Cruising Life

Beneteau, Pardo, Solaris: Winners of Boat of the Year Awards

By Peter Janssen on January 20, 2020 Cruising Life

The European Powerboat of the Year Awards were just announced on the opening night of the Düsseldorf show, and the winners included Beneteau, Pardo, Solaris and, in a special category, Volvo Penta. This was the 14th year the awards were announced at a gala dinner. They were chosen by an expert jury from Europe’s leading boat testing organizations and eight leading powerboat magazines. The boat awards were in five categories: Up to 25 feet; up to 35 feet; up to 45 feet; over 45 feet; and displacement (regardless of length). The winners, chosen from a field of 23 nominees, are:…

Feds Say Smugglers Use Yachts To Bring Chinese to Florida

By Peter Janssen on January 19, 2020 Cruising Life

Federal officials say that human smugglers are using recreational yachts to carry dozens of Chinese without papers from the Bahamas into South Florida. The Coast Guard has stopped two boats, one a 63-foot Sunseeker and the other a 70-foot Hatteras (pictured above), as they approached South Florida. Federal authorities charged three men who were running the boats with human smuggling, and said that each of the Chinese paid them thousands of dollars for the trip. In the most recent case, the Coast Guard stopped the Sunseeker, INXS FINALLY, which was carrying 14 Chinese and one Bahamian to the U.S. from…

Bumfuzzle Moves On, Cruising in the Caymans

By Peter Janssen on January 16, 2020 Cruising Life

When we last heard from the Schulte family, they were waiting out the hurricane season up Rio Dulce in Guatemala. But now a new season has started, and they’re on their way again. The Schultes, Pat, Ali, their daughter Ouest, 10, and son Lowe, 8, just reached Little Cayman Island on their 1986 Grand Banks 42 Bumfuzzle, and they’re happy to be there. In late November, the Schultes, from St. Paul, Minnesota, topped off their fuel tanks, giving them about a 1,000 nm range, and headed out into the Caribbean, staying a while in Roatan, the largest of Honduras’ Bay…

New Compact ThrowRaft PFD: Easy To Store, Easy To Use

By Peter Janssen on January 15, 2020 Cruising Life

Here’s something that you might want to get for your boat, or even for your ditch bag: The new ThrowRaft compact, throwable Personal Flotation Device that inflates into a life-saving “raft” in seconds. It’s approved by the Coast Guard as a Type IV PFD, meaning it must be immediately accessible on the boat and can be thrown to a person in the water to keep him or her afloat until rescued. One appealing feature of the ThrowRaft is its compact size. It’s much smaller than the traditional Type IV PFDs – buoy rings or seat cushions. Since it’s small, measuring…

Right Whale Calf Hit by Boat; May Starve

By Peter Janssen on January 15, 2020 Cruising Life

Here’s a terrible story from Patch about a new-born right whale calf apparently being hit by a boat prop; the injuries may prevent it from nursing and surviving: ST. PETERSBURG, FL — The FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg is closely monitoring a rare right whale and her calf after the calf was discovered with two open wounds on its head consistent with a boat propeller last week. “The injuries are concerning because of the severity and location of the wounds,” commented marine biologists at the research institute. “One of the injuries appears to include damage to the calf’s…

Cruising With a Cat – Around the World

By Peter Janssen on January 14, 2020 Cruising Life

Long-range cruising is one thing; long-range cruising with a pet is another. But James and Jennifer Hamilton have managed to make all this seem easy, as they’ve been cruising – literally around the world – with their cat Spitfire ever since they left Seattle on their Nordhavn 52 Dirona in 2012. The Hamiltons, who now are in Amsterdam, have written an account of life on board with Spitfire on their blog, MVDirona.com. Here’s how they – and Spitfire – have managed so far: When we first started planning our boat trip around the world, we expected that cruising internationally with…

Really Big, and Really Old, Grouper Caught off Southwest Florida

By Peter Janssen on January 13, 2020 Cruising Life

If you think you’ve ever caught a big grouper, take a look at this one. It weighs in at 350 pounds. It’s also the oldest Warsaw Grouper ever recorded; biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission estimate it’s about 50 years old. The huge, old grouper was caught in 600 feet of water off Southwest Florida with a hook and line. The largest Warsaw grouper ever caught in Florida was about 440 pounds. Warsaw groupers have an elongated second dorsal spine. They are the only grouper with 10 dorsal spines; the others have 11. Biologists with the commission’s Wildlife…

New Sea Ray Features Lithium-Ion Battery Pack To Run Accessories

By Peter Janssen on January 13, 2020 Cruising Life

Sea Ray just introduced its new top-end, outboard-powered SLX-R 400e model at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, featuring a new electrical system that takes the place of a genset on the boat. The 40-footer is powered by three 450-hp, V8 Mercury Racing outboards. It also has Brunswick’s new Fathom e-Power with a high-capacity, lithium-ion battery pack with enough storage to run all the accessory systems on board, including air conditioning and gyro stabilizers. (Brunswick owns Sea Ray.) The Fathom e-power system is eco-friendly, in that you don’t have to run the outboards, using fossil fuel, if you just…

Georgia Spells Out New, Restrictive, Rules for Anchoring Overnight

By Peter Janssen on January 8, 2020 Cruising Life

Georgia’s new anchoring rules went into effect on January 1, and they spell out where you can – and where you cannot – anchor overnight there. These rules, spelled out by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, will affect many cruisers traveling through Georgia on the Intracoastal Waterway or as part of the Great Loop. (You can see the DNR’s entire administrative order, as well as an interactive map showing anchoring areas, below.) The new rules basically prohibit anchoring within 1,000 feet of any structure, although they create new “marina zones” between 300 feet and 1,000 feet of a marina…

How Strong is Your Favorite Knot? See MIT Video

By Peter Janssen on January 5, 2020 Cruising Life

We all know that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But what about your knots? How strong are they? Now we have answers, and videos, from researchers at MIT who used color-changing fibers and a new mathematical model to predict a knot’s stability. The math model is based on several things, including the number of crossings involved and the direction the rope segments twist when you pull the knot tight. “These subtle differences between knots critically determine whether a knot is strong or not,” says Jörn Dunkel, associate professor of mathematics at MIT. “With this model,…

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