Born in Rotterdam in 1953 Peter Kluytenaar grew up on board of family-owned inland barges, but himself pursued a career at sea, serving as deck officer and master on a wide variety of sea-going vessels. Presently he is partner of Serendipity UnLtd, a small consultancy firm that is involved in nautical research and training. In his ship-manoeuvring consultancy activities he introduced the use of large scale ENCs in order to get too large vessels in too small ports. One ongoing example being the transits of large cruise vessels from the Meyer Shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, to sea. Still navigating both at sea and on inland waterways he is an active user of ECDIS. Together with SevenCs he successfully lobbied for the introduction of Inland ECDIS in Europe and more recently the drafting of a international harmonised Product Specification and Encoding Guide for Inland ENCs. Peter is vice-chairman of the European Inland ECDIS Expert Group, who is responsible for the European Inland ECDIS Standard. Together with Lee Alexander, he is technical co-ordinator of the International Inland ENC Harmonisation Group.

Peter, together with his wife and two daughters, lives on board of the historic coastal trader mv Zwerver, which has her homeport in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.