Cruising Life

New Azimut 55 Fly, with Italian Style, Soft Curves and Sophisticated Design, To Debut in Dusseldorf

By Peter Janssen on November 15, 2017 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The all-new Azimut 55 Fly, with nary a sharp edge or straight line anywhere, will debut at the Boot Düsseldorf show in Germany from Jan. 20-28. The contemporary Italian-designed yacht, filled with light and luxury home-style interiors, has three cabins and two heads (plus a crew cabin and head), and will top out at about 31 knots. The Azimut’s sophisticated lines, inside and out, are soft and smooth; there are no sharp edges on this cruiser. The exterior is designed by Stefano Righini, for Azimut, and the interior by Achille Salvagni, an architect who’s on the A list from Elle…

The Ten Most Famous Sailors’ Bars in the World. Do You Agree?

By Peter Janssen on November 15, 2017 Cruising Life, Destinations

These are billed as the Ten Most Famous Sailors’ Bars in the World, but it really doesn’t matter how you get there; the drinks and atmosphere are the same whether you arrive by sail or by power. But take a look at this list, created by Sail Universe, and see if you’ve been to any of them, or if you have your own favorites. The pictures alone will make your mouth water. Peter’s Café Sport, Horta, Azores. (Historic, dating to 1859. Don’t know how I missed this when I was there with the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally.) Foxy’s Tamarind Bar, Jost…

Prehistoric Shark with 300 Teeth and Dating to the Dinosaur Age Found off Portugal

By Peter Janssen on November 15, 2017 Cruising Life

You definitely don’t want to go near this guy. Look at those teeth, all 300 of them. And he’s been around a lot longer than we have; in fact, this frilled shark, recently caught off the coast of Portugal, has lived, largely unchanged, for 80 million years – since T Rex and his friends were roaming the planet. A deep-sea dweller, living between 390 and 4,200 feet below the surface, the frilled shark has a unique mouth, with more than 300 teeth in 25 rows, specifically designed “to trap squid, fish and other sharks,” according to The Portugal News.…

Report from Lake Okeechobee: “Ugly, Dark Brown” Water and an Unhappy Lockmaster

By Peter Janssen on November 14, 2017 Cruising Life, Destinations

For all you snow birds who are heading south and perhaps thinking about crossing Lake Okeechobee to get to the west coast of Florida, take a look at this report from Peg and Jim Healy, very experienced cruisers on their Monk 36 Sanctuary. They crossed from east to west last week and wrote the following for Salty Southeast Cruisers’ Net: “The condition of the water is deplorable. In the anchorage at Stuart, the water is ‘Lake O chocolate milk.’ The water throughout the system is an ugly, dark brown. Water levels are high, and there are no water level issues…

New Software Creates Routes To Avoid Bad Weather, Already Being Used by the Navy

By Peter Janssen on November 14, 2017 Cruising Life, Electronics

Here’s something new in planning how to avoid heavy weather on a long cruise, thanks to researchers at the University of Connecticut and the U.S. Navy. It’s new software called TMPLAR (Tool for Multi-objective Planning and Asset Routing) and it’s already being used by the Navy to reroute ships to avoid bad weather. But it also can create routes, with waypoints, depending on whether you want to emphasize speed or fuel efficiency to reach your destination – all while avoiding bad weather. The software is already being fully integrated into the Navy’s meteorology and oceanographic weather forecasts for both surface…

Post-Hurricane Status Report of What’s Open, and What is Still Recovering, in the Caribbean

By Peter Janssen on November 13, 2017 Cruising Life, Destinations

It’s now been about three months since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated parts of the Caribbean, but the swath of destruction was selective. Some islands were virtually destroyed. Almost every building on Barbuda, for example, was knocked down, while on Antigua, almost next door, the damage was minor. Generally, the southern Caribbean, from Martinique on down, escaped undamaged, while Puerto Rico and the nearby U.S. and British Virgin Islands took a big hit. But that was then. What’s open now? Here’s an island-by-island update from the Travel section of The New York Times, reporting on the recovery situation and when…

Month-by-Month Itinerary for Cruising the Sea of Cortez, from November to May

By Peter Janssen on November 13, 2017 Cruising Life, Destinations

By all accounts, Mexico’s Sea of Cortez is a boating paradise, a 570-nm-long warm-water cruising ground filled with marine life and some 100 uninhabited islands, often surrounded by white beaches with nary a soul in sight. The question is not whether to go there or not; it’s really how long to spend once you get there. This story from Sea magazine suggests an answer, saying it takes seven months to sample everything the Sea of Cortez has to offer. Why rush? You need to avoid the hurricane season in summer, but otherwise just relax and enjoy yourself. Sea suggests you…

Dramatic You-Are-There Video of Rescue of Disabled Fishing Boat in a Gale off Scotland

By Peter Janssen on November 13, 2017 Cruising Life

This video is not for the faint of heart, but it is a dramatic testimony to the courage and dedication of the crew of a RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) rescue boat who went out in 45-mph winds and 30-foot waves to rescue six fishermen on a disabled fishing boat off the north coast of Scotland. The fishing boat became disabled when it fouled its prop in a westerly gale, and it started drifting toward shore. It took the RNLI rescue boat more than nine hours to tow the fishing boat back to port; the tow line parted a total…

Admiral Stavridis: Navy Needs To Return to Basic Blocking and Tackling

By Peter Janssen on November 13, 2017 Cruising Life

To my mind, James Stavridis is a national treasure. A retired four-star Admiral, Stavridis originally graduated from Annapolis and after 37 years rose to be Supreme Commander of NATO. He’s now chairman of the board of the U.S. Naval Institute and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. In his writing and public appearances, Stavridis comes across as an experienced, plain-spoken patriot who knows what he’s talking about. In this story for Bloomberg, below, Stavridis writes about what the Navy needs to do in the aftermath of the collisions of two destroyers, the USS McCain and…

The Seven Knots You Need to Know – in an Easy Video. Take a Look

By Peter Janssen on November 13, 2017 Cruising Life

One of my all-time movie favorites is the scene toward the end of Jaws where Roy Schneider, playing the very un-nautical police chief, is sitting in the cockpit of Robert Shaw’s fishing boat, trying to learn how to tie a bowline…”The rabbit comes out of the hole…” he recites, while the theme music comes up and the shark swims closer and closer for its final attack. In real life, as in the movies, you don’t want to wait until you – or your crew – are actually on the boat before you learn how to tie at least a few…

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