On Watch with Peter Janssen

Lauderdale Show Opens; Fewer Boats, Spirited Crowds

By Peter Janssen on October 29, 2020 Ft Lauderdale Boat Show, On Watch with Peter Janssen

The 61st annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, the largest in-water show in the world, just opened, with fewer exhibitors, smaller crowds, and lots of safety precautions taken because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The show runs through Sunday, Nov. 1. The crowds may not have been as large as in previous years (last year the show attracted 100,000 people), but they included a lot of serious boat buyers. Indeed, Jeff Druek, the head of Outer Reef Yachts, said he was “extremely pleased” with people he saw. “It does not seem that Covid-19 has dampened the spirits of those shopping for…

Arcadia Launches #18 of A85 with New Hot Lab Interior

By Peter Janssen on October 27, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Arcadia Yachts knows when it’s on to a good thing. After it launched its new A85 about ten years ago, the Italian yard won a series of prizes for the yacht’s design and performance. Now it’s just launched hull number 18, with a totally redesigned interior by the Hot Lab design firm in Milan, which has won a series of awards in its own right. “The A85 was an iconic model,” says Ugo Pellegrino, the sole director of Arcadia, and it “broke the pattern in one of the worst moments in yachting history.” Now, he said, “launching hull number 18…

Beneteau Building Long-Range Grand Trawler 62

By Peter Janssen on October 19, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Beneteau is doubling down on the trawler market, and is now building hull number one of a Grand Trawler 62, a long-range vessel with a full-displacement hull made for safe, comfortable (and slow) cruising. The new Grand Trawler 62 follows on the popularity of Beneteau’s Swift Trawler line, which now runs from 30 to 50 feet. But while they have semi-displacement hulls and cruise easily in the 15-16 knot range, the new 62 is most efficient cruising at 9 knots, where it has a 900-nm range. Powered by twin 730-hp MAN diesels with straight shafts, the new 62 will be…

Veteran Owners Customize New Hunt Ocean 63. See Video

By Peter Janssen on October 14, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Hunt has launched hull number one of its new Ocean 63 series, with a lot of input from its new owners, experienced cruisers who knew just what they wanted in a blue-water yacht. The owners, Jim and Cindy Cuminale, from Darien, Connecticut, worked with Hunt during the boat’s construction in Taiwan, and during the commissioning at the Hunt yard in Portsmouth, Rhode Island (which it shares with its parent company, Hinckley Yachts). They have been boating most of their adult lives, and most recently owned an Eastbay 50. But they wanted a larger boat, one in the 60-foot range, so…

Billy Black Photo

Lyman-Morse Launches New C.W. Hood 57

By Peter Janssen on October 4, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The new, composite-built, custom C.W. Hood 57 was just launched at the Lyman-Morse yard in Thomaston, Maine. With power from twin 1,000-hp Volvo IPS 1350 pod drives, the new Hood is a marriage of classic lines and state-of-the-art performance. Indeed, it tops out at just under 40 knots. With its Down East lines, sharp entry, long sheer and beautiful tumblehome, the Hood 57 is an unusual collaboration, starting with Chris Hood, the head of C.W. Hood Yachts in Marblehead, Massachusetts, Stephens Waring Yacht Design in Belfast, Maine, and Lyman-Morse. It started when an owner approached Hood about repowering his 26-foot boat,…

First Two Nordhavn 41s Heading for California

By Peter Janssen on September 28, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Nordhavn has just shipped the first two hulls of its new 41 world cruiser from the factory in Turkey. They are on their way to the company’s headquarters in Dana Point, California. The smallest vessel in Nordhavn’s fleet, the new 41 is the successor to the Nordhavn 40 that circled the globe in 2001 and 2002. Over the years, Nordhavn built 69 hulls of the 40, the company’s previous smallest passagemaker. It set the world record for a fastest circumnavigation by a production powerboat. So far, the 41 has become something of a home run for the company, setting records…

Hinckley Building New 35 Outboard with Iconic Looks

By Peter Janssen on September 24, 2020 Boat Reviews, On Watch with Peter Janssen

Hinckley is building a 35-foot outboard boat that looks pretty much like its iconic Picnic Boat, except for the twin Verados hanging off the stern. Indeed, says Scott Bryant, the company’s VP of sales and marketing, the new 35 “has the Hinckley curves, but with outboard propulsion.” The new 35, already under construction at Hinckley’s yard in Trenton, Maine, on the mainland just across from Mt. Desert Island, is not Hinckley’s first outboard boat. The traditional Down East builder introduced a Sport Boat series two years ago with outboards, first a 40c and then last year a 40x, with more…

Fall Boat Show Special: We Preview 48 New Boats

By Peter Janssen on September 16, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

This is usually my favorite time of year. The boat show season has started, I can see all the new cruising power boats, catch up with my friends, and feel good about notching one more year on the belt – a combination of a sense of survival and renewal. Well, not this year. In normal times, this would be the second day of the Newport International Boat Show, and I’d be sitting in a tent early in the morning, waiting to find out the winners of the best boats in the show contest. Not this year. The COVID-19 pandemic has…

New Spirit P70: A Very Special Long-Range Cruiser

By Peter Janssen on September 7, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Before we get to the basics, let’s consider some numbers about the elegant new Spirit P70 long-range cruiser. Sean McMillan, the head designer and CEO of Spirit, drew 22 exterior profiles of the boat before the owner signed off one. It took three men seven months to varnish the mahogany interior. It took eight craftsmen three years to build the boat. The boat has a range of 1,000 nm at its cruising speed of 18 knots, something the owner stipulated so that he could cruise from his home port of Southampton in the U.K. to the Baltic without having to…

Our 200th Issue! Plus, Trends 2020

By Peter Janssen on September 2, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Welcome to the 200th edition of Cruising Odyssey, the weekly digital newsletter that celebrates the idea of living the dream under power. Two hundred weeks. Who’d have thought? Well, when we (George Day, our publisher; Scott Akerman, our ad director, and me as editor) started this enterprise, we never really had a longevity discussion. We hoped Cruising Odyssey, the newsletter and the associated website, would catch on, but we never really considered a timeline for that. As things turned out, we hit a nerve – the right idea at the right time. The growing power cruising audience was more than…

Browsing: On Watch with Peter Janssen