Here’s a great look at the best toys, technology and boats at the London Boat Show, in a CNBC video. Take a look at how you can use your Apple iWatch to control all the lights on your boat (pictured above), for example. Oh, you don’t want to do that? Well, try a ride on the Seabob instead. In the middle of winter here in the northern half of the U.S., it’s easy to forget that boating is fun. Here’s an easy reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ9sGUn6JZs
We all know about Nordhavn owners who circle the globe, head for high-latitude explorations or spend seasons island-hopping in the South Pacific. More typical, and realistic for the rest of us, are families who embark on coastal cruises or take off for the Caribbean, having adventures together and living the dream. Count the Folvigs from Sarasota in this group. The captain of this crew, John Folvig, bought a brokerage Nordhavn 62 last April. It was his first trawler, so he and his wife Jen and their three sons spent the summer cruising up and down the East Coast, getting used…
You don’t see this very often. A passing Carnival cruise liner rescued two crew members from the 121-foot Masteka 2, the most expensive yacht ever sold in Australia, when the yacht lost its steering and started taking in water at the stern. The Masteka 2 charters for $3,000 an hour, but no guests were on board at the time. See the video below: http://www.oceanofnews.com/two-saved-121-sinking-yacht-masteka-2-nearby-cruise-ship/
Bad things can happen in the Gulf of Alaska, particularly in January. First, the commercial fishing boat Lady Gudny had fuel problems and became disabled 230 miles east of Kodiak in 20-foot seas and 42-knot winds (pictured above). The 225-foot Coast Guard cutter Spar went to the rescue, but when it started to tow the Lady Gudny the tow line separated and caught in Spar’s props, disabling it. A Coast Guard helicopter flew in to rescue the four crew members from the Lady Gudny, while two commercial tugs went out to retrieve the cutter and the fishing boat. Read about it here and…
The British magazine Motor Boat & Yachting has just named the Azimut Magellano 66 the best passagemaker of the year during a gala awards dinner at the London boat show. The magazine’s annual Motor Boat Awards cover eight categories, ranging from sports boats to 100-foot custom yachts. The magazine said the Magellano won the Passagemaker category because it is “a boat that encapsulates everything wanted from a passagemaker: masses of storage space, a safe deck layout and a hull that is comfortable across a wide range of cruising speeds.” You can read our review of the Azimut Magellano by going…
The National Marine Manufacturers Association seems to have learned some lessons from last year, the first time its Miami boat show was on Virginia Key on Key Biscayne. Mainly, that it was hard to get there. Now, for the show starting Feb. 16, the NMMA has lined up more buses, more water taxis, and more parking spaces to make it easier to get to the show. And, the real point, there will be a lot more boats to see once you get there. See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZvcGzRI48
Laura Comela and Kevin Morris are hardly a stay at home couple. Indeed, it seems that they’re always on the road, or on the water, or in the air. That’s because they have a 27-foot Airstream for the road, a 34-foot Nordic Tug for the water, and a Cirrus turbojet for the air. They actually live in Portland, Oregon, where she’s a studio photographer, and he runs an electronic publishing business (Electronic Engineering Journal). But when they’re traveling, he runs his business from anywhere in the world, and she takes pictures, anywhere in the world. Right now Comela and Morris…
Just when we thought we knew everything about the Titanic, an Irish journalist found old photos, taken by the chief engineer of the Belfast shipyard that built the unsinkable ship, showing the extensive damage caused by a coal fire that started three weeks before the Titanic left the dock in Southampton in 1912. The photos had been stored in an attic in Southwest England. The journalist uncovered them while doing research on a documentary. They clearly show the extent of the fire in a three-story coal bunker, next to one of the ship’s boiler rooms, that damaged the hull and…
The new, more contemporary Grand Banks 60 is under construction in the factory in Malaysia, and is due to be launched this summer. The three-stateroom, two-head cruiser will be the flagship of the Grand Banks Heritage fleet, which now tops out at 54 feet. Built under the leadership of Grand Banks (and Palm Beach) CEO Mark Richards, the new 60 also will be stronger and lighter and made with more sophisticated materials than previous models, reflecting Richards’ decades of experience as one of the leading sailboat racers in the world. We don’t have may details yet, but we know the…
The last time anyone saw Granny, the world’s oldest killer whale, was more than two years ago in the Salish Sea between Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle. Researchers, who had been studying orcas there for many years, thought she was about 100 years old then, qualifying her as the oldest killer whale on the planet, and she was still using her accumulated wisdom to find food for her whale family. They now assume that she has died. Read about Granny here: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38496164 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38496164