Sunday, October 13

Browsing: Cruising Life

Safehaven Marine, based in County Cork, Ireland, builds boats and small ships for just about every purpose in marine world. They build pilot boats, rescue craft, working boats for offshore oil rigs, naval vessels and yachts. Their motto is, “When you demand strength and seakeeping, turn to Safehaven.” The company’s crew also holds a world marine speed record in a boat of their own design and build. So, it is not surprising that Safehaven’s yachts are both robustly built and endowed with excellent seakeeping characteristics. The new 70-foot T 2000 Voyager has all of the company’s DNA in a narrow-hulled,…

The Bristol, Rhode Island builder NorthCoast is a family-run company that has a big reputation for their sea-kindly center console and pilot house designs that are offshore-capable and prized among sportfishermen. Their new 415HT is a dual-purpose boat that will be a capable sportfisherman and a couple’s fast cruising boat. With NorthCoast’s familiar Downeast styling and an enclosed salon, this design compliments the existing line but with a difference. The 415HT has the builder’s deep V hull design with a whopping 24 degrees of dead rise at the transom. This deep V-shape provides a soft ride in chop and a…

Now here is something different for adventurous travelers, a boutique-style charter on mini-cruise vessels in Indonesia. The outfit is called Rascal Voyages and they have two vessels Rascal and Rebel, each with five cabins, that will take you to the most pristine islands, reefs and beaches on the planet. Indonesia is a vast country made up of thousands of islands. It is also one of the world’s most populous countries but most of the people live on Java and very few live on the outer islands where there is no infrastructure, no airports and no bridges. The only way to…

Last spring, the American Bureau of Shipping convened their first sustainability conference for the yacht industry in Monaco in an effort to share knowledge of the industry’s ongoing efforts to promote sustainability in yachts. Experts in their respective fields discussed efforts to develop alternative fuels, how to create more efficient electrical systems, where the development of fuel-cell technology is leading and more. It was agreed that the yacht industry had to take a public stand on sustainability since yachts are leisure craft and yachting is often considered by the general public to be wasteful and a prime source of carbon…

The British designer and builder of water-jet powered tenders, Williams is marking it’s 20th year with the introduction of a new version of the SportJet 520 and a limited edition of their TurboJet 325. The new 520 delivers eye-watering speed and will accelerate in seconds to a top end of 56 knots. This latest version has many upgrades including new ergo-dynamic seating, a boarding step and a boarding handrail. The new limited-edition TurboJet 325 is a size that will fit into the dinghy garages on boats over 40 feet yet it still delivers high speed performance and the ability to…

The Newport International Boat Show is only three weeks away with the kick-off on Thursday September 12. There are many reasons for coming to Newport for the show. It is the largest in-the-water show in the Northeast and features a broad selection of both sail and powerboats. Plus, acres of tents house hundreds of marine vendors of all types, many of whom offer great show discounts on their products and services. If you are coming to the show, you are also coming to the City by the Sea that is considered the sailing capital of America and has a new…

The Outback 50, designed by Michael Peters, has been on the scene for five years and still, in our estimation, occupies a unique niche among performance cruisers. It is a truly a boat that embraces the outdoor lifestyle. The concept begins with what Outback calls the “Infinity deck” or the expansive after deck that is open on the sides but covered with a hard-top extension of the salon’s cabin top. The sheer line has a step down as it runs aft and the cabin top, enclosing the flybridge and upper lounge, has a pleasant curve, so the straight hardtop aft…

This is a story with a happy ending, but it certainly could have gone the other way had it not been for the bravery of 17-year-old Brady Procon. Procon was sitting on the porch of a rented cottage on the shore of New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesauke when he heard his father yell out that there was a driverless, out-of-control motorboat speeding in circles in the no wake zone where children were swimming. The motorboat belonged to a local sailing club and in a freak accident one of the sailing dinghies tipped over next to the instructor’s motorboat. Its mast hit…

The capsized 121-foot mega yacht Love Bug was intentionally run into shallow waters near the Chesapeake Bay’s West River last week after it began taking on water. A witness on hand, Tim Hardman, who owns Tour Boat Annapolis, reported that he saw the yacht listing and as he got closer he could hear the high water alarms ringing. “As we tried to figure out what part of the boat we were looking at, we realized it slowly started to list and lean over to one side,” Hardman said. “I would say within four to five minutes the boat was consumed…

And now for something a little different, a family cruiser that intentionally goes slow. The Polish builder, Delphia, now owned by Groupe Beneteau, has been building lake and coastal cruisers for 30 years and they continue to embrace the notion that cruising should be serene, quiet and, yes, slow. Their 32-foot Delphia 10 has a displacement trawler-style hull that provides a lot of interior volume for living and sleeping spaces. The boat comes with a number of power packages, including an all-electric system, and with the beefiest diesel, a 110-horesepower Yanmar, it tops out a nine knots.  It’s most efficient…

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