Cruising Life

Want To Donate Your Boat? Act Now, Says BoatUS

By Peter Janssen on June 15, 2021 Cruising Life

ANNAPOLIS, Md., June 15, 2021 – Boat owners wishing to do good or take advantage of potential tax benefits may consider donating their boats to charity. Often this decision is made at the end of year just before the start of the new tax season. Waiting until the end of the year, however, could shortchange a boater’s potential tax benefits, according to the nonprofit BoatUS Foundation and Boating Safety and Clean Water, which has decades of experience operating a successful boat donation program. How can waiting to donate a boat until the end of the year potentially hurt you? Most…

Boatsetter Launches Luxury Yacht Rentals

By Peter Janssen on June 15, 2021 Charter, Cruising Life

Boatsetter, the global peer-to-peer boat rental company, is moving uptown. Indeed, Boatsetter just announced that it’s starting Boatsetter Lux, aimed at high-end day or term yacht charters with a dedicated concierge team in more than 600 locations around the world. Boatsetter started in Fort Lauderdale in 2012, and it has been growing ever since. It started a partnership with Geico, for example, to handle insurance on its rental boats. Boatsetter Lux is now a partnership between the parent Boatsetter and Airbnb Luxe and Luxury Retreats, offering access to yachts to people staying in Airbnb’s luxury homes and villas. Each yacht…

Elegant New Avionics Electric Bike Hits 36 mph

By Peter Janssen on June 15, 2021 Cruising Life, Gear

You probably won’t want to throw the new Avionics electric bike in your lazarette, or take it on the Great Loop. But it sure would be fun to ride down to your local marina or yacht club. The elegant Avionics VM, handmade in Poland in a vintage retro style, combines a steel frame with Jatoba wood for contrast, and it uses state-of-the-art electric power to hit a top speed of 36 mph. A sine-wave controller lets you choose a “force mode” for maximum speed, or a “street mode” for a walk-in-the-park experience. In the street mode, the Avionics has a…

New Safety Measures Proposed for Northwest Passage

By Peter Janssen on June 14, 2021 Cruising Life

I’ve been following boating traffic on the harrowing Northwest Passage ever since my friend Sprague Theobald cruised 8,500 miles from Newport, Rhode Island, to Seattle, on his Nordhavn 57 Bagan in 2009 (see photo above). Theobald, an award-winning documentary film maker, wrote about that trip in his gripping book, The Other Side of the Ice. His crew included his son, stepson and stepdaughter. At one point, when Bagan was trapped in ice that threatened to crush the hull, Theobald asked himself, “Have I brought my family together only to lead them to their deaths?” Since then, with global warming and…

Idyll Time Starts New Cruising Season in Alaska

By co_admin on June 14, 2021 Cruising Life

It’s the start of a new season for Jeff and Susie Parker on Idyll Time, their Kadey-Krogen 48 North Sea trawler, in Alaska. Veteran cruisers, the Parkers bought the boat new in 2006, cruised up and down the East Coast, completed the Great Loop, and three years ago shipped it to the Pacific Northwest, where they’ve been cruising ever since. Here’s their new blog posting, with Jeff’s terrific wildlife pictures: After eight days of work getting the boat ready for another season of cruising, we are finally pushing away from the dock for the first cruise of the season. It…

Hodgdon Building Two New Electric-Powered Tenders

By Peter Janssen on June 14, 2021 Cruising Life

Hodgdon, the historic Maine builder, just announced that it’s building new all-electric tenders, on the same hull as its diesel-powered 10.5-meter and 12-meter Venetian line of luxury tenders. The new tenders will use Vita Power’s high-performance powertrains with dual-prop stern drives. The 10.5-meter (about 34 feet) will use a single electric motor and three Lithium-ion batteries. The 12-meter (abut 39 feet) will have twin motors and four batteries. The range for both boats is about 20 to 50 nm, depending on speed and sea conditions. The batteries on both boats can be charged from the mothership, using AC or DC…

Wind Farms Coming for New York Bight

By Peter Janssen on June 13, 2021 Cruising Life

The Biden administration just announced that it’s starting the process of selling leases to develop wind farms in the New York Bight area between Long Island and New Jersey. The Bight is a triangle in the ocean between Montauk Point at the end of Long Island and Cape May at the southern tip of New Jersey. A total of eight leases will be for sale there, in what the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (part of the Interior Department) calls “a priority offshore wind farm.” The area is about 14 miles off the coast of New York and 26 miles…

Whale Swallows Cape Cod Diver, Spits Him Out

By Peter Janssen on June 12, 2021 Cruising Life

A lobster diver in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was swallowed by a humpback whale recently but he survived with just minor injuries. “I was completely inside,” the lobsterman, Michael Packard, 56, told the Cape Cod Times. Packard, a veteran diver from Wellfleet, was on his second dive of the day just before 8 in the morning. He was working from the boat Ja’n J, off Herring Beach Cove. A fleet of other boats were fishing for striped bass nearby. A commercial lobster diver, Packard dove down. When he was about ten feet from the bottom, he said, “All of a sudden, I…

New Zealand Developing Hydrogen-Powered Chase Boats

By Peter Janssen on June 9, 2021 Cruising Life

Team New Zealand just gave a big boost to the development of hydrogen power in recreational boating when it announced it is developing hydrogen-powered foiling chase boats for the next America’s Cup campaign. For years, RIBs have been the standard chase boats for most America’s Cup campaigns. But now Team New Zealand is working with AFCryo, a Christchurch company, to develop a hydrogen chase boat. They just released renderings of a prototype, a radical foiling catamaran with four hydrogen tanks in each hull and electric motors built into the foils and rudder. The hydrogen-powered boats will be built at the…

Riva Making New 68 Based on Iconic Hull

By Peter Janssen on June 8, 2021 Cruising Life

Riva, the iconic Italian builder, just announced that it’s making a new 68 Diable, based on the classic Riva Super America hull. Riva, now part of the Ferretti Group, plans to launch the 68 Diable in September. With Riva’s unmistakable lines, the 68 Diable has three staterooms, all with en suite heads, and a 40-knot top speed from optional 1,650-hp MAN diesels. Standard 1,550-hp MANs produce a cruising speed of 33 knots and a top speed of 37 knots, with a range of 260-nm. The new 68 Diable was drawn by Mauro Michell, the co-founder of Officina Italiana Design, with…

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