On Watch with Peter Janssen

Beneteau Launches New Project E – Big Luxury Cruisers

By Peter Janssen on January 22, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Beneteau has some big news: It’s starting Project E to launch two new luxurious cruising boats, a 62 and a 73, its largest boats yet, and they’ll have innovative displacement hulls for comfort, space and range. The “E” stands for “expedition,” among other things, and the company says the 62 (pictured above) will have a range of 900 nm at 8 knots, while the 73 (pictured at top) will have a range of 1,400 nm at 10 knots. Announcing the new boats at the Düsseldorf show, Beneteau says they are designed to build on the popularity of its Swift Trawler…

New Erie Canal Report: A Problem for Loopers?

By Peter Janssen on January 15, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Earlier this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed spending $300 million over the next five years to improve the historic Erie Canal. Some $135 million of this amount was earmarked to research recommendations made by the Reimagine Task Force, which dealt with mitigating floods, preventing invasive species, and restoring the canal’s ecosystem. Some of these recommendations could affect anyone cruising on the canal, including the great majority of people who are cruising on the Great Loop. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, an enormous boon to economic growth at the time. It’s…

New Quiet and Fuel-Efficient Sabre 58 Cruising to Miami

By Peter Janssen on January 9, 2020 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Hull number one of the new Sabre 58 Salon Express is scheduled to leave Portland, Maine, on Monday and cruise south. The latest Down East cruiser from Sabre, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, will make its public debut at the Miami yacht show, starting Feb. 13, and then appear again at the Palm Beach show, starting March 26. The new 58, with a low profile and clean, classic lines, arrived at DiMillo’s in Portland just before Christmas and has been undergoing sea trials with Sabre’s design and engineering staff. The trials, on Casco Bay, showed that the…

Yacht Sinks Off Puerto Rico; Coast Guard Rescues 4

By Peter Janssen on December 16, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The Coast Guard rescued four people from a life raft after their boat sank 25 miles northwest of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, on Sunday morning. One of the men lost parts of two fingers while deploying the raft, but he kept them on ice and flew to Cornell Medical Center in New York where they were reattached. The boat, a Marlow 76 named Clam Chowder, from Shelter Island, New York, was on its way from Puerto Rico to the Turks and Caicos when it suffered a catastrophic failure. Four people were on board. The owner, was not. The boat spent the…

Surviving Marriage at Sea: Tales from Mermaid Monster

By Peter Janssen on December 11, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

In July, 2018, Brooke and Braden Palmer “sold everything,” rented out their house in Newport Beach, California, drove across the country and moved on to the 2008 Nordhavn 55 they had just bought in Southport, North California. With them: their daughter, Rooney, now 6; their son Penn, now 4, and two dogs, Fraiser and Captain. The Palmers named the boat Mermaid Monster, and decided to make a life at sea. Since then, they’ve cruised more than 2,000 nm up and down the East Coast and the Bahamas. Ultimately, they want to circumnavigate, but they’ll start with crossing the Atlantic in…

New Beneteau Gran Turismo 36 with Optional Outboards

By Peter Janssen on December 10, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The new, French-inspired Gran Turismo 36 is the latest express cruiser in Beneteau’s lineup, and it’s made for the American market in Cadillac, Michigan. It’s also the first Gran Turismo with optional outboard power, although it comes with sterndrives too. The Gran Turismo 36 is open, light-filled and has lots of curves. It’s designed for entertaining and having fun on the water, and it’s two cabins below mean it also can be used for cruising with a family or friends. And it has sun lounging areas both fore and aft. Seven people can fit in the cockpit lounge, and the…

Brooklin Yard Building Replica of Hemingway’s Pilar

By Peter Janssen on December 1, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine is building a cold-molded, modern replica of Ernest Hemingway’s famous Wheeler 38 Pilar, and it will be launched next spring. The new Wheeler Pilar was reverse engineered from the original by Bill Prince Yacht Design, of Port Washington, Wisconsin. Hemingway’s Pilar is one of the most famous boats of all time. He wrote about it extensively, particularly in Islands in the Stream and then in The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Hemingway bought the boat in April, 1934, when he returned from a safari in Africa, from…

Ferry Captain Hits Boat, Says He’s “The Dog’s Badoodahs”

By Peter Janssen on November 19, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Even after his 305-foot passenger ferry ran into a 32-foot Doral cruiser with four people on board on the Solent near Southampton, England, veteran ferry captain Ian Drummond, 62, didn’t seem to feel much remorse. “I’m the dog’s badoodahs out on the Solent,” he told investigators from Britain’s Maritime and Coastal Agency. “I don’t know what to feel guilty about. I’m as good as it gets.” Drummond’s remarks were played in court, where prosecutors said he failed to keep a lookout on the day of the accident, Sept. 29, 2018. “If there had been a proper lookout, the vessel would…

New Fountaine Pajot MY 40: Year of the Cats

By Peter Janssen on November 14, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Judging by all the activity and new launches so far, this is shaping up to be the year of the cats. New catamarans, it seems, have leaped into the power cruising mainstream. Several were introduced at the recent Fort Lauderdale show, while others are already in the private or charter markets, and even more are on the drawing boards. The new Fountaine Pajot MY 40 (pictured above) was a big hit in Lauderdale, and so was the Bali 4.3, which is 42’ 3” LOA and has a massive 23’ 3’ beam. Silent-Yachts had its newly repowered 55 solar cat on…

Sunseeker 74 “Arrested” in Legal Dispute After FLIBS

By Peter Janssen on November 6, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Here’s a story about a real mess, one that surfaced when U.S. marshals boarded a 74-foot Sunseeker at the Sunseeker International exhibit at the Bahia Mar on Sunday night, just after the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show ended, and placed it under arrest. The boat is at the center of a $4 million legal dispute between the buyer, Sunseeker in England, and Rick Obey & Associates, the Fort Lauderdale broker. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the buyer says that Sunseeker is not crediting him the $4 million he paid to Obey to have the boat built. But the legal dispute…

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