Yachting December 2018

Solutions that seem simplest can be so damn brilliant that you wonder how we got along before they existed. For years, I used to straddle the twin oil-loving two-stroke outboards on my 25-footer, and then stretch to clamp on the motor-flush earmuffs. Then I’d attach the hose to the earmuffs and rinse the engines with fresh water. It was the best technology of the time. And it worked. But when I moved up to a 31-footer a few years later, and I could attach the dock hose directly to a fitting on the motors and flush, I felt liberated. Needing one less step seemed more effective. Recently, I stepped aboard a 34-footer with triple four-strokes, and the engine flush was a button at the helm that drew on the vessel’s…

MICHAEL KÖHLER WAS ANNOYED. He was cruising the world on a catamaran, seeing all kinds of technological leaps, yet struggled with a lack of power. ¶ “People have cellphones, iPads, cameras, whatever, but the energy-harvesting system on boats did not change at all in the past 20 years,” he says. “It forces people to go to the marinas every second day or run the generators.” ¶ So, he started noodling. For four years. He wanted to stay on the hook for weeks, running the air conditioning and all the systems. ¶ Finally, the ideas about which solar panels, electric motors, inverters and the like to use — and more importantly, he says, how to configure them — became the basis for the brand Silent-Yachts. The company offers 55-, 64- and…

01. HE CAN MOVE UP, DOWN AND AROUND The Grant robot clock (about $22,700) can lie horizontally, crouch as if in anticipation or sit up straight. And those three rubber tank treads roll. 02. HE CAN GO FOR DAYS Eight days, to be exact. That’s how long Grant’s power reserve reportedly lasts. The “grenade launcher” in his right hand is also his winding key. 03. HE COMES IN COLORS Nickel, black and blue are available, with each limited to 50 pieces. In all colors, his name and military styling are an homage to Ulysses S. Grant.…

TRUTH BE TOLD, Mark Robinson got the idea in his living room. It was a big room with furniture in the middle, but outlets in the walls. He didn’t want to trip over lamp cords. ¶ He looked and looked but couldn’t find a cordless lamp that was anything beyond a novelty design. A year and about $1.5 million in seed money later, the company Alexander Joseph came online this past September, offering luxury cordless lamps — all built in a way that Robinson knows, from his years of racing and cruising, will work aboard yachts. ¶ “Our lamps are incredibly heavy,” he says. “The reason for that, and the low center of gravity, is to prevent them from falling over on boats.” ¶ The lamps can be bolted through…

POWER CATAMARANS HAVE been gaining popularity, bringing the rest of us in line with the thinking of France-based Fountaine Pajot, which has been in the power-cat game since in 1998. Its latest model is the Motor Yacht 44, the new flagship in a three-model motoryacht series. ¶ The MY44, a creation of Italian architect Pierangelo Andreani and French designer Daniel Andrieu, has a main deck that’s open from the aft-deck seating all the way forward to the starboard helm station. The sense of spaciousness is significant, for several reasons. First, four glass panels aft can all slide to port, creating an indoor-outdoor space with the aft deck and salon. In the salon, 32-inch-high windows extend for 12 feet down the sides of the yacht, with three sections per side, bringing…

THE TABLE, CHAIRS AND LIGHTS in the photograph above all used to be plastic garbage floating in Amsterdam canals. Volunteers with Plastic Whale recycled it after fishing it out of the water — while cruising aboard boats made from recycled plastic that once was canal trash too. Talk about an evolution of construction in the Netherlands, one of Europe’s most celebrated boatbuilding nations. ¶ Plastic Whale started in 2011 and now includes 10 recycled plastic boats. The more plastic the company collects, the more boats that can be built to collect even more trash. Plastic Whale owner Marius Smit says the company collects 25,000 plastic bottles a year, along with tons of other plastic waste. Anybody can pay about $30 for one of eight spaces on a boat and then…