On Watch with Peter Janssen

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…

FLIBS Opens with a Wave of New Cruising Boats

By Peter Janssen on October 31, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

It wasn’t even noon yet on the second day of the massive Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, but there were lots of new cruising boats and lots of smiling people everywhere. No one was happier than Mark Richards, the president and CEO of Grand Banks and Palm Beach Motor Yachts. Richards had good reason to be pleased. He told me he had taken his gorgeous new Palm Beach 70 out for two sea trials in the past two days. “Two sea trials, two deposits,” he said. The price for a Palm Beach 70: about $4.5 million. The show runs for…

New Mayflower: Lots of AI and No People on Board

By Peter Janssen on October 22, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The original Mayflower, the famous one, left Plymouth, England, on Sept. 16, 1620, and made landfall in the New World, near where Provincetown is today on Cape Cod, 66 days later. It was about 90 feet long, weighed 180 tons, and carried a crew of about 30 and 102 Pilgrims as passengers (including five who died along the way). Next September, on the 400th anniversary of the original voyage, another Mayflower will leave Plymouth and retrace the 3,220-mile trip. It will be about 164 feet long, weigh 5 tons, and it won’t have any crew or passengers on board at…

Largest Ever Fort Lauderdale Show Opens Oct. 30

By Peter Janssen on October 17, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show just keeps getting bigger and better every year. This year is the show’s 60th anniversary, and it will have 1,500 boats in the water on six miles of floating docks, 1,200 exhibitors and an expected 110,000 visitors (including 1,000 who will arrive on their private planes). The organizers say it is the largest in-the-water boat show in the world, and it runs from Wednesday, Oct. 30, through Sunday, Nov. 3. Large, indeed, and a far cry from the first Lauderdale show, which featured 13 boats, and which opened in the in the Eisenhower Administration.…

Liveaboard Owner Saves His Two Bulldogs from Burning Boat

By Peter Janssen on October 7, 2019 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Mike Babbitt, a retired police detective, saved his two bulldogs after his motoryacht caught fire when he was moving it to the fuel dock at the Bremerton (Washington) Yacht Club. His fast thinking saved the dogs, Pearl, who weighs 60 pounds, and Hootie, who weighs 70; it also saved other boats from becoming involved in the fire themselves. About 3 on a recent calm afternoon, Babbitt, who lived aboard his yacht Doctor’s Orders with his wife Jamie, took it out of its slip to get some fuel. Then he saw flames coming from the engine room. Babbitt maneuvered the boat away…

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