Category: Industry News
Nordic Tugs Production Re-Starting
News this week from Nordic Tugs, Inc., that it has re-started production after a three-month hiatus during which most of the operational employees were laid off. Bob Shamek, who heads sales and marketing for Nordic Tugs, said workers were being recalled as the production processes ramp up. The company has a number of boats on [...]
A Bigger Motorsailer from Nordhavn?
Pacific Asian Enterprises, the company that builds the Nordhavn line of passagemaking boats, has spent some of the less-pressured time of the economic recession to finish work on a couple of new designs. Among them reportedly are a larger version of the 75 Expedition Yacht Fisher, a megayacht even bigger than the Nordhavn 120 currently [...]
Nordic Tug Brand Could Revive Under Management Buyout
The current management team at Nordic Tugs is looking for investors to help them acquire the brand and production capabilities from the current private owner of the company, according to a source familiar with the search. Late last week, the Washington state boatbuilder announced it was shutting down manufacturing operations. The company recently launched a [...]
BREAKING NEWS – FLIR To Acquire Raymarine
Soundings Trade Only is reporting that FLIR has announced the purchase of Raymarine. Keep an eye out for Ben Ellison’s take on this development coming soon on Panbo, no doubt. Copyright © 2010 by OceanLines LLC. All rights reserved.
ActiveCaptain on the iPad – Wicked Cool
I’ve been looking for a reason to have to get an iPad and I think now I’ve found it. In his latest on-the-road blog entry, Jeff Siegel of ActiveCaptain demonstrates how well the software works on the new tablet platform from Apple. Regular readers know I’m a big fan of ActiveCaptain — I use it [...]
Writers on the Water
Okay, so it’s not quite as memorable (yet?) as “Riders on the Storm,” the 1971 hit by The Doors, but a new blog by writers Christine Kling and Mike Jastrzebski called Write on the Water, is a place to talk about the intersection of writing and living and working on the water. I was the guest [...]
Garmin Makes Huge Offer for Raymarine
In an announcement made on the London Stock Exchange today, Garmin announced it is offering 15 pence (19.74 cents U.S.) per share for all the shares of Raymarine Plc. Raymarine lately has been discussing the various offers made for its shares but had not specifically mentioned Garmin since talks broke down between the two firms last [...]
USCG Photo Contest Winners for 2009
Last month, the U.S. Coast Guard announced the winners of its “People’s Choice” photo contest, which we covered here. This month we have the winners of the in-house photo contest from the Coasties. These are great photos and although we’ve all seen similar photos before, we can’t seem to get enough of them. When you [...]
Marinalife Members Get 20 Percent Discount on Beacon Wi-Fi
Marinalife, the online concierge and trip-planning service, recently partnered with Beacon Wi-Fi, the largest supplier of wireless Internet to marinas along the East Coast, to provide a 20% discount to its members. The new partnership extends to marinas as well, who will receive a 30% discount off the Beacon Wi-Fi wireless installation fee and 15% [...]
Fugawi Announces NavPlanner 2 and Updated Marine ENC
Fugawi recently announced the release of Navionics NavPlanner2, powered by Fugawi. The company also said it has released version 4.5.5 of its Fugawi Marine ENC. NavPlanner2 is an atlas of U.S. coastal waters, navigable waterways, and more than 12,000 inland lakes for use on a home computer for map viewing, searching, printing, waypoint planning and [...]
Will Your Liferaft Work When You Need It?
Last year’s “Baja Ha Ha,” the fleet cruise from San Diego to Mexico, provides yet another impetus for all ocean cruisers to reconsider their liferaft situation. You DO have one, right? And it HAS been maintained, inspected and re-certified, right? And you actually know what’s stored in it and how to use it, right? And [...]
A Closer Look at the New Krogen 52′
Kadey-Krogen’s recently announced 52′ is a classic example of a builder filling out a product line in specific response to customer demand. In this case, the company already had on offer its well-established 48′ and the new 55′ Expedition. The 55′ Expedition, however, is not really the “other” boat in this comparison — it’s the [...]
Second Sunreef 70 Expedition Power Cat Launched
Sunreef Yachts said today it has launched the second in the expedition series of 70 Power Catamarans; this one named ONDIN and sold to a Chilean couple who plan to explore Patagonia. The long-range yacht will depart the shipyard in Gdansk soon and make a transatlantic passage, followed by a Panama Canal transit and final [...]
Diesel Delivered to You at Anchor
Passing through Miami or Fort Lauderdale and need fuel? How about having it delivered to you at anchor by Peterson Fuel Delivery. They’ve been doing it for almost ten years but I didn’t know about it until Jeff and Karen Siegel took advantage of the service and wrote it up in their cruise blog, TakingPaws. [...]
Interlux Recalls New Compass Varnish
Sometimes I guess you can just have too much of a good thing. The case in point here is Interlux’s new Compass varnish, introduced last fall, which incorporated a new, fast-drying chemistry. Unfortunately, it seems to be just a little bit too fast-drying. An OceanLines reader in North Carolina noticed cans of the varnish being [...]
Second Great Technique for Dinghy Anchoring
Our recent piece by Jeff Siegel of ActiveCaptain about a novel dinghy anchoring technique stimulated quite a bit of discussion from readers and we even heard about another, possibly even better, technique from John Marshall, owner of the Nordhavn 55 Serendipity. Marshall discovered a particular product that makes the process of anchoring the dinghy off [...]
Blackberry Weather App for Coastal Cruisers
Mobile Mariner LLC has announced the official launch of the Mobile Mariner™ for the Blackberry® smartphone, which will provide NOAA marine weather forecasts, tide information and life weather conditions for the coastal United States, including the Great Lakes. More upcoming releases will expand the application to other smartphone platforms and cover more international areas. Mobile [...]
KVH Offers Rebates on Smaller SAT TV Antennae
KVH Industries said today that it will offer rebates up to $200 through the end of April on its TracVision M1 and M3 satellite TV systems. The M1 and M3 systems are typically used on smaller boats, although the M3DX unit, with its HDTV capability could easily serve as the workhorse on almost any size [...]
Women Learning About Canal Cruising With Sea Sense
Sea Sense, the St. Petersburg, Florida-based sailing and powerboating school for women, is offering a new international class on Ireland’s Shannon River and canals. Every year, the company offers a different international course, with previous locations including various Caribbean locales, as well as Italy, Greece, France and Tahiti. The 2010 course will be aboard a [...]
Ranger Tugs Offers New 25 Sport Cockpit
Ranger Tugs recently introduced a variation of the popular Ranger Tugs 25 — a Sport Cockpit version with an extra 16 inches of cockpit room. In the video below, you’ll see that they stole the 16 inches from the galley counter inside the house, but that it doesn’t seem to have taken away any capability. [...]
New Ranger Tugs Available for Sea Trial
Two prominent Ranger Tugs dealers in the Northeastern U.S. have 2010 models of Ranger Tugs available for sea trials this weekend. Wilde Yachts in Essex, CT, is having an open house this weekend (March 13 and 14) and has the R-21 and R-29 available, as well as the Nordic Tugs 32 and NT-37. Essex is [...]
List of Simrad Electronics Eligible for Rebates
Simrad Yachting said customers purchasing certain new marine electronics products from authorized dealers are entitled to rebates up to $200. While the program runs til the end of June, customers who purchased eligible products beginning February 8, 2010 are also eligible for the rebates. That’s a nice touch. Here’s a list provided by Simrad of [...]
Island Pilot DSe Hybrid to Air on Discovery Channel’s HD Theater
HD Theater “World’s Most Expensive Rides” Sunday, March 7th at 9 p.m. EST (check your local listings for other times). Last winter Reuben Trane, owner of Island Pilot was contacted by the producers of Discovery Channel’s HD Theater who were interested in featuringhis DSe Hybrid 12m in an episode about the world’s most expensive rides. [...]
U.S. Coast Guard Photo Contest Winners
The winners of this year’s U.S. Coast Guard People’s Choice Photo Contest have been announced and the photo above is the winner! This year’s contest elicited some amazing photos, which you can see here at the Coast Guard’s blog, Compass. The winning photo is of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Vigorous (WMEC 627) as she [...]
KVH Offers Rebates for Upgrades to HD7 Sat TV System
KVH Industries said today that current TracVision satellite TV customers can upgrade to the latest HD7 system and get a rebate of up to $2,000, depending on which system they are upgrading. The promotion runs through June 30, 2010. The deal requires the customer to return to KVH the old system’s circuit boards via an [...]
The Marlow Ocean Challenge
David Marlow has a reputation in the industry for being. . . well, let’s say. . . outspoken. He believes strongly in the superiority of the boats he builds and isn’t afraid to name the names of competitors whom he feels don’t live up to their own marketing claims. To say the least, he can [...]
Marina Life Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Best Marina Contest
Marina Life members are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the cruise planning and concierge service by voting for their favorite member marina. The company will feature the winning marinas voted “Best Transient Marina” and marina with the “Best Customer Service” in the summer issue of Marinalife Magazine. For those readers not familiar with Marinalife, it [...]
More Details on New Krogen 52
Kadey-Krogen yesterday released more details of its newest trawler, the Krogen 52′, which we first reported on here. It’s decidedly a classic Krogen trawler, with its raised pilothouse and 3,000 nm range at about 7 knots. It shares many of the features of its bigger sister, the Krogen 58′. The main-deck galley is “Iron Chef”-equipped [...]
ActiveCaptain Launches Major Website Upgrade
Jeffrey Siegel said this week that the ActiveCaptain “X” beta website, under development for the past year, is now fully launched and live, providing everything from a new user interface to NOAA charts and Microsoft Virtual Earth cartography. The website benefits greatly from having been available in beta form for the last several months and [...]
Considering a Trawler? Get to a Trawler Fest
Yesterday’s news of the new Kadey-Krogen 52′ — which was made sort of under the public radar — at last month’s Trawler Fest in Fort Lauderdale, reminded me of just one more benefit of these events. If you’ve never been to a Trawler Fest, which are owned and operated by Passagemaker Magazine, and you’re thinking [...]
