Here’s a fun fact: According to a recent survey of adults 18 and older, nearly 20 percent of Americans are now planning road trips with itineraries that are fully contained within 100 miles of home. People traveling really long distances for vacations—say, 1,000 or more miles from home—make up less than 7 percent of the US population.

The takeaway is that it sometimes pays big dividends to think small when it comes to planning an escape. With a boat, it’s entirely possible to spend an afternoon or a long weekend away from the grind, often right up the coast from home.

In fact, more and more marinas are adding waterfront dining and other amenities that make them great destinations unto themselves. Some marinas are also within walking distance or a quick cab ride of vibrant downtowns with all kinds of options for an afternoon escape or a long-weekend getaway.

One good example is Marina Jack in Sarasota, Florida. It’s part of the Suntex Marinas network, and its waterfront dining room is open daily for lunch and dinner. Specialties include steaks, seafood and pasta, along with gluten-free and vegetarian dishes. The marina is also within walking distance of downtown attractions, including off-site restaurants, for yachtsmen to explore.

Up the coast from there, for cruisers in the Chesapeake Bay region, is Little Creek Marina in Norfolk, Virginia. The Cutty Sark bar and restaurant is on-site at this Morningstar Marinas property, with another fun waterfront-dining option, Longboards, just a five-minute walk away (try the crab mac ’n’ cheese or the blackened yellowfin tuna tacos).

Another option for a quick escape is Safe Harbor Newport Shipyard in Rhode Island. It has on-site dining with Belle’s Cafe, which serves breakfast and lunch daily (don’t miss the lobster rolls), and the marina is within walking distance of historical downtown Newport. Visiting boaters can enjoy the views at the shipyard and then stroll over to the photography gallery owned by renowned yacht photographer Onne van der Wal at Bannister’s Wharf. Grab a keepsake souvenir that shows the city or that inspires future escapes to other boating locales.

Yet another example is Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which is part of the Suntex network and great for exploring the shops along Las Olas Boulevard. It’s also near the Riverwalk arts-and-entertainment district, which has galleries, dining and concerts.

The point is this: Yachtsmen who want to stay a bit closer to home often have fantastic options for a great escape. And sometimes a little change of pace can make a world of difference.

Notable Marinas for Waterfront Dining

• Dockside Marina in Milford, Connecticut, makes build-your-own pizzas, along with specialty versions such as the Mutha Shuka, which is topped with fresh clams and bacon.
• Chesapeake Inn Restaurant and Marina in Chesapeake City, Maryland, makes memorable sushi, along with a duet of crab and lobster ravioli.
• The Boca Raton on Florida’s East Coast is home to The Flamingo Grill for serious steaks and chops.

The post Great Dayboating Cruising Options appeared first on Yachting.

A funny thing happened to Nordhavn chief of design Jeff Leishman one day while he was standing on the docks, looking out at the boats. Before him were a Nordhavn 120 and a Nordhavn 96, docked side by side. He knows each model inside and out, but in that moment, he realized just how different in size the two vessels were, and how hard it might be for owners to move up from one to the next. “It was evident that we needed something in between,” he says.

Enter the Nordhavn 112, which the company hopes will appeal not only to buyers looking to move up to a bigger boat, but also to buyers who want to downsize from larger yachts with extensive crew into something less complex.

“I think this design would be a perfect fit for anyone who has owned a large yacht with lots of crew and is looking to simplify things,” Leishman says. “Or anyone looking to upsize from something smaller and wants a true expedition yacht. She’ll be versatile enough to be ideal for a number of different buyers.”

Leishman expects the Nordhavn 112 to come in at less than 400 gross tons, with more manageable equipment and systems that can be handled by a small crew. The full-displacement steel hull will be able to carry enough fuel for transoceanic crossings, and the superstructure could be built in either aluminum or FRP.

Accommodations will include five staterooms for 10 people: a master and four queen-berth guest spaces. There also will be quarters for six crew, along with superyacht-style amenities such as fold-out balconies, a flybridge hot tub and a gym. The deck abaft the pilothouse will be sized to carry a 26-foot tender in addition to a smaller inflatable and personal watercraft.  

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Let’s be honest, driving a boat with a joystick seemed altogether bizarre when Hinckley Yachts introduced the JetStick a quarter-century ago. “It’s a strange sensation,” Yachting’s editor-in-chief wrote in 1998. “It is intuitive and vastly different from any other steering and control function on any production powerboat I have been on. In simple terms, the joystick handles all facets of the boat, except for the rpm. I don’t need to do the usual hand dance and alternate between grabbing the wheel, throttle and gear shift.”

The JetStick was mind-bending stuff for old salts, but it made perfect sense to the Atari and Nintendo generation, who today are boat buyers in their 50s and 60s. And, just as video game technology has been evolving this whole time, so have joystick systems for boats.

Hinckley’s JetStick 4 is the newest iteration from the Maine boatbuilder. Hinckley’s team acknowledges that JetStick driving is becoming ubiquitous but adds that their goal is to have top-performing tech among all helms.

“We’re not the only ones in the industry offering this kind of innovation,” says Scott Bryant, Hinckley’s vice president of sales and marketing, “but the integration and functionality of JetStick 4 is the best of its kind.”

JetStick 4 has many of the same features as JetStick 3, but with better underlying GPS and digital processing, which Hinckley says add to the boat’s performance and maneuverability. Dock Hold and Heading Hold features now operate with more precision, and the transition between modes is more seamless.

No, this joystick system doesn’t let a skipper play Space Invaders or Super Mario Bros. at the helm, but who knows? Engineers are surely working on version 5 as we speak.

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It has been almost two decades since Volvo Penta premiered its IPS pod-drive system in 2005, leading to a revolution in powerboat design and operation. Joystick control became an option. So did larger guest spaces, with the IPS system needing less room. Today, IPS drives are nearly ubiquitous on spec sheets worldwide.

But that’s true only up to a certain size yacht: Just two years ago, when Italy’s Amer launched a new 120 flagship, it was heralded as the largest-ever yacht of its kind with IPS. And while 120 feet of length overall is big, these days, it’s considered a midrange yacht, not a super.

Now comes word from Volvo Penta that 2025 will bring an IPS professional platform for yachts starting at 82 feet and going past 180 feet length overall. The Volvo Penta IPS 40 is designed to produce speeds from 12 to 40 knots on displacement, semiplaning and planing vessels, with all parts of the system integrated, from the helm to the propeller.

In designing the new IPS system, Volvo Penta relied on data and feedback it has collected while delivering a reported 36,000 units of previous IPS systems. The professional platform will also be available for heavy-duty commercial applications, and will come with premium 24/7 customer service and global parts availability.

“Now an entirely new group of owners and marine professionals can benefit from the most fully integrated system on the market that really brings new levels of performance, efficiency and reliability,” says Johan Inden, president of Volvo Penta’s marine business. “We are eager to expand this platform to a whole new class of professional marine segments.”

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Pat Healey, the president and CEO of Viking Yachts, minces no words about the situation facing owners of boats 35 feet and longer: “If this would go into effect, it shuts down boating on the whole East Coast from November 1 to anywhere from the middle of April to the end of May.”

He’s talking about a proposal from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would impose a 10-knot speed limit along much of the coast for much of the year, as a way to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. The highly controversial proposal has drawn the ire of recreational boating and fishing groups, which say the idea poses an existential threat to all recreational boaters.

Since the rule-making process began last summer, Healey and others have been trying to sound the alarm, as well as come up with a solution. Now, he says, they think they have one the government might like: a task force called Whale and Vessel Safety, or WAVES.

“Our objective is to go to NOAA and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to develop a way to track the whales: tagging them,’” Healey says.

The idea is to take the same technology already used to tag and track marlin, tuna and other species, and now apply it to whales—in a way that lets boaters see the whales on their plotters, just like they’d see an oncoming boat with an AIS signal. “You’ll be able to alter your course and avoid them,” Healey says.

The sport-fishing community has been most vocal about concerns with the government’s proposal. Madelyne Rowan, tournament director of the White Marlin Open, says about 40 percent of participating boats in that tournament are chartered. If those boats can’t operate normally the rest of the year, they’ll go out of business—along with all the tackle shops, fuel docks, marinas and other businesses that make up marine communities, ultimately affecting all kinds of boaters.

“A lot of people don’t understand the potential scope of the economic impact that this restriction will have,” she says.

Healey says it’s an uphill battle to get NOAA to listen, but he likes his odds with the task-force concept: “This is a sensible way to get all stakeholders involved, instead of having complete governmental overreach.”

What’s Likely to Happen Next?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its proposed rule on August 1. A public comment period was then held until October 31. As of this writing, NOAA was still reviewing all the comments it received. After that process is done, the agency can issue its final rule with or without changes, as early as this summer. At that point, federal legislation or lawsuits become options to try and overturn the rule.

No More Day Trips?

Sport-fishing boats like this one often zip out to the canyons and back in the same day. Their speed makes this possible. If they’re forced to slow to 10 knots, boaters say, there won’t be any time left for actual fishing.

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Viking Yachts made more than a few anglers happy with its Viking 92 model, delivering 21 of those boats to new owners in a span of seven years. But then, a few years ago, eco-minded regulations came into play that would have required additional equipment on board—equipment that was problematic in so many ways that the builder decided to design a new model instead, one that was just a bit smaller to avoid the regulatory size cutoff. That new sport fishing model is the 90C, which premiered at the Miami International Boat Show in February 2023. As of early April 2023, 16 of the 90Cs had already been sold.

“We designed it right under 24 meters,” says Pat Healey, president and CEO of Viking Yachts. “We took 13 inches out of the beam, 27 inches out of the length, we got it under 24 meters, and we gained outstanding performance. The boat cruises at 32, 33 knots, tops out at 38 full of fuel. We see 40 knots every day with it—that’s a big increase in speed over the 92. The 92 is an awesome, incredible boat, but this boat, it’s seven years of building 92s—everything we learned from doing that, we took it and put it into this boat.”

The 90C’s features include a 203-gallon transom fish box/livewell, a pair of 103-gallon insulated in-deck fish boxes (with optional refrigeration), a Seakeeper 35, and a cockpit sole that’s reinforced for a fighting chair, rocket launcher or table. Inside are six staterooms and seven heads, along with a full-size stackable washer and dryer.

Hull No. 1 of the 90C is being used as a demo boat on the tournament circuit. It was headed to the Bahamas as this issue went to press, with Healey pleased about its performance: “It just does things like a 70- or 80-foot boat, but you have the accommodations of a 92.” 

The post Viking’s New 90-Foot Sportfish Yacht appeared first on Yachting.

Swedish boatbuilder Candela announced in January that it had achieved an expected 65-mile range with its C-8, a nearly 28-foot-long carbon-fiber foiling powerboat that runs on electric power.

The technological advancement in extending the boat’s range—a task that has long bedeviled makers of electric boats worldwide—was achieved in collaboration with the Swedish company Polestar, which is Volvo’s electric-vehicle subsidiary. Candela and Polestar first announced their collaboration this past August. According to Candela, the 65-mile range announced less than six months later makes the C-8 the world’s longest-range electric boat available today.

The Candela C-8 will use the same 69 kWh battery pack and DC charging technology as the Polestar 2, a vehicle that has a reported 300-mile range on the roadways. The boat’s 65-mile range will be achievable on a single charge at a cruising speed of 22 knots.

“This collaboration means that C-8 can travel to destinations previously only reachable by combustion-engine boats,”  Gustav Hasselskog, the CEO and founder of Candela, announced. “The Candela C-8 powered by Polestar marks a significant breakthrough for electrification at sea.”

The boatbuilder says the C-8’s hydrofoil technology is also a key element in the range extension. As shown in the photograph, the C-8 can “fly” above the waves on computer-guided underwater wings that reduce water friction. Candela says the C-8 uses 80 percent less energy than conventional boats at high speed. Its pod motor, the Candela C-POD, outputs 75 kW (the equivalent of 100 hp) for takeoff. Once foil-borne, the C-8 draws around 23 kW (about 30 hp) continuously from its Polestar battery pack. A similar-size conventional powerboat would use around 120 kW (160 hp), according to the Candela team.

Another thing that makes the boat notable, the company says, is the way the collaboration with Polestar enables DC charging on board. The installation of standardized charging stations for electric boats is a chicken-and-egg situation, with many marina owners holding off on adding higher-speed charging stations until more electric boats are on the waterways to use them. “With access to DC fast chargers, which are now starting to pop up in several places around the globe, you can cover totally new routes with Candela C-8,” Hasselskog says. “You can go from Sweden to Finland in one day, or along the entire French Riviera in a few hours.”

The C-8 is not the builder’s first model; the company, founded in 2014, previously launched the C-7 bowrider, without an enclosed cabin. That boat, which was announced in 2019, was suitable for six people. It’s now only available on the brokerage market.

All new-order Candela C-8s going forward will be equipped with the Polestar batteries, the company says. The boat can be ordered in three versions: day cruiser (with an open top), hardtop and T-top. The interior layout is designed for overnights with two adults and two children, with a marine head, dimmable lights and an optional premium sound system.

Deliveries on the boats are expected to take place starting in 2024. According to Candela, the company has already received more than 150 orders for the C-8.  

High Tech Meets Scandinavian Style

The Candela C-8 foiling electric powerboat comes from Sweden. Its interior styling is based on the basics, with a marine head and room for two adults and two children to sleep overnight. The sex appeal of this boat is in its technology, including the foils and the battery-powered propulsion. The foils can be fully retracted out of the water when the boat is at the dock, which should cut down on marine growth that could increase drag and reduce range. Using them is reportedly easy; some reporters with no boating experience say they can have the boat flying within about two minutes.

The post Candela’s C-8 Goes the Distance appeared first on Yachting.

In late December, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its findings about a collision that occurred a year earlier about 20 miles northwest of Nassau, Bahamas, between a 206-foot superyacht and a 159-foot commercial tanker. The probable cause of the collision, according to the NTSB, was that neither vessel maintained a proper lookout.

The findings served as a reminder to boaters on all kinds of vessels that maintaining a proper lookout is a mandatory part of basic seamanship, and that major damage and injuries can result from a failure to keep watch. The NTSB estimated the financial cost of the Bahamas incident at $7.9 million, including the sinking of the tanker and its cargo. In addition to that, three of the superyacht’s 12 crewmembers sustained minor injuries.

According to the report, the collision occurred at sunset on a day with visibility of 10 miles. Aboard the superyacht, the captain had left the wheelhouse to check on the guests, leaving the bosun in command. The bosun was working on log entries and facing away from the windshield at the time of the collision with the tanker, where the master had left that vessel’s bridge to use the head in his cabin.

The report further notes that both vessels had radar; however, “it is likely none of them had looked at the radar in the 12 minutes before the collision. … Additionally, there was no evidence that they used radar for long-range scanning. Therefore, neither crew used their vessel’s radar effectively.” The tanker also had AIS, but a power issue made it unusable.

The NTSB concluded that “had either kept a proper lookout, they likely would have detected each other and could have taken action to avoid the collision.”

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More than a few people from the United States and beyond have been frustrated the past few years when attempting to book a charter vacation. In 2020, the pandemic pretty much shut down international travel, forcing widespread booking cancellations. All those charters got rebooked into 2021 and 2022, often at the same time yacht owners were pulling their vessels off the charter market and instead keeping them for private, socially distanced use. And there were shipyard shutdowns that hampered construction schedules, leading to fewer new  charter yachts entering the market than in previous years. By summer 2022, even longtime charter clients were frustrated trying to find a ride.

“The market wasn’t prepared for the amount of demand that we had, especially from mid-June through August,” says Ben Harwood, head of charter for Burgess.

The booking backlog left charter yachts packed: Burgess says it handled 860 charters in 2022, while Camper & Nicholsons International reports 700 charters booked. “If you were looking to book a boat of quality at the last minute,” Harwood says, especially from mid-June through August, “it was very challenging.”

Things are looking better for this summer and going into winter 2023-24. Harwood says he still expects summer to be busy, but Burgess has a strategy in place for clients who are ready to book now.

“We have a number of yachts that are coming onto the market; they’re being delivered in May or June, but we’re not advertising them until we know they’re going to deliver on time,” he says. “They’re new builds that no one knows about, but we can talk to clients on a case-by-case basis.”

Charter Yacht Artisan: One of Benetti’s Biggest

The 207-foot Artisan, launched in 2019 and refitted in 2022, is one of the biggest yachts that Italian yard Benetti has built to date. Accommodations are for 12 guests in seven staterooms, with the owner’s stateroom alone spanning more than 1,700 square feet. Burgess says charter inquiries are being accepted now for bookings this summer in the West Mediterranean, and during the winter season in the Bahamas and Caribbean.

The post Time to Charter appeared first on Yachting.

Standing at the helm of Dasher, the first Hinckley Yachts Picnic Boat ever built, I got to experience the past at the same time that I was meeting, and driving, the boatbuilder’s future offerings.

You see, the 36-foot, 28-year-old Dasher is the testing platform for Hinckley’s new SilentJet technology, which was developed in partnership with Twin Disc. It’s a diesel-electric-hybrid system that is currently available on the Hinckley Picnic Boat 40 S, and it follows on the heels of the company’s first all-electric 29-footer, also known as Dasher, which launched in 2017. The lessons learned building the all-electric boat led to SilentJet for the larger vessels.

There are several key elements of SilentJet that make it an intriguing proposition: Working in concert with water jets and the Hinckley JetStick, the boat operates in some serious quietude around the dock, in the harbor and underway at speeds up to about 7 knots. The only sounds are water bubbling out of the jets and running under the hull. Additionally, an owner has speed when desired.

The helmsman simply engages the throttles, and the intuitive system realizes more speed is required, transitioning the boat from the electric motors to the diesels. In the case of the 40 S, traditional power will be twin 550 hp Cummins diesels, while the electric motors will be twin 90 kW setups, with an 80 kWh battery. (The 40 S should cruise about 35 knots on the diesels.) Bring the throttles back, and slow down to below 7 knots, and the 40 S switches back to electric. And when the boat is running on its diesels, the batteries are recharging. Total recharge time: 30 to 45 minutes underway and about 8 to 10 hours on shore power.

SilentJet also lets owners run all onboard systems off battery without the need for a generator. And during my day on board Dasher, we tested the theory.

I eased the boat out of the harbor in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and aimed toward a mooring field that Scott Bryant, Hinckley’s vice president of sales and marketing, had chosen for our systems check. Once clear of the no-wake zone, I brought up the throttle, and the single 570 hp FPT diesel spooled up and shot Dasher across the bay in no time. As I approached the mooring field, I brought the throttle down, and the system seamlessly reverted Dasher back to all-electric operation.

Once we picked up the mooring ball, Bryant had a chef show us how efficient the all-battery setup works. After turning on all the galley appliances as well as an all-electric grill in the cockpit, the chef prepared a steak-and-lobster-roll lunch with all electric-hungry systems engaged. After sitting on the hook for a couple of hours, the battery capacity had barely budged. Loss was nominal. So, for typical dayboating, the SilentJet system looks like a win.

All too soon, I was easing Dasher out of the mooring field to do some more running and experiencing of the system in action. It was green across the board, and everything about SilentJet worked as advertised.

The first Hinckley Picnic Boat 40 S with SilentJet should launch in 2024, which may seem like a distant future. But it’s closer than you think, and you won’t even hear it coming.

Commonsense Solutions

“We know our clients want what’s next, and they also want commonsense solutions,” says Geoff Berger, Hinckley’s CEO. “With SilentJet, you can travel farther with the hybrid-diesel system than with Dasher’s electric platform. Furthermore, we learned that electric-powered water jets are much quieter and produce less vibration than traditional propellers.”

Formidable Power

While the Hinckley Picnic Boat 40 S with SilentJet will have twin 550 hp Cummins diesels, the prototype 36-foot Dasher we got aboard was outfitted with a single 570 hp FPT diesel. The formidable motor was matched with Twin Disc’s electric motor and transmission, which then were paired with a Hamilton water jet.

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