On Watch with Peter Janssen

Ever-Better Palm Beach Show Opens March 21

By Peter Janssen on February 26, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen, Palm Beach Boat Show

The Palm Beach International Boat Show, which just gets better and better every year, opens on Thursday, March 21, and runs through Sunday, March 24. Only a month after the Miami show, the Palm Beach affair gathers a variety of upscale cruising boats in an inviting, relaxed, and easy-to-navigate venue that has an appeal all its own. To my mind, Palm Beach is the Goldilocks of boat shows; not too big, not too small. It’s a boat-show case of less is more. The Palm Beach show is smaller than Miami, but some 800 boats will be on display this year,…

New Sialia 80: High-Tech Electric Explorer

By Peter Janssen on February 22, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Sialia just unveiled what it calls “the world’s most advanced explorer yacht,” a Sialia 80 Explorer electric long-range cruiser. The new Sialia was designed by Vripack, the leading Dutch design and naval architectural firm. The hull was drawn specifically for electric power, offering low resistance and sophisticated balance for the high-tech vessel. Sialia says the all-aluminum 80 offers silent, emissions-free cruising around the world, combining the luxury and comfort of a superyacht with the sustainability of electric power. “The Sialia 80 Explorer is designed to redefine exploration and sustainability; to thrive in a variety of environmental conditions, traveling to some…

Palm Beach GT60 Turns Heads in Miami

By Peter Janssen on February 12, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The long, low, lean and unmistakably luxurious Palm Beach GT60 is on display at the big Miami show, running from Feb. 14 through 18. The new sleek, fast and low-slung motor yacht with its long sheerline and low center of gravity is bound to turn heads everywhere from Malaysia (where it’s built, just outside Singapore) to Monaco and the Herald Plaza docks in Miami. Looks, of course, are one thing; performance is another. And it’s in performance that the GT60 shows its stuff. The new Palm Beach has the builder’s proprietary V-Warp hull, with a fine entry to slice through…

Nordhavn Splashes Much-Heralded 51-01

By Peter Janssen on February 8, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Lots of new boat buyers, particularly those who sign up for hull number one, go to far lengths to visit the factory as the actual construction goes along, to check on the progress, to make final decisions, or simply to become part of the process of creating a brand new yacht. But Mark and Fiona Rammell, who described themselves as lifelong Kiwis, have taken all this to an entirely new level. Mark, a retired Air New Zealand pilot, has created a series of videos of their new Nordhavn, hull number one of the 51 series, being built in Turkey. The…

Massive Miami Show Starts Feb. 14

By Peter Janssen on January 31, 2024 Miami Boat Show, On Watch with Peter Janssen

The massive, sprawling and multifaceted Miami boat show will start on Wednesday, February 14, and run through Sunday, February 18. If you go, you won’t get lonely. The show’s organizers expect more than 100,000 people over those five days. The show this year is a combination of the Miami International Boat Show and the Miami Yacht Show. It’s now called the Discover Boating Miami International Boat Show, a mouthful, but the point is that it’s bigger, and presumably better, than ever before, with more than 1,000 boats on display and an economic impact of $1.34 billion. The show now is…

Meet Winners of Best Powerboat Awards

By Peter Janssen on January 25, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The Azimut Magellano 60, Marex 440 Gourmet Cruiser, Omikron OT 60, and Leopard 40 PC were all winners of annual European Powerboat of the Year awards in their various categories. The awards were made in a ceremony on Flagship Night at the opening of the Düsseldorf show. The winning boats were chosen by a jury of editors from eight European powerboat magazines. The judging started with sea trials of boats introduced during the year and included each boat’s quality, workmanship, handling, layout, safety, innovation, and value for money. The judges started with more than 250 new boats and then narrowed…

3 Top New Boats at Dusseldorf

By Peter Janssen on January 17, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The Düsseldorf show gets underway this Saturday, Jan. 20, with the largest indoor collection of boats of all sizes and shapes in Europe. Many of the boats introduced there by the larger builders make their way to the U.S. for the shows starting next fall; others just drop off our radar screens. But it’s always fun to see what’s being shown there, just to get some fresh ideas. Here are three that caught my eye, and they’re all very different. Steeler 50S TA, where the TA stands for Trans-Atlantic (pictured): A rugged steel and aluminum cruiser that the Dutch builder…

Seattle Yachts Building New Legacy 12

By Peter Janssen on January 10, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Seattle Yachts just announced that it’s now building the first downeast-styled 38-foot Legacy 12 cruiser in its plant in Anacortes, Washington. The boat, the first in the Mark 11 series from Tartan Legacy Yachts, will be launched later this year. The new Legacy will have one or two staterooms, a single head and a galley-up layout. Standard power is twin 300-hp Yamaha or Mercury outboards, producing a top speed of 35 knots. Optional twin 400-hp outboards move the top speed up to 45 knots. Twin 300-hp diesel outboards are another option. The new Legacy has a rich and cross-country history.…

New Tiara EX 54 To Debut in Miami

By Peter Janssen on January 3, 2024 On Watch with Peter Janssen

Tiara is building a new EX 54 express yacht, the second in its EX series after the flagship EX 60 was launched in 2022. The new EX 54 is scheduled to make its public debut at the big Miami boat show that starts on Feb. 14. The 54 is a three-stateroom, two-head cruiser with an open salon and a modular, customizable aft deck with terraces that fold down on both sides to make it even larger. Standard power comes from twin 725-hp Volvo IPS950 pod drives. We don’t have any estimated performance figures yet, but the EX 60, with 1,000-hp…

Austin Parker 56: High-Style Cat

By Peter Janssen on December 14, 2023 On Watch with Peter Janssen

The new Austin Parker Cat 56 is certainly not your average garden-variety power catamaran. Indeed, the high-styled cat looks like a state-of-the-art superyacht, overcoming the floating-box shape that has defined many recent entries in this fast-growing market segment. A boutique Italian builder, Austin Parker worked with some heavy hitters for the new 56, its first power catamaran. It hired the legendary Pininfarina design office (think Ferrari Europa, Lancia Aurelia and Alfa Romeo Spider) and the creative Fulvio De Simoni Yacht Design office (Rossinavi, Pershing and Filippetti, as well as some recent Austin Parkers). The two designers set up an office…

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