of Aqua superPower, “and they require the charging infrastructure we  provide with our dedicated marine fast-charge network.” Aqua superPower says it has the first fully dockside network of fast chargers…

Cruising Life
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Prince Philip’s Runabout To Be Auctioned

The late Prince Philip’s much-used and beloved British speedboat, a 1956 Albatross Super Sport Runabout, is coming up for auction. The prince, married to Queen Elizabeth for 73 years, was a British naval officer and an avid sailor. The Royal Yacht Britannia carried his Albatross for more than ten years. In 1967, the boat was moved to Balmoral, the Queen’s estate in Scotland, where the late Princess Diana is said to have driven it. Here’s the auction announcement from Bonhams: A classic motorboat formerly owned and driven by HRH the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, for more than 30 years,…

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