Cruising Life

New Alen 77 Flagship Now in U.S.

By Peter Janssen on December 11, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

The new Alen 77, the flagship of the Turkish builder, is distinguished by its elegant long, straight sheer and clean lines, and that’s before you see the wide side decks and the extended swim platform with teak all around. Alen has been making boats, starting at 44 feet, for the past 20 years. The new 77 is available in flybridge or sedan models. The sedan was on display at the recent Fort Lauderdale show with a price of $4.5 million, a very competitive number for a solid, comfortable, well-built 77-foot yacht. Powered by twin 1,000-hp Volvo IPS1350 pod drives, the…

Superyacht Crashes into Dry Dock

By Peter Janssen on December 10, 2023 Cruising Life

Sooner or later, we all have a misunderstanding with a dock; a sudden shift in the wind, a misjudgment of current, or simply a day when things don’t go well, and the boat and the dock have a meeting sooner that we’d planned. But a recent incident at the Lürssen yard in Germany put that sort of thing on an entirely new level. Indeed, a 446-foot yacht, one of the largest in the world under construction, ran into the steel door at the Lürssen dry dock in Bremen from the inside, damaging the door and then wiping out part of…

Sealine S390: Well-Designed Cruiser

By Peter Janssen on December 7, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Sealine’s new S390 is a versatile sportcruiser with lots of space for a day or weekend on board and even has room to sleep five on its accommodations deck below. Powered by twin 380-hp Volvo D6 diesel sterndrives, the new Sealine tops out at about 34 knots while providing a fun, safe ride for everyone on board. Designed by Britain’s Bill Dixon, who often works in the superyacht space, the new Sealine seems to have more room for relaxing and enjoying a cruise than is usual in this size range. The foredeck, for example, has 48 square feet of lounging…

Chesapeake Light Sells for $150,000

By Peter Janssen on December 6, 2023 Cruising Life

After a flurry of last-minute bidding, a 150-year-old lighthouse marking the entrance to Baltimore from the Chesapeake was auctioned for $150,000 earlier this week. The lighthouse is still an active aid to navigation, operated by the Coast Guard, but no one has lived there since 1964 when it was automated. The auction involved only the lighthouse, and not the water under it, and the interior needs some work. The auction notice says that there are no public utilities available. The lighthouse is officially the Craighill Channel Lower Range Front Light Station, marking the mouth of the Patapsco River, about two…

Windy Unveils First Adventure Boat

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

Windy just unveiled its plans for a new adventure boat, the S38, entering a rapidly growing segment of the day or weekend cruising market. The S38 is the Norwegian builder’s first adventure boat, although it’s now building 17 different boats from 27 to 60 feet. It’s offering the S38 with either inboard diesel sterndrive power, or with outboards, preferred by the U.S. market. With twin Volvo D6-440 DPI sterndrives, the S38 has a top speed of 44 knots. With twin 450-hp Yamaha or twin Mercury 400-hp outboards, the top speed goes up to 48 knots. Windy is building the S38…

Shark Kills U.S. Woman in Bahamas

By Peter Janssen on December 6, 2023 Cruising Life

A 44-year-old woman from Lowell, Massachusetts, was killed by a shark when she was paddle boarding with her husband in the Bahamas. Lauren Erickson Van Wart was on a vacation with her husband, Ernest, at the Sandals Royal Bahamian Resort in western New Providence Island. They had been married for 13 years, and were looking forward to a dream vacation at the five-star, adults-only resort. Just after 11 on Monday morning, they were about three-quarters of a mile off the beach when people heard screams. A shark had dragged her off the paddleboard. A lifeguard at the resort ran for…

New Princess Y80 Heading to Miami

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

The large, luxurious and fast Princess Y80 flybridge motor yacht will make its U.S. debut at the Miami show in February. The British-built yacht had its global introduction at the Cannes show in September. With 1,900-hp MAN V12 diesels and straight shaft drives, the new Princess tops out at 33 knots, and it has an impressive range of 340 nm at a fast cruising speed of 24 knots. Dial back to 10 knots and the range jumps to well above 1,000 nm. The Y80 comes with a slash of glazing running almost full length of the hull side, suggesting forward…

VisionF Launches 82 Flagship

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

VisionF, the four-year-old Turkish builder, just launched its new 82 all-aluminum power catamaran flagship. Powered by twin 800-hp Volvo IPS1050 pod drives, the new 82 has a top speed of 16 knots and a range of 1,600 nm. VisionFs can be heavily customized, but the new 82 has three staterooms holding up to six guests, plus two more for four crew. The cat’s beam of almost 40 feet allows for massive amounts of interior and exterior space for relaxing, entertaining or living on board for extended periods of time. The draft is just 2’ 6”, so the VisionF 82 can…

New Linssen 35 SL: A Couple’s Cruiser

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

Linssen Yachts, the family firm that’s been building steel boats in The Netherlands since 1949, just launched their new 35 SL couple’s cruiser. Powered by a single 75-hp Volvo diesel, the new 35 SL (for Sport Lux) with a displacement hull has a top speed of 8 knots. There’s nothing fancy about this latest Linssen, or previous Linssens either. They’re solid, functional, user-friendly cruising boats, made for coastal waterways or the canals and rivers of Europe and anywhere else. It doesn’t take a big leap to envision the Linssen 35 SL anywhere on the Great Loop, for example. The boat…

New Fast, Light, Jet Capsule Super Sport

By Peter Janssen on December 3, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Italy’s thinking-outside-the-box Lazzarini Design Studio has just launched its new 2024 Jet Capsule Super Sport, the fastest and lightest version of its pod-like capsules that are meant to inspire a new wave of mobility on the water. The new Jet Capsule SS is 26’ 2” long and weighs just 7,055 pounds, or 1,300 less than the previous version. It has a carbon-fiber shell laid up by vacuum-infusion molding. Powered by a 640-hp supercharged gas engine, it tops out at 38 knots, considerably faster than other Jet Capsules. It also accelerates to a 32-knot cruising speed in 12 seconds. Other gas…

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