Cruising Life

New ALVA 90: No Fossil Fuel At All

By Peter Janssen on April 12, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

ALVA Yachts keeps pushing the envelope, building bigger and more high-tech solar/electric yachts. Its latest is a 90-foot luxurious solar/electric catamaran superyacht that gets additional clean power from hydrogen and wing sails. ALVA, a German company founded just three years ago, says its new OCEAN ECO 90 H2, currently in production, will be the first superyacht to run without any fossil fuel at all, with silent, sustainable power and zero emissions. The new 90 H2 will be launched late next year and it should have virtually unlimited range. Standard power for the new yacht comes from two 250-kW electric motors,…

Candela Building Foiling Electric Center Console

By Peter Janssen on April 12, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Candela just announced that it’s building a new 29-foot foiling boat that it says will be the first all-electric center console in the world. The new C-8 CC uses the same high-tech platform as the Candela Daycruiser that was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January. Candela says the Daycruiser is now the best-selling electric boat in the world, with more than 150 orders. An innovative Swedish builder, Candela now wants to enter the center-console market, the largest segment in the U.S., with more than 50,000 boats sold last year. The C-8 CC has two seats…

Greenline To Focus on Larger Yachts

By Peter Janssen on April 12, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Greenline, the trend-setting Slovenian builder, just announced that it will focus on building larger yachts and will discontinue its popular 33 in the summer of 2024. Back in 2008, Greenline staked out its position as the world’s leader in building hybrid production boats with its now iconic 33. It has delivered about 500 of them since then to owners in 50 countries around the world. The Greenline 33 also garnered more than 30 awards along the way, including one for International Boat of the Year. The Greenline 33 was innovative in more than its use of clean solar/electric/diesel technology. The…

Coast Guard Warns About Bulk Carriers Safety Risk

By Peter Janssen on April 11, 2023 Cruising Life

Here’s one more reason, as if you needed it, to stay out of the way of big cargo ships. The Coast Guard just issued a safety bulletin warning mariners about a growing number of huge bulk carriers arriving in the United States carrying wind turbine parts that are so large they limit visibility from the ship’s bridge. This brings to mind the already daunting vision of huge cargo ships navigating both Atlantic and Pacific ports filled with recreational boats, from Seattle and San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale and New York. Cruising up or down Delaware Bay has always been a…

Makai 37: A New Cat from a New Builder

By Peter Janssen on April 10, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

A new boat from a new builder, the Makai 37 is building on the growing popularity of power catamarans in a popular size range. The new Makai 37 is a two-stateroom, two-head cruiser with two 320-hp Yanmar diesels and surface-piercing props, delivering a top speed of 38 knots and a range of 750 nm. Twin 370-hp Yanmars are upgrades. Makais are built in Split, Croatia, by a new company lead by people with 20 years of experience in the industry, primarily on the catamaran side. The boat as designed by the Italian designer Emanuele Rossi. On its website, Makai says…

Michelle Lee Rows Solo Across Pacific

By Peter Janssen on April 10, 2023 Cruising Life

Michelle Lee, a 50-year-old massage therapist from Sydney, just became the first woman to row solo, with no assistance and no stops, across the Pacific. It took her more than 237 days, passing through five hurricanes and four cyclones, to row from Mexico to Australia. Here’s a great story from ABC Far North: An Australian has become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean unassisted and without stopping. Sydney-based Michelle Lee was greeted by cheering friends and supporters as she rowed into Port Douglas in Far North Queensland on Wednesday morning, marking the end of a 14,000-kilometre, 237-day…

Washington State Ferries photo

Ferry Captain Lost Situational Awareness: Report

By Peter Janssen on April 10, 2023 Cruising Life

The captain of a Washington State ferry lost situational awareness before his vessel hit a dolphin near its terminal in southwest Seattle at its cruising speed of about 15 knots, according to a newly released internal investigation. One car was damaged and one passenger suffered minor injuries in the allision (a collision with a stationary object) at 8:13 a.m. on Thursday, July 22 last year. The weather was clear with negligible wind at the time and the investigation, by the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Transportation Board, and Washington State Ferries, determined that the MV Cathlamet, a 328-feet-long ferry, did…

New Neptunus 650E: Luxury Blue-Water Cruiser

By Peter Janssen on April 9, 2023 Boat Reviews, Cruising Life

Made in Canada, just over the border from Niagara Falls, the new Neptunus 650E is a sleek, solid cruiser with some big-yacht touches and blue-water capabilities. The Neptunus 650E is a three-cabin, three-head cruiser that comes with a CE Category A Ocean Certified pedigree, meaning it’s built to handle winds over 40 knots and wave heights over 13 feet. It’s powered by twin 1136-hp CAT C18 diesels, giving it a top speed of 32 knots. At a cruising speed of 26 knots, it has a range of 282 nm. Dial back to 10 knots, and the range jumps to 713…

New 41-Knot, 65-foot Innovative Dutch Cruiser

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

The Van der Valk yard in The Netherlands is making a new 65-foot, 41-knot, luxury cruiser with an exceptional aluminum hull and the ability to navigate the shallow waters of the Bahamas and cut through rough water offshore. With a low profile, an aft-set flybridge, a massive 111-square-foot aft deck when the terraces are deployed, post-modern European lines and an Art-Deco styled interior, the new EDGE 65 will turn heads on both sides of the Atlantic. And that’s before you get to its performance. Van der Valk worked with Cor D. Rover, the Dutch superyacht designer, and Studio Delta Naval…

New 64-Foot Cat with Hydrogen Power

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

Swiss Sustainable Yachts AG in Zurich has sold the first hull of its solar/electric/hydrogen-powered 64-foot catamaran, AQUON One. The new luxury catamaran can hold up to 10 passengers and theoretically can have an unlimited range by combining all of its renewable emissions- and noise-free power sources. The AQUON One has 64 square meters of photovoltaic solar panels on its roof to charge its lithium-ion batteries. From there on, the cat’s green-power solution seems fairly elegant. For the short term, the batteries provide power for twin electric motors, one in each hull, for propulsion, and to run the yacht’s systems. But…

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