Cruising Life

New Rossinavi with Artificial Intelligence

By Peter Janssen on September 6, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

This was bound to happen. Artificial intelligence now is taking to the water, theoretically helping a new luxury yacht cruise more efficiently under electric power, while also keeping tabs (in not quite defined ways) on the crew to make sure they are embracing the new green technology to the full. All this is built into a new 164-foot Rossinavi hybrid named No Stress that was launched last spring and delivered to its owner last week. It’s the first in the Italian builder’s Blue line of hybrid yachts. No Stress has sleek, super-modern lines and an aluminum fast-displacement hull that has…

Lancia Aprea 52 To Debut in Cannes

By Peter Janssen on September 5, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The historic Cantieri Aprea builders in Sorrento, Italy, will unveil their all-new Lancia Aprea at the Cannes Yachting Festival, starting Sept. 12. With its elegant, classic lines, the new 52-foot Lancia Aprea is bound to get a lot of attention there and in the U.S. later on with a special outboard version. The Lancia Aprea line is the latest generation of boats from the Cantieri Aprea builders who date to the 1890s. They started with fishing boats and gained fame in the 1950s by building boats for movie stars who wanted to cruise between Sorrento and Capri. The company says…

Greenland Shark Found Off Belize

By Peter Janssen on September 5, 2023 Cruising Life

What’s a Greenland shark doing in Belize? Marine scientists aren’t exactly sure how to answer that question. What they do know is that one was found there recently, swimming thousands of miles away from its natural habitat. After studying pictures, they determined that the shark they found in the Caribbean was indeed a Greenland shark, the longest-living vertebrate in the world. Adult Greenland sharks are usually about 24 feet long and weigh 2,200 pounds. They are predatory. Greenland sharks aren’t exactly a garden-variety shark. They usually live thousands of feet underwater in the pitch dark near the Arctic, and are…

Jimmy Buffett: A Full Life

By Peter Janssen on September 5, 2023 Cruising Life

For more than half a century, Jimmy Buffett made people happy. It’s almost impossible to listen to one of Buffett’s songs and not end up with a smile on your face; you want to sing along, to join the fun. At his concerts (as many as 250 a year), people did just that, shouting out the refrains (“salt, salt, salt”) and reciting the well-memorized lyrics. They not only liked Jimmy Buffett’s music, they wanted to join Jimmy Buffett’s life. He was authentic, the real thing. He led the life his Parrotheads dreamed about. And why not? Jimmy Buffett seemed to…

Tyde Launches New 43-foot Icon

By Peter Janssen on September 4, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The eye-catching Tyde Icon, with looks like nothing else on the water, will make first show appearance at the Cannes Yachting Festival starting on Sept. 12. The all-electric Icon is a foiling luxury vessel, using leading-edge technology to provide a smooth, and quiet, ride for a group of passengers. The 43-foot boat is powered by two 100 kW electric motors giving it a top speed of 33 knots and a range of more than 50 nm at its cruising speed of 24 knots. It comes with a battery capacity of 240 kWh. The Icon has a beam of 14’ 7”…

How To Dock in Wind or Current

By co_admin on September 4, 2023 Cruising Life

Here some great advice from Skipper Tips about how to dock safely even when there’s a strong wind or current. Take heed: Imagine you need to dock your boat in a strong, gusty wind between two other boats. The wind is blowing from ahead of your bow and parallel to the pier. How can you make this docking challenge easier? Follow these five easy steps. Stop into any marina on a weekend and you’re bound to see several great and not-so-great docking approaches. The best approaches are never about speed or quickness, but about command and control. Keep your bow…

Dive boat Conception. Photo by Ventura County Fire Department

NTSB Urges Coast Guard To Act on Safety

By Peter Janssen on September 4, 2023 Cruising Life

The National Transportation Safety Board is urging the Coast Guard to adopt safety management regulations for small passenger vessels, one of the recommendations that the NTSB made as a result of the fire on the commercial dive boat Conception that killed 34 people off Southern California in September, 2019. Safety management systems (SMS) regulations now are now looser for smaller passenger vessels than they are for cargo ships and workboats. But the NTSB has asked the Coast Guard to tighten them since 2005. Congress approved a tightening in 2010. For its part, the Coast Guard says it has made some…

Man Overboard from World’s Largest Cruise Ship

By Peter Janssen on September 3, 2023 Cruising Life

A 19-year-old college student, on vacation with a group of friends, somehow fell off the world’s largest cruise ship off the Coast of Cuba last week and has not been found. Sigmund Ropich is from Texas but he was attending college in Washington State. He fell off the Wonder of the Seas about 9 at night on the second day of a seven-day cruise from Port Canaveral in Florida. The ship measures 1,188 feet long and was carrying 5,606 passengers and 2,300 crew on its 18 decks. Royal Caribbean International, which owns the ship, said, “The ship’s crew immediately launched…

Idalia’s Storm Surge Slams into Florida’s Big Bend

By Peter Janssen on August 31, 2023 Cruising Life

The most terrifying part of Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida on Wednesday morning, even more than the 129-mph winds and the blinding rain, was the storm surge. When Idalia slammed into the Big Bend area, north of Tampa and south of Tallahassee, it rose as high as 12 feet, about the level of the second floor in most houses. “I was swimming inside my house,” one Big Bend survivor told NBC News. The good news is that the bulk of the storm passed north of the heavily populated Tampa area, although there was a lot of local flooding. Indeed, 9.4…

Pearl to Display New 62 with Volvo Assisted Docking

By Peter Janssen on August 30, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Pearl will demonstrate Volvo’s new Assisted Docking system at the Southampton boat show starting Sept. 15. on its award-winning 62, the British builder’s best-selling model. Volvo’s Assisted Docking is a stem-to-stern system designed to take the stress out of docking a boat, even one as large as the Pearl 62. It represents the next generation of marine automation (although it does not replace a captain at the helm) and makes docking even in tight spaces safe and easy, compensating for the dynamics of wind and current. You control the boat’s direction and speed, while the system automatically adjusts for everything…

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