Cruising Life

Is It Cheaper to Live Near the Water, or On the Water? In Portland, Maine, the Answer is Clear

By Peter Janssen on December 4, 2017 Cruising Life

Robert Stephens and Paul Waring, of Stephens Waring Design in Belfast, Maine, do much more than design beautiful, fast and innovative boats. Now they’ve done a comparison of real estate and boat prices in Portland, Maine, to see if it costs more to live near the water or on the water. Their answer: In a side-by-side comparison of actual living space, floating residences (including houseboats, floating homes and live-aboard boats) come out ahead; it’s considerably cheaper to live on a boat. And they have maps and charts to prove their point. Stephens and Waring looked at upscale neighborhoods near the…

Heroes: Two Ship Pilots Get International Bravery Award for Saving Ship in Houston Fire. See Video of Flames

By Peter Janssen on December 4, 2017 Cruising Life

September 6, 2016, started as just another night at work for Captain Michael C. Phillips (above, left) and Captain Michael G. McGee, two ship pilots working on the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the United States. Just after midnight, they were piloting the Aframax River, an 810-foot-long tanker, undocking it from its terminal. All of a sudden, the ship lost propulsion, drifting into two mooring dolphins and breaching a diesel fuel tank. Diesel spilled from the ship, starting an inferno with flames leaping 90 feet into the air. (See a video taken from another ship,…

More Details and Performance Charts for Yanmar’s New 50-hp Diesel Outboard

By Peter Janssen on December 4, 2017 Cruising Life, Engine Room

Production has started on the innovative Yanmar Dtorque 111 50-hp, common-rail, turbo-diesel outboard, which the company says is the world’s first viable diesel outboard. The new outboard was developed as a Neander-Shark engine; Neander Motors, based in Kiel, Germany, on the Baltic, specializes in producing small capacity diesels with two con-rods per piston. The new outboard has two counter-rotating crankshafts in a lightweight aluminum block to create a perfect balance, free of vibration. The diesel outboards are lighter and more compact than traditional gas outboards of the same size. The company says they have twice the engine life, up to…

Proposed Offshore Wind Farm in Nantucket Sound is Dead

By Peter Janssen on December 4, 2017 Cruising Life

Here’s some news for those of us who love to cruise on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind, which was supposed to build the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. with up to 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, is dead. It isn’t going to happen. Indeed, Cape Wind, based in Boston, has notified the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has terminated its wind development lease covering 25 acres about 5 miles off Cape Cod in the area of Horseshoe Shoal. The idea had been to develop a 468-megawatt offshore wind farm, creating enough energy to power 200,000…

NOAA: Extremely Active Hurricane Season Ends. See Chilling Four-Minute Video

By Peter Janssen on December 1, 2017 Cruising Life

The 2017 hurricane season is now officially over, and we have to say good riddance. Unfortunately, it matched NOAA’s predictions for being extremely active, with 17 named storms, including ten that became hurricanes. And six of those were major hurricanes, including the first two to hit the continental U.S. in the past 12 years. By NOAA’s records, 2017 was the seventh most active season going back to 1851, and the most active season since 2005. “This was a hurricane season that wouldn’t quit,” said retired Navy Rear Admiral Timothy Galladuet, acting NOAA Administrator. Three major hurricanes made landfall this year:…

On Watch

By Peter Janssen on November 30, 2017 Cruising Life, On Watch with Peter Janssen

Holiday Boat Parades, from Virginia to California, With Advice About How To Stay Safe By Peter A. Janssen Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, it’s full speed ahead for the holiday season. And for boat owners, that means holiday boat parades, where people decorate their boats in everything from simple strands of lights to Hollywood-like productions filled with Santas and reindeer and almost anything else you can imagine. Most of the parades end, of course, with parties back on shore, which are at least half the fun. For those of us in the north, it’s getting too cold for…

Here’s a Different Look at the First Kadey-Krogen 50 Open from John Deere

By Peter Janssen on November 30, 2017 Cruising Life

The first Kadey-Krogen 50 Open is now on a ship heading from the factory in Taiwan to Florida, where it should arrive before long. And that’s none-to-soon for its owner, Larry Polster, a Kadey-Krogen vice president, who, with his wife Janet, has been actively engaged in the building and fitting out of their new boat, choosing everything from the hand-crafted vanity drawers to the single John Deere diesel. We’ve been covering Polster’s involvement in the boat, the first Kadey-Krogen with an open interior – meaning the salon and galley are open to the pilothouse, which is just one step up.…

Canadian Couple Cruises to Mexico, Falls Prey to “Four-Foot-Itis”

By Peter Janssen on November 29, 2017 Cruising Life

We all know what “four-foot-itis” means, right? It’s the legendary fever that grips boat owners who, even though they may love the boat they have, are more than ready to move onward and upward to a new one that’s four-feet longer than their current model. Well, here’s a story about “four-foot-itis” in spades: Lawrence and Penny Talbot, from Vancouver, British Columbia, like cruising; in fact, they’ve been cruising for about 40 years, primarily in the Pacific Northwest, throughout the San Juan Islands and even around Vancouver Island. They started with a 26-foot Tanzer sailboat and worked their up to a…

New GOST Apparition: A Cutting-Edge Monitoring and Security System for Your Boat

By Peter Janssen on November 29, 2017 Cruising Life, Electronics

GOST just launched a new, cutting-edge touchscreen monitoring and security system so you can know what’s going on inside and outside your boat, called Apparition. You control it with interactive 5- and 7-inch touchscreen keypads installed throughout the boat, as well as through an app that works with smartphones and tablets. You can install as many as 16 Apparition touchscreens throughout the boat and they work with up to 192 sensors, monitoring everything from a locked liquor cabinet or the door to a guest cabin to high-water alarms in the engine room. When an alarm sounds, you touch the flashing…

Solar-Powered Boat Completes the Great Loop – a First

By Peter Janssen on November 29, 2017 Cruising Life

A homemade 48-foot trimaran running entirely on solar panels, batteries and an all-electric Torqueedo propulsion system just completed the Great Loop. Jim Greer, the 75-year-old former filmmaker and captain of the boat, says it’s the first time a boat has done the Loop entirely under solar power. “With solar panels, batteries and Torqueedo electric motors, we were able to complete our travel days without any use of fossil fuels or plugging into marina electric hook-ups when we docked,” Greer said. “We don’t have a backup generator or power cords in case of emergency, and that’s the adventure of it.” Greer,…

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