Cruising Life

Nordhavn Rendezvous: More than Ever Before

By Peter Janssen on May 8, 2024 Cruising Life

The largest gathering of Nordhavns ever assembled is meeting at a Nordhavn rendezvous in Poulsbo, Washington. More than 60 of the iconic long-range cruising boats are at the rendezvous, and owners of a dozen more came by car and plane. This year there are 18 different models in slips at the Poulsbo Marina, from a 35 up to a 96. The rendezvous, a weekend of educational seminars, dinners, dock parties and story-telling, started on Thursday, May 9 and runs through Sunday, May 12. It was organized by Nordhavn and Jill and Don Bernard, who own a Nordhavn 47, Slow Burn…

New Delphia 11 Hybrid Family Cruiser

By Peter Janssen on May 8, 2024 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The new Delphia 11 Sedan from the Beneteau Group is a no-nonsense, practical family cruiser with electric or diesel power that’s designed for inland lakes and waterways. The Sedan has a fully enclosed wheelhouse and two cabins and one head below. Power comes from a single 110-hp Volvo diesel with shaft drive or a 55kW Torqeedo electric motor with 38kWh battery capacity. The full displacement hull carries a squared-off bow so there’s lots of space and headroom in the master cabin below. Top speed is about nine knots under diesel power and about 6.5 knots under electric. The Sedan has…

New Evo R4 WA: Just Keeps Growing

By Peter Janssen on May 7, 2024 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

If you missed the Italian-made 43-foot Evo R4 WA at the recent Palm Beach show, you can still catch it as the Venice show that starts at the city’s historic Arsenal on May 29. But wherever you find it, the uber-modern Evo, devoid of things like stand-up cleats and railings that might interrupt its clean lines, is bound to turn a lot of heads. And that’s before you push a button and deploy the bulwarks from both sides aft, or push another one and the transformer-type stern opens up and unfolds a terrace down to water level. The concept of…

Selene 72: Big Blue-Water Cruiser

By Peter Janssen on May 7, 2024 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The Selene 72 Ocean Explorer ticks a lot of the boxes for safe and comfortable blue-water cruising. Designed by Guido de Groot in the Netherlands and Howard Chen and his Selene Design Studio in Taiwan, the big Selene has a modern-styled raised pilothouse, Portuguese bridge and high bulwarks for safety, wide side decks, large side windows to provide lots of interior light, and an upper flybridge. The aft deck and side decks are covered for weather protection. Doors on both sides of the pilothouse open to the side decks and the Portuguese bridge, which has a large settee set across…

How To Keep Your Pet Safe On Board

By Peter Janssen on May 7, 2024 Cruising Life

Here are some great tips about how to keep your pets safe on board this summer from MarineMax: You pets can’t regulate their body temperature as wel as we can, so it’s important to make sure pets stay hydrated and don’t overheat. Keep fresh drinking water available and a shady spot for them to get out of the sun if they need to. Keep decks cool. A hot deck can damage your pet’s paw pads, so make sure there is a temperature-regulated surface available. Even just hosing down the deck can save sensitive paws. If it is too hot for…

Coming: New Light-Filled Prestige F5

By Peter Janssen on May 6, 2024 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Prestige, the upscale French builder, just announced that it’s making a new 57-foot F5 flybridge motoryacht, a larger version of the 50-foot F4 that it launched at the Cannes Yachting Festival last September. The new F5 has the same styling as the F4, but with even more glazing in the salon and in the hull sides for the lower accommodations deck. Indeed, the salon sides have almost full-height glass side windows, forward and aft; on the starboard side, they’re separated by a sliding glass door in the middle, designed to give the captain immediate access to the side deck. The…

Dive Boat Captain Sentenced to Prison

By Peter Janssen on May 6, 2024 Cruising Life

A federal judge has sentenced the captain of the dive boat Conception that caught fire and sank off Southern California in 2019, killing all 33 passengers who were sleeping on a lower deck and one crewmember, to four years in prison. The captain, Jerry Nehl Boylan, 69, of Santa Barbara, was convicted by a federal court jury in November of “seaman’s manslaughter.” It said he was guilty of “misconduct, gross negligence and inattention to his duties.” The charge carried a sentence of up to ten years in federal prison. The 75-foot dive boat caught fire at 3 a.m. on Labor…

Photo by Will Ricketson

Iconic Shelter Island Runabout: Now with Outboards

By Peter Janssen on May 2, 2024 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The iconic Shelter Island 38 Runabout, which got a lot of attention when Billy Joel launched hull number one in 1996, is now being built with outboards. The original boat had twin 415-hp MerCruisers with Bravo 3 drives and counter-rotating props, delivering the “Newport by lunch” speed that Joel wanted. More recent versions have been powered by 370-hp Yanmar diesel sterndrives, topping out at 45 knots. Now, with twin 300-hp Mercury Verados, the top speed is about the same, but the outboards are quiet, and they can be lifted up for running in shallow water. Almost 30 years ago, the…

New Beneteau Antares 42-Foot Flagship

By Peter Janssen on May 1, 2024 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The flagship of Beneteau’s Antares fleet, the new 42-foot Antares 12 is a versatile flybridge cruiser that’s easy to like and easy to use. The Antares 12 is a three-cabin, two-head family cruiser, powered by three 300-hp Mercury outboards, with a top speed of 36.8 knots. Two 400-hp Mercury outboards are options. A fingertip joystick control makes slow-speed maneuvering and docking easy. A door next to the helm opens to the starboard side deck, so the captain can move around the boat quickly. All the way aft, a fixed bench seat runs across the transom, and the swim platform is…

“Bank Effect” Causes Crash: NTSB

By Peter Janssen on May 1, 2024 Cruising Life

A pilot’s navigation error and an unexpected “bank effect” caused a 600-foot-long tanker to hit a pier in South Carolina last September, sending a 300-foot section of the pier crashing into the water and cutting deep gashes in the tanker’s bow, according to a new report from the National Transportation Safety Board. The accident occurred on the Cooper River, north of Charleston, just after 4 in the afternoon, when the tanker Bow Triumph was heading outbound on the Joint Base Charleston Channel. The tanker had a beam of 105 feet and a draft of 26 feet. The channel was 600…

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