Miscellaneous Boat Show Pictures

I'm a little behind the curve in the photo posting because I've been just a little busy taking care of the injured.  Here are a few pictures from the boat show that I didn't get in Tim's original post.

Tim in the front cockpit of the Chris White Atlantic 57

Tim at the interior helm station of the Chris White Atlantic 57

Even with the new Hunter interior in the Gemini 105 I still can't connect with it.  Sorry all you Gemini lovers.

The Tomcat 9.7 on the other hand has some very smart design features - just a few feet too short for a full ocean-going catamaran.

The Gunboat 66 "dinette"

The Gunboat 66 Lounge

The Gunboat postage stamp galley sans fridge and freezer

The Gunboat 66 fridge and freezer in the utility room only accessible through the head (Uhhh excuse me for barging through your shower but I need to get a glass of milk).

The Passport 47.5 center cockpit - My vote for the best monohull of the show.

The Passport aft cabin queen island bed.

Separate shower stall

The V-berth queen island bed

Second head/shower

Companionway / Galley...This is one seriously nice boat.

Warning...

thoughts on the boat show are my personal musings...your mileage may vary.

The boat show was the expected good time though I was surprised at my reaction to the big Gunboat. It was massive, 70+ feet, clearly well built and with a basic layout I think right for a Cat. But the philosophy behind it was so blatantly in-your-face, so "mine is bigger than yours," that it just left me cold. A boat whose arrogance completely overwhelmed its elegance. Even if I did hit the lottery I couldn't imagine myself living on or sailing a Gunboat.

The Atlantic 57 had the same air about it, though not quite to the same degree. I know they were both presented as performance oriented boats, and I usually have a soft spot for anything designed and built to go fast. But something about these things just struck me wrong. Whatever it is I love about sailing, I couldn't find a hint of it built into these hulls.

The last boat we boarded was the new Discovery 50. I suspect it sails like a condominium with its in-mast furling main, single head sail, wide hulls and large salon. But the inside space was just about perfect. If it took a couple of extra days to get somewhere no one on board would mind. Still a "too-much" kind of boat, at least it didn't slap me upside the head with pretence and 'tude.

We didn't entirely shun the mono hulls, even after our NY adventure sail. I took a shine to the Dufour 405. Deb thought its interior looked like a hotel room. (And she's right, it did.) She liked the Passport 475CC. I took her word on its interior since I couldn't get my gimpy self down the companionway ladder with the crowd. (All of the sales folks were very tolerant of me limping around the various decks. I'm sure a couple of them were holding their breath at times, waiting for the loud splash.)

Maybe it is just my general mood after the crash, but the show as a whole left me with a bit of an "outsider" feeling. The boats were trick, shinny, loaded with goodies, marketed to within an inch of the tops of their masts; and somehow gave the impression they were quite content to stay tied to a dock, Netflix running on the big screen TV. It was like the salt smell had been scrubbed completely out of the air, the ocean just something to hold the hulls up out of the mud. Or maybe it was that the prices of these things flat sucked the air right out of my lungs, blurring any thought of real boats sailing in a real world of wind, weather and wave. Anyway, it felt like the sailing got left out of the sailboat show.

It will be good to get on little Nomad this weekend, put some canvas up to catch a little air, look around and see real water (even if it is just our landlocked lake).

Boat show prep...

I was kind of hoping the good folks at the boat show would tie all, or at least most, of the Cats to the same pier. Given my status as the "The man who walks with sticks" (I'll bet the Native American version sounds better.) a minimum number of steps would be a good thing. But the Atlantic 57 is on C, the new interior Gemini on K2, Gunboat is tied to D, (The Gunboat is my "Lotto Boat" and this may be the only chance I have of actually touching one.) Fountain Pajot is on B; you get the idea. So if you are at the boat show, get irritated at the slow pace of the crowd, notice that you are tied up behind some wanna-be on crutches, and feel a good bitch coming on, take a deep breath and relax. I will be going as fast as I can.

(If there is more than one stick-walker at the show, I'll be the one in the green Tilly hat. And if you really do want to bitch remember this; I just got knocked off my favorite motorcycle by an eejit in a Mercedes, the docks are narrow, and I will be carrying two big aluminum clubs.)

Deb was thinking of visiting a few off-sight, used yachts, that are for sale in the Annapolis area. With the exception of the Chris White designed Atlantic and the Gunboat, there are really no new boats around the show to see. There are certainly no boats at the show we can reasonably expect to ever afford. So it seemed a good idea to wander around some. But that may be too many steps.

And a difference from our other trips to Annapolis is that this year there will be some people around the show that we know, and maybe some others that we hope to meet. Though we will still gawk over the boats we are not newbies anymore. As in everything, the people have become the focus of our plans. People who have become friends, friends and family we hope to spend time with once on the boat, and people, maybe in far away places, that are friends still to meet.

ps. The insurance man called today. When his list reached $7000+ in damages he called the GSXR officially toast.

Boat show...post (1)

We got home from the airport just a few hours ago. These last 3 days were about as much fun stuffed into one weekend as I can remember, but some of the details will have to wait. It is already getting late and I have an early flight tomorrow, so just the highlights while they are fresh in my mind. First, a huge "Love you guys!" to Matt, Tiff, Campbell, John and Lara, who made the trip a delight. Matt and Tiff and their daughter Campbell (just a few months older than Catherine) even came with us to the show on Saturday. It was great to get their impression of the ones we liked and they let us use Campbell for "grand kid tests." She approved of all the boats, even climbing under the covers on a couple of the bunks to check out their suitability for a nap. Important stuff. It was also our first time to meet Lara (she and John are recently married) and I was completely charmed.

 

So what about the show itself? Fantastic if a bit smaller than I thought. The entire show sight would fit in the corner of Oshkosh, the National Business Aviation Association meet, or Sun-N-Fun (3 big aviation shows) and barely be noticed. Still, the docks were stuffed with sailboats of every description and supply vendors filled the tents on shore. Deb and I had plenty of hulls to mull over, and we climbed on and off of literally dozens of boats over the course of two days. Many of them several times. We met and talked with owners. We listened to sales pitches. We gazed at masts and rigging that made Nomad's look short and light. We saw RADARS and plotters, auto-pilots, fantastic interiors, engine rooms to make a mechanic's eyes shine and helm stations that promised adventure far over the horizon. Dock lines creaked, waves slapped gently at a multitude of hulls, the weather was perfect, and all the hardware as shiny as it could be.

 

Much to my surprise the catamaran vs mono hull debate lingers. We dropped one Cat completely from consideration as a live-aboard boat. (The Gemini 105 for anyone who cares). It was simply too lightly built and too tight inside. We would pick a 45 foot center cockpit mono hull first. In fact the center cockpit boats made a very favorable impression all around, and one was drop-dead gorgeous. (For $1.2 mil new it freaking well better be!) So we are now looking at catamaran v center cockpit monohull. (Aft cockpit mono hulls did fall pretty far out of consideration as well. When the weather goes interesting I don't want a monster sea that close to my ass. More to the point the aft cabin in a center cockpit boat is just amazing.) But here's the main thing, all boat details aside. Of the numerous center cockpit mono hulls and Cruising Cats we looked at (less the 105) none would be a disappointment. I would call any of them "home" without a second thought; and would point each toward deep water at the first opportunity. For all the boats we lusted over it turns out the boat itself is not the thing. The thing is the going. So a new debate has taken over from the boat debate. No so much "which" but "when?" Now we are sneaking up on the idea of picking a time, December of 2011 say, or July of 2012. (We haven't gotten that far yet.) When that day comes, put the house up for sale, dump whatever is left that will not fit on a boat, and then find a boat. Work up the list of "most lusted after" (more on that later) get the best boat we can for the money we have, and make it happen. It is the one thing I didn't really expect to learn at the boat show.

 

Boat show...pre

In just a few hours Deb and I should be jumping on a plane and heading for the boat show and a visit with some in the family we rarely get to see. Pretty exciting stuff. Though there is a whole list of boats we want to check out I hope we still have a little time to be surprised, to see some boat we haven't heard of before, maybe run across the "right" one without knowing it yet. I'm sure we will never see all that we want to see in just a day and a half, but it should be pretty cool for Deb to get her first "on the boat" look at the catamarans and center cockpit mono hulls we have been reading about for months. A weekend to spend with her playing in the world's biggest toy store. How much fun is that? And a good time for it, I say. At the moment it looks like retirement might be a bit further away than we thought. (Us and everyone else with a 401k and a house.) There sure are a bunch of clouds on the horizon and (in boat talk) it might be time to reef the sails and figure this is a storm that will be hard to avoid. It is difficult to see to the other side of this one; a serious economic decline coupled with a political debate that gets uglier, more mean spirited and more filled with hate with each passing day. Maybe this is the way it has always been? The days of Vietnam and Nixon, Watergate and riots, saw bodies lying on University lawns, tear gas in the streets and whole city blocks reduced to war torn rubble. I remember tanks on the roads of D.C. and I doubt that the death toll of those tragic times has ever really been told. It hurts my heart to think that those days may be upon us once again. We survived it once. But this time the divide may be even deeper, the two sides more vehement, the hate more passionate. No matter which side wins the current election, after the things said and the charges flung how can either claim to represent the whole? Who on the right will willingly support a President Obama? Who on the left a President McCain (or Palin)? It seems that neither side can bare the thought of living in the country the other side wants to build. And neither side speaks for those of us who would hope the country is big enough for both. When did we decide that the woman who wants to stay home and take care of her family couldn't live next door to the woman who wants to fly airplanes for a living or run a business? Who decided one was better than the other, and when and how? When did we determine that the air was so poisoned by the religious or the atheist that the other couldn't breathe it any more? When did it become my business to tell you who you could love, how you could live, what you could eat or drink (or smoke); and when did it become your job to decide those same things for me? When did it happen that any of us decided that we, and we alone, were the only adults in the room? Scary times indeed. But for tomorrow and Saturday and Sunday the biggest and baddest debates I want to hear are; catamaran or mono hull, in-mast furling or lazy jacks, hank-on or rollers, and how big an anchor is big enough? In the end we all sail the same sea and a large enough storm can take us all to the bottom.

Not just pictures but real boats!

So I had a corporate flight that ended up in Ft. Lauderdale over Friday morning. (That afternoon we flew to Key West, spent the night, and now I sit in Freeport, Bahama. Sometimes this job doesn’t suck too bad!) And as luck would have it the Ft. Lauderdale boat show was going on. It is mostly a powerboat show, but there was one marina where they filled a couple of docks with sailing catamarans; the main displays being Leopard, Lagoon, and Fountaine Pajot. It was the first time I’ve actually had a chance to step onto one of these things and poke around.

Mind you these were all brand new display boats and mostly bigger than anything Deb and I can hope to afford; but it was still a good chance to learn about them. My first impression was that this is just way cool; beautiful pieces of equipment with all kinds of fun stuff to play with. Second, they really aren’t very big. Well, pretty big for a boat but not too big for a house. I guess the way to put it is that this is about as big a change in lifestyle as we could imagine. We would (will) be going from a house / garage full of stuff, toys, things, tools, knick-knacks to a floating, open-floor-plan cabin that floats and moves. Everything you need for daily living is there – but there is no room for all of the stuff we tend to drag along with us through our lives. A good many of the people I talked with at the show, salespeople mostly, were live aboards for at least several months a year. And they all seemed to love it. (I know, they would love to sell me a boat.) Anyway, it was a good time and did nothing to discourage me from hoping to make this happen some day.

A new kind of kitchen for Deb

A new kind of cockpit for me