Any members headed for Ft. Lauderdale Trawler Fest

My Admiral went crazy and signed us up for 6 seminars at the Ft. Lauderdale Trawler Fest. *Any other members headed there? *We love looking at the new ideas in materials, space saving, storage, electronic suites, door and window tech, and appliance location/installation etc. on the new boats, even if we can't afford to do most of them.

We'll be down for Friday and Saturday. Kept the seminars to one on fiberglass on Friday am, and loop/inter-coastal on Saturday am. We're also looking forward to crawling around boats and getting ideas as we renovate our Gulfstar 36.

the missus and I went 3 yrs ago. Perhaps it was just us but we were both very disappointed. We were expecting it to be more like a swap meet/carshow. As healhustler alluded to......its geared to the more "affluent" end of the boating spectrum. Sure it was neat to look at all the shiny new toys but we'd both have really liked to have had more "open houses" on older boats and a swap meet area would have been really good. The vendor area was pretty small so getting some 1 on 1 time with the reps was difficult. We both fell in love with a 39' sparkly new tug though!! Hate not being RICH!

Healhustler, I'm going to try to get up one day. I've never been to Trawler Fest and I just want to see what goes on. When are you going to leave your island paradise and visit me?

Bilgewater: We'll see you at the Saturday "Loop" seminar then.

Hopcar: I'm knee deep in re-skinning my hardtop. Glad to have finally finished the re=plumbing and get out of the gennie space, even though the hardtop job is quite miserable. At least I get to enjoy the weather up there. Bought most of the plumbing stuff from you guys over there, and will probably be back for some resin and putty.

Looking forward to meeting you.* I'll be wearing my desert camo boonie hat.* Do you have delamination issues you're dealing with?

Bilgewater wrote:
Looking forward to meeting you.* I'll be wearing my desert camo boonie hat.* Do you have delamination issues you're dealing with?

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*The hardtop was just tired from too many owners putting different stuff up there. *I just decided to replace the top skin with pre-fab panels, and rebuild the inside with new closed-cel foam. *There was severe delamination under the radar pedestal, but a persistent drip of tobacco juice in one corner of the pilothouse convinced me to do it this way. *Right now, it's a heck of a mess, but at least I can see what I've got nows. *Inner skin is beautiful.....hope I can preserve it just the way it is. *Outside, I'm using 4 X 8 prefab 5/16" sandwich panels that are quite a bit lighter, but stronger than the originals. *I should save about 80 lbs. or so, which will help with the extra weight of electronics going on the mast instead of the roof. *Solar panels will be on aluminum brackets, but no holes in the new skin.

Oh yeah for those who are new to Ft. Lauderdale, you chould check this place out for a meal after the show. Its been there forever, used to be known as "dirty Ernie's" until the health dept. made them CLEAN the place. It used to have dirt and cobwebs everywhere, but then as now the food made it so that nobody cared what the place looked like. If its nice head upstairs and dine on the deck.
http://fortlauderdale.citysearch.com/profile/2576376/fort_lauderdale_fl/ernie_s_bar_b_q.html

twiisted71 wrote:Oh yeah for those who are new to Ft. Lauderdale, you chould check this place out for a meal after the show. Its been there forever, used to be known as "dirty Ernie's" until the health dept. made them CLEAN the place. It used to have dirt and cobwebs everywhere, but then as now the food made it so that nobody cared what the place looked like. If its nice head upstairs and dine on the deck.
http://fortlauderdale.citysearch.com/profile/2576376/fort_lauderdale_fl/ernie_s_bar_b_q.html

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*Back in the mid*70's Dirty Ernie's was an open roof on top.*No cover no tarp just sun, rain or moonlight and strings of lights.*Just picnic tables and you had to bring your beer up from downstairs yourself sometime.

But the Conch Chowder and fritters*are still as good as ever.


-- Edited by JD on Tuesday 31st of January 2012 04:37:08 PM