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Nominal Voltage

Power Play: Part I

Part I: Factors to Consider When Connecting To International Power In Part I of this two-part series, we’ll discuss four key factors to take into account when preparing your boat to connect to international shorepower. Shorepower is an increasingly vital service for the modern cruising boat. Many boats have most, if not all, the comforts of home-and those comforts come with a nearly insatiable appetite for electrical power. Most larger cruising boats have generators aboard, but running them constantly can be expensive and won’t help you make friends at the dock. Fortunately, many modern (and even not-so-modern) marinas offer shorepower for visiting yachts. But before you arrive at that dream cruising port and plug in your TV, microwave, air conditioner, and laptop, it pays to make some careful preparations for the variety of shorepower standards you’ll encounter.

Absolute 70 Fly

Absolute 70 Fly Reviewed

Twin 1,000-hp Volvo Penta D13s and 285 nautical miles of range give the new Absolute 70 Fly the room and speed to roam.

Twin delivery captains Assen and Nikolay Alexandrov standing on the bow deck of a motor yacht docked alongside a pier.

The Twins

After more than 500,000 nautical miles as yacht delivery captains, Assen and Nikolay Alexandrov are still bringing boats home.

Alt Text: A close-up view of two polished stainless-steel windlasses and anchor gypsies mounted on the white foredeck of a yacht under a partly cloudy sky.

Anchors Aweigh

Windlass and ground tackle maintenance can make all the difference in an emergency.

A Garmin marine chartplotter display screen showing a digital nautical map with AIS vessel tracking, route waypoints, and navigation data overlay.

Understanding AIS

Good seamanship means using every available tool, but never relying on any one alone.

Three side-by-side screenshots from the Navionics app showing nautical charts of Hell Gate and Wards Island, contrasting a correct manually plotted water route on the left with two flawed AI-generated routes on the middle and right that erroneously plot course lines directly across land.

A Suspicious Plot

I used AI to chart a course through a notorious waterway. The results were unusable.

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