Thursday, March 28

Browsing: Cruising Life

Here’s some big news on the power catamaran front. Prestige, the French builder of luxury motoryachts and part of the powerful Groupe Beneteau, will start making luxury power cats. Erwin Bamps, the Prestige general manager, made the announcement at a Groupe Beneteau press conference at the Cannes Yachting Festival. He did not reveal any details, and said he would have much more about the new cat at the Düsseldorf boat show in January. But Bamps did say the cat was an expansion of the company’s “private island concept” and it would be aimed at both the charter and owner-operator markets…

In the early 1900’s, New York businessmen discovered that the trip from Long Island and Connecticut to Wall Street in Manhattan could be accomplished faster and more luxuriously on a boat. They built some amazing fast commuters or business boats specifically for this purpose. Pan forward a hundred years and boat commuting still works. A resourceful airline pilot based in New York City and flying out of LaGuardia follows the lead of these early commuter boat pioneers by living aboard and commuting to work on a Ranger Tugs R-29. Instead of staying in an expensive and tiny Manhattan apartment and…

Two candles that had been lighted but left unattended in the VIP suite caused a fire that burned and sank the 120-foot yacht Andiamo at its dock in Miami two years ago, according to a new National Safety Transportation Board report. The NTSB also said that the crew’s failure to complete repairs to the yacht’s fire detection and alarm system contributed to the severity of the fire. The yacht, worth $6.3 million, was a loss, and the fire caused an additional $480,000 worth of damage to the marina and other boats. The NTSB reported this series of events: On Dec.…

Many years ago, when Bob Long was running the company, Wellcraft was a powerhouse. It made everything from Scarabs (think Don Johnson in Miami Vice) to cruising boats to fishing boats. It had a strong dealer network, and a worldwide presence. But times change, and Wellcraft’s fortunes waned. Then Groupe Beneteau bought the company in 2017, and now Wellcraft is poised for a resurgence. Indeed, Wellcraft just announced it will make a series of “adventure cruisers,” starting with a 35-foot Commuter driven by three outboards. It’s scheduled to be launched in the U.S. next spring. Wellcraft sees a trend for…

Cutwater is making a new C-288 Coupe with twin 250-hp Yamaha outboards, a fully equipped pocket cruiser suitable for a couple or a small family. The boat has a 10-foot beam to maximize the cabin area for comfortable living on board and to give the boat stability, while still making it a trailerable vessel. The new 28 has a double-stepped, deep-V hull for performance and efficiency. It comes with a standard bow thruster and electric trim tabs to make maneuvering easy both around the docks and underway. Inside, the forward stateroom has seating around a table that drops down to…

Divers have found at least three damaged pipelines on the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico about two miles off Port Fourchon, Louisiana, that may be responsible for a 14-mile-long oil slick that appeared there after Hurricane Ida. The spill was so large that NOAA took pictures of it from space. The Coast Guard and other agencies have been monitoring the oil spill and they report that the rate of new oil flowing to the surface has slowed dramatically. Originally, the Coast Guard said it did not know where the oil was coming from. Talos Energy Inc., a Houston-based…

Garmin just announced that it’s launching a new Surround View Camera System to enhance situational awareness and help with docking. The new system uses six cameras to maximize visibility all around the boat. Garmin says that Surround View gives captains a bird’s-eye, 360-degree view around the boat. This visibility lets captains see what’s around their boat’s perimeter in low-speed maneuvers in real time. The technology uses six 1080p cameras located around the boat: a forward-looking camera in the bow, a rear-looking camera aft, and two side-looking cameras on both the port and starboard sides. It displays a full overhead image…

Sunreef Yachts just launched their new 70 Sunreef Power, which fills the obvious hole between the Sunreef 60 and the Sunreef 80. Like its siblings, the 70, all-new for the 2022 model year, is a luxury catamaran that can be highly customized for each owner. The 70 Sunreef Power, built in Gdansk, Poland, can hold up to 12 people in five staterooms and crew quarters; the galley can be ordered up or down, depending on the owner’s desires. The new cat, with an LOA of 69’ 9,” has enormous social areas, inside and out. The foredeck alone spans the yacht’s…

A Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who had been attacked by a shark from his fishing boat in the middle of the night about 35 miles off the coast of Grand Isle, Louisiana. They flew him to a hospital in New Orleans, where he was in critical condition. The Coast Guard in New Orleans says it received a VHF call from the fishing boat Moon Glow at 12:51 a.m. The call said a 64-year-old member of the crew had been attacked by a shark and had a serious leg injury. The crewman had been untangling fishing nets from…

The Newport International Boat Show, the first how of the season in the Northeast, opens on Thursday, Sept. 16, and runs through Sunday, Sept. 19. The show was cancelled last year, because of the pandemic; it undoubtedly will more interest than usual this year as a result. The Newport show has always been one of my favorites, because almost all of the new boats are there and then, well, it’s in Newport, one of the most historic and iconic boating destinations in the United States. The show this year, the 50th annual, will have hundreds of new power and sail…

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