The West Palm Beach International Boat Show is right around the corner!

Need something to do this weekend?  Check out the 26th Annual Palm Beach International Boat Show, March 24 – 27, 2011, one of the top ten boat shows in the country – featuring more than $350 million worth of boats, yachts and accessories from the world’s leading marine manufacturers. It is truly an International Show. The event includes hundreds of Boats from 8 foot inflatables, power boats, fishing boats, center consoles, bow riders, personal watercraft to superyachts over 150’. Show entrances will be located at  Evernia St./Flagler Dr. (waterfront) and North Clematis St./Flagler Dr. (waterfront)

Boat transportation companies have been delivering yachts and boats from all over the world to one of the most opulent and beautiful cities in South Florida.  The City of West Palm Beach is a splendor of sunny palm-lined streets, scenic waterfront views, quaint shopping districts, historic neighborhoods and year-round outdoor festivals. A visit to the Downtown Retail and Entertainment district will showcase a vibrant area lined with fashionable martini bars, trendy nightclubs, elite boutiques and fine restaurants. Elegance and luxurious comfort are the hallmarks of this slice of paradise.

If you’re in the market for a new boat or something new for a boat you own, visit the Palm Beach International Boat Show.

The 26th annual show is Thursday through Sunday along Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach. In addition to a variety of boats transported to West Palm Beach, the show will also have the latest in marine accessories.

Boats on display include J Craft’s 42-foot luxury Torpedo motor launch and Jarrett Bay’s Jeff Burton 46, the custom sportfisherman built for the NASCAR driver. Global Satellite USA debuts The Bridge, its long-range, secure WiFi connection for boats of all sizes.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Part of Flagler Drive will be closed until April 1st as West Palm Beach hosts the Palm Beach International Boat Show.

Preparations for the boat show are underway along the waterfront. Flagler Drive is closed between Banyan Boulevard to Lakeview Avenue to get boats, tents, and attractions ready.

The boat show begins Thursday. Flagler Drive will partially reopen on Tuesday March 29th and will be completely reopened Friday, April 1st.

[Source: ShowManagement.com]

The tsunami that devastated Japan also sent strong currents to California’s northern coast, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage and leaving four coastal counties under a state of emergency.

Sunken Boats in Crescent City

Crescent City, Calif., near the Oregon border, ranks as the state’s most productive seafood harbor. But with no place for fishing boats to tie down, the entire commercial fishing industry is, for all practical purposes, dead.

Crescent City has earned its reputation as a “tsunami magnet.” The small, half-moon-shaped harbor traps the energy from churning ocean waves and has absorbed more than 30 tsunamis in the past eight decades. Last week’s tsunami, which hit as the harbor was still recovering from another tsunami that hit five years ago, sank 16 boats and damaged 47 others.

“We’re all shut down here, the whole fleet,” says Ivan Simpson, a deckhand on a fishing boat that survived. “Seems like it’s going to be a while before we can even tie up in here or work out of this port or any other port around here.”

“This is my source of income, my captains, there’s two to five people on each boat. You figure you got 100 or 200 boats that are shut down. That’s a lot of people out of work,” Simpson says. “We had a fairly good season until this.”

The tsunami also washed thousands of dollars of crabbing traps and gear out to sea. They are likely irretrievable.

Officials here fear another potential catastrophe. The sunken or damaged boats still hold fuel onboard, says Alexia Retallack of the state’s Department of Fish and Game.

“That fuel, should there be a rupture or puncture or something along those lines, could get into the environment,” Retallack says. “So every boat that is sunken or currently in the harbor and compromised is a source of petroleum product, so our idea is to get as much of it out of there to remove the threat.”

Officials in other coastal harbors face similar threats. In Santa Cruz, about 500 miles south, 30 boats sank or remain unaccounted for. And north of Crescent City, the harbor at Brookings, Ore., was trashed.

‘Could Have Been Far, Far Worse’

Even so, some experts say what happened last Friday is not the worst case event.

“In this case, Mother Nature was actually a little bit kind for the folks on the West Coast of the U.S.,” says Lori Dengler, a geologist at Humboldt State University in Northern California. “The Japan tsunami could have been far, far worse if it had happened six hours earlier to 18 hours later. Why? Because the largest tsunami surges coincided with our lowest tide.”

If there’s any other good news, it’s that scores of boats that normally dock in Crescent City managed to escape to nearby Humboldt Bay. They took advantage of a sophisticated warning and evacuation system developed over the years — ever since the legendary 1964 tsunami in which 11 people were killed and the city’s downtown was wiped out.  Any boats scheduled to dock in these norther harbors, will have to be diverted for now.  Boat transportation companies will transport the boats to safer waters.

Ironically, next week is California’ s Tsunami Awareness Week. And many more Californians will likely pay attention given the real evidence of disaster.

[Source: NPR.org]

Pirates in the Arabian Sea hijacked a yacht carrying seven Danish citizens, including three children, the Danish government said Monday, in the first reported attack on a small pleasure vessel since four Americans were killed by their pirate captors last week.

The Danish yacht was taken shortly after four Americans were killed.

That episode was the deadliest in recent years involving Somali pirates, who have struck with increasing impunity throughout the waters off the Horn of Africa, and appeared to represent a departure from the usual hijacking playbook, which calls for large cash ransoms and little violence.

What effect the American deaths would have on Denmark’s approach to the latest hijacking remained unclear. Along with United States Navy vessels, Danish naval ships are part of international antipiracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. In the past, however, Denmark has favored negotiation over taking an aggressive posture toward pirates.

Aboard the Danish yacht, which was taken on Thursday, were a man and a woman; their three children, ages 12 to 16; and two crew members, the Danish Foreign Ministry said. The ministry did not explain why it had waited several days to make the announcement; it said relatives of the hostages had been notified.

It was not immediately clear how many pirates boarded the yacht or whether they were Somali. Ecoterra International, a nonprofit maritime group that monitors pirate attacks, said the yacht had been hijacked in the southern Arabian Sea, far from the Horn of Africa, but appeared to be heading toward Somalia.

“Naturally, I am deeply concerned over the situation,” the Danish foreign minister, Lene Espersen, said in a statement. She added that was especially true “as there are children involved, and I can only express my utter disdain for the pirates’ actions.”

Governments have pleaded with shipowners and seafaring vacationers to stick to designated shipping lanes when passing through the Arabian Sea, where pirates continue to strike despite the presence of dozens of warships. The United States Navy sometimes provides escorts for convoys, and the ships travel in numbers for safety.  Many yacht and boat transportation companies have also taken additional precautions and/or avoid this region all together.

Last Tuesday, pirates shot and killed Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey, Calif., and Phyllis Macay and Robert A. Riggle of Seattle during what appeared to be a dispute among jittery pirates as United States Navy forces shadowed the hijacked yacht, the Quest, in the Gulf of Aden. Why the pirates chose to kill their captives remains murky. Generally, Somali pirates try to ransom captives alive.

Several Danes have been held by Somali pirates in recent years. In 2007, five sailors were held captive for 83 days on board the hijacked Danish freighter Danica White, the Danish newspaper Politiken has reported, and pirates are currently holding two Danes and four Filipino sailors from a Danish freighter. That ship was hijacked Jan. 12 near Oman in the Gulf of Aden and later abandoned.

Somali pirates increased their attacks in 2010 for the fourth straight year, striking more ships and taking more hostages than in any year on record, according to a January report by the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau. According to the report, 1,181 people were taken hostage and eight killed in attacks on 445 ships in 2010.

[Source: New York Times]

2011 Miami Yacht and Brokerage Show

Miami show and Yacht & Brokerage show run for five days

The Miami International Boat Show & Strictly Sail Miami and The Yacht & Brokerage Show are both Thursday through Monday.

The 70th boat show, which has more than 2,000 exhibitors, 2,500 boats and hundreds of boat shipping companies is at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Sea Isle Marina & Yachting Center and Miamarina at Bayside (Strictly Sail Miami).

Admission is $30 Thursday and $16 a day thereafter for adults and free for ages 15 and under. Tickets are available at the show or at miamiboatshow.com or strictlysail.com.

The yacht show has more than 500 new and used boats in the water along Collins Avenue from 41st to 51st Streets in Miami Beach. Admission is free.

For more information on the event, you can visit ShowManagement.com.

Source: [Sun-sentinel.com]

Despite an international effort to ensure safe passage through the world’s most treacherous waters, pirate attacks in 2010 reached an all-time high, striking more ships and taking more hostages last year than in any year on record, according to an annual report on piracy.

The report, by the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau, found that pirates had taken 1,181 people hostage and killed 8 in attacks on 445 ships over the course of 2010. At least 53 ships were hijacked last year, the bureau said.

Attacks on ships were up 10 percent over 2009, as were the number of hostages. Pirates captured 1,050 people in 2009, with 4 killed.

“At the moment, it looks like it’s getting out of control,” said Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the maritime bureau, which has tracked incidences of piracy at sea since 1991.

While the report catalogs violent attacks on ships around the world including those off the coast of Nigeria, Indonesia and Bangladesh, the most dangerous waters remain those off the coast of Somalia. Ninety percent of ship seizures occurred there last year, and at year’s end at least 28 vessels bearing 638 hostages were still being held for ransom.

Moreover, the bureau’s figures, taken from incident reports or provided by shipping companies, certainly represent an undercount, Captain Mukundan and other experts said. Ecoterra International, an organization with offices in East Africa that keeps track of Somali piracy, put the number of vessels of all sizes still being held by pirates at 46, with 800 hostages currently being held.

An international naval presence in the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden, between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, provided a lone bright spot for those seeking to stem rising piracy. The number of attacks there were cut in half, to 53 last year from 117 in 2009. The number of successful hijackings also dropped, to 15 from 20 in 2009.

But with dozens of naval ships, including those from the United States, patrolling the gulf, many pirates appear to have simply gone elsewhere, extending their reach hundreds of miles from shore into the Indian Ocean and as far south as the Mozambique Channel, and menacing ships across an unprecedented expanse of water, according to the maritime bureau.

In many cases, shipping companies have made the cold calculation that hijackings — even those that result in millions of dollars paid in ransom — are rare enough to be considered a cost of doing business. Higher ransoms, in turn, allow pirates to purchase better equipment and pay more effective recruits. “Success begets success,” said Nikolas K. Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College.

As recently as 2006, hijackings and attacks had been in decline. Only 188 hostages were taken in 2006.

But attacks began mounting again in direct correlation to the enduring lawlessness on shore in Somalia, Captain Mukundan said. The country has had no functioning central government for nearly 20 years, and many young Somalis find themselves drawn into the piracy business.

Captain Mukundan praised the efforts of the navy patrols but said governments need to refocus on getting some administrative structure in Somalia. “Unless that improves,” he said, “no matter what we do at sea to contain the problem, nothing will happen.”

Source: [Nytimes.com]

As violence has broken out in Egypt, concern has turned to the risk of the blocking of the Suez Canal or nearby pipelines, which could pose a threat to world energy supplies. This canal is a passageway for many ships and carriers to transport essentials, such as, oil.

Rising tensions in the port of Suez have led several shipping companies to order their ships not to change crews in Egypt.

“Potentially, we see attacks on employees of shipping companies and attempted attacks on vessels docked in ports if you see more violent demonstrations around the ports,” said Helima L. Croft, a director and geopolitical strategist at Barclays Capital. “It could be very problematic.”

Gen. James Mattis, head of the United States Central Command responsible for military operations in the region, said on Tuesday that it was inconceivable that anyone would want to disrupt the canal.

“Were it to happen, obviously, we would have to deal with it diplomatically, economically, militarily, whatever, but that to me is a hypothetical,” Reuters quoted him as saying to a policy group in London.

Over the last half-century, shippers have built a large fleet of supertankers that can haul oil in case of an interruption of Egyptian operations. Taking cargo around Africa would add about 16 days’ time to delivering oil and gas to global markets, and it would add insurance and other costs. But it would probably not cause a dire shortage or bottleneck, energy experts said.

James Burkhard, an oil analyst at IHS Cera, an energy consulting company, noted that OPEC had five million barrels of spare production capacity to bolster world supplies if needed. “That’s a substantial volume, more than we see transiting Egypt,” he added.

Nevertheless, the turmoil in Egypt and concerns that political contagion could spread to larger oil producers around the Middle East has caused a price spike of nearly 10 percent in some oil benchmarks over the last week. Brent crude oil has broken the $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since 2008. Since natural gas prices in most world markets are tied to oil, they are expected to increase as well.

The unrest in Egypt comes at a time when global oil supplies are tightening mainly because of Chinese demand increasing by 10 percent last year, or by 810,000 barrels a day. Energy analysts expect Chinese demand to increase by an additional 400,000 barrels a day this year. But the United States appears less vulnerable than it did only three years ago to a Middle East crisis.

Demand for oil in the United States remains about 5 percent lower than it was before the recession, and increased domestic production and imports from Canada have moderated the rise in oil and gasoline prices in some regions in recent days.

Spain would be most vulnerable to an interruption of Egyptian transit operations because an estimated 10 to 15 percent of its liquefied natural gas imports come from Egypt. Egypt also exports gas through pipelines to Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Many companies, including the Italian company Eni and two based in Houston, Schlumberger and Diamond Offshore Drilling, have moved workers and family members out of Egypt, although oil production in fields far from population centers has continued.

Source: [Nytimes.com]

During booming times, yacht enthusiasts would order a new dream boat and keep their old one for the two or three years the builder needed to complete the new boat. Then, they would quickly sell the older yacht to impatient new millionaires and billionaires eager for their requisite status symbols.

But that equation changed with the financial crisis two years ago and took the super yacht market down with it.

The industry has picked up a bit in recent months, although most buyers remain on the sidelines. “The inquiry level is picking up,” said William S. Smith III, vice president of Trinity, the largest custom yacht builder in the United States. “And there is more activity in the used-boat market. But there is still a lot of inventory, and as long as that is the case, people are keeping their hands in their pockets.”

Fear is part of the problem. The wealthy are holding on to their money, and even speculators who built yachts, confident that they could find willing buyers among the new rich, are largely on the sidelines.

The Chinese have not come into the market, although brokers are hoping that the ultimate status symbol will catch their attention. “It is a big question mark whether the Chinese will embrace yachting,” said Bob McKeage, a yacht broker in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “So far it is mostly Hong Kong Chinese, not mainland people.” It remains a question mark because forecasting cultural appetites for yachts is not simple. He noted, for example, that there was vast wealth in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, but only the Venezuelans were avid yacht buyers.

While rank speculation may be gone from the yacht market, there are still billionaires who like to sail the seven seas and are willing to pay for that pleasure.

Some yacht brokers say that Americans are holding back now largely because they fear being viewed as profligate when many people have lost jobs, and that they will soon return.

For the moment, it is just as easy to charter as to buy. Chartering has come back faster than the business of buying boats, or, as Mr. Maclean put it, “Would you buy a house right now?” alluding to the uncertainties in that market. Shannon Webster, a yacht broker based in Fort Lauderdale, said her business this winter had been good. “It is not tremendous, but it is up quite a bit from last year,” she said. “My price points are about $200,000 a week. That is for a boat that sleeps 12 people and has 11 in crew. It is 164 feet.” But she added that yacht owners were more willing to negotiate.

Certainly $200,000 a week is only for the very rich. But in comparison to a $20 million yacht, it is, some might say, a bargain. After choosing which boat to charter, your local boat shipping company will transport it to you at a decently low price. Saving money is now everybody’s current goal.

Source: [Nytimes.com]

The incidences of pirates attacking ships out at sea increased dramatically during the year of 2010 by striking more ships and taking more hostages than in any year on record, according to an annual report on piracy.

Attacks on ships were up 10 percent over 2009, as were the number of hostages. Pirates captured 1,050 people in 2009, with 4 killed.

“At the moment, it looks like it’s getting out of control,” said Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the maritime bureau, which has tracked incidences of piracy at sea since 1991.

While the report catalogs violent attacks on ships around the world including those off the coast of Nigeria, Indonesia and Bangladesh, the most dangerous waters remain those off the coast of Somalia. Ninety percent of ship seizures occurred there last year, and at year’s end at least 28 vessels bearing 638 hostages were still being held for ransom.

Moreover, the bureau’s figures, taken from incident reports or provided by shipping companies, certainly represent an undercount, Captain Mukundan and other experts said. Ecoterra International, an organization with offices in East Africa that keeps track of Somali piracy, put the number of vessels of all sizes still being held by pirates at 46, with 800 hostages currently being held.

Boat shipping companies, as well as, shipping companies of any sort are fully aware of the statistics.

In many cases, shipping companies have made the cold calculation that are rare enough to be considered a cost of doing business. Higher ransoms, in turn, allow pirates to purchase better equipment and pay more effective recruits. “Success begets success,” said Nikolas K. Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the United States Naval War College.

As recently as 2006, hijackings and attacks had been in decline. Only 188 hostages were taken in 2006.

But attacks began mounting again in direct correlation to the enduring lawlessness on shore in Somalia, Captain Mukundan said. The country has had no functioning central government for nearly 20 years, and many young Somalis find themselves drawn into the piracy business.

Captain Mukundan praised the efforts of the navy patrols but said governments need to refocus on getting some administrative structure in Somalia. “Unless that improves,” he said, “no matter what we do at sea to contain the problem, nothing will happen.”

Source: [Nytimes.com]