Miami International Boat Show

Any trawler folks coming to Miami for the show?

Julie and I are flying down in the morning. Staying on my brother-in-law's boat at the Miami Beach Marina.

If I win Lotto this week I'm gonna come. That's the best boat show in the world, I'm told. What a blast to go to it.

Of course, I'll be there for business and pleasure. Looking forward to a better equipped Trawler Port section this year.

I'd love to meet some of you guys. I'll be running back and forth between the show and my store. We've got a booth on the second floor of the convention center and we're running the Gill Foul Weather Gear booth over at the sailboat show. Dave is running the booth at the convention center and Pam and Maria are running the Gill booth. Any of them should be able to reach me.

We were there on Thursday & will return on Friday. I'll drop by yr booth in the afternoon, doing the trawler show in the morning. Coordinate meeting via phil_jude@yahoo.com

I didn't make it to the show today! I always go the first day but we were too busy in the store, thank goodness. Sales were pretty good at the Hopkins-Carter booth and the Gill Foul Weather Gear booth we run. I hope to be there tomorrow afternoon. Philip and Judy I sent you an email with my cell phone number. I hope I get to meet you.

We spent the afternoon hanging out on the boat and enjoying the sunshine. We'll be headed to the show this morning. Looking at new chart plotters and radar. If I find a bargain...I'm droppin' the cash.

Chip, Where are staying in Miami?

Someone go take a look at the Standard Horizon booth and the CPN1010i and give me your opinion Official release is the show (re-release might be more accurate). Thanks.

Hoppy, we're in the Miami Beach Marina. Dang Tom..I was at the SH boothe today and missed the CPN1010i. If I get by there tomorrow I'll check it out.

Chip, If you need anything for your boat, we deliver to Miami Beach Marina. No charge for the delivery. I managed to get to the sailboat show today. There were at least three booths selling repair tape. That's good stuff to have around but how many sellers do we need? There was a book seller there and he had Peggy Hall's book right up front. I got a kick out of looking at the sailboat hardware. Some of those blocks and furlers are works of art.

I finally got over to the convention center today. It looks like a good show. There were three things I saw that got my attention. The first was the propane powered outboards. I've got a thread running on the subject on the engines forum. The next was the tiny floating Personal Locater Beacon that ACR has come out with. It's about the size of a cell phone. The other thing that caught my eye was a small (4500 btu) air conditioner with very low starting amps. The fellow selling it said you could start it and run it on a 1000 watt Honda. The guys in my booth did well today. They sold several life rafts, a lot of clothing and foul weather gear and a ton of fishing tackle. The booth is 2720, drop by.

Sorry HopCar for never meeting, we spent Friday morning at the trawler show dreaming "what if" & the afternoon choosing the nav systems for HEY JUDE, Raymarine e97 & Rose Point. We found '"deals" on both. Friday evening & Saturday were spent on Key Biscayne as guest of Healhusler where we discussed our common vessels & cruising plans.

This was our rookie trip, we tried too hard to do too much, next time we'll pace ourselves. Staying somewhere on the shuttle route would be well worth it.

-- Edited by HeyJude on Saturday 18th of February 2012 10:53:19 PM

-- Edited by HeyJude on Saturday 18th of February 2012 10:53:49 PM

Darn it, I've been trying to meet Healhustler for months and we live in the same town!

Back home after a great trip. I agree with Hoppy the new ACR PLB looks great. I was trying to justify replacing my two year old ACR thats twice as big but spent my money elsewhere. Also the SPOT folks have come out with a cell phone size sat phone that appears to have a great minutes plan that won't break the bank. Love my SPOT tracker.
Tom, I spent some time with the Standard Horizon folks and looked at 1010i. Seems they're not going to release it until late April ("hopefully") because of some "issues". The first release will not be "totally compatible with NEMA2000" also because of "issues they hope to address late in the year or early next year". It's a souped up media center with a chart plotter. First thing he wanted to show me was the MP3 player and the built in speakers. I'm used to Raymarine and Garmin plotters and I didn't find this unit intuitive to use with it's combo touch screen and buttons. My gut feeling is wait and let them work out the 'issues'.
I did buy are Garmin 740s and HD radar package plus transducer and extra inland Vision chip for a great price.
Great show...always enjoy my time in south Florida....glad I don't live there....grin....

The show is too darned big to really cover it in a couple days. My dogs (feet) are howling. Stopped by your booth Hopcar, but as always, they told me "Oh yes, Parks took it upon himself to escort a bevy, er, I mean group of somewhat mis-directed ladies to the appropriate booth". The truth is that just getting the minimum amount of info I was in search of took me every minute I could spend at the show. Like Chip, I've been watching the prices on the Garmin 740S, but they didn't drop this year. The same $1250 I was quoted last year was still the standard.....not that it's not a good price, but I thought I'd see the price drop down to a single boat unit. It would make an excellent back-up system for whatever primary system I choose once we begin full-time cruising in about 16 months or so. Garmin said that the 740 is still the backbone of their business and would likely be in production for years to come. They also advised me to wait for January 2013 when they would be introducing a whole new line of equipment which will do two things.......one, it will lower the prices of their current top line systems, and two, the new systems will be more integrated in the features they offer, taking plug and play another step forward. Raymarine's new product also looked good, but should see some software and control-ability upgrades over the next six months.

The Trawler Port, which I left until last, demonstrated just how skinny the budget has become for trawler-philosophy type builders. Missing was the important grouping of trawler-philosophy type offerings (yes, yes, I know.....we don't really have trawlers, but you know what I mean). Trawler-cats like Fontaine Pajot, Endeavour, Maine Cat, PDQ Pearson and Leopard were either missing or located somewhere else. Strangely, Journey Catamarans had a booth even if they don't have a finished example yet. Also absent or elsewhere were Ranger, American Tugs, Nordic Tug, Ocean Alexander, Corvette, Mirage Great Harbor, and real meat custom builds like Diesel Duck and Downeast customs builders. The used broker trawlers that tended to round-out the spectrum of choice probably couldn't afford the space. In order to compare, I would have had to find parking at each of three distant locations, or take the snail-paced shuttle bus whose progress I actually out-walked for the 10 blocks of motor yacht display in North Miami Beach. After witnessing the extent of the ostentatious Motor Yacht offerings, all of which have almost incomprehensible rates of fuel burn, one can see what the Miami show is really about and where the money is being spent and made. Throngs of 60-130 ft. examples featured bikini-clad hostesses, but I didn't see a single one aboard a trawler, no matter how big or costly. Gee, what do you think that means? Have we (trawler people) fallen to Fuddy-Duddyness among the boating world?

Anyway, I did meet Phil and Judy (Hey Jude) and we enjoyed greatly. Parks....maybe we ought to have a Southeast Florida TF reunion.

Hot women in bikinis don't sell trawlers. That said, would you be attracted to buy a boat modeled by a upper middle-aged woman wearing sweats and a big straw hat that, with the honest look on her face, says, "I'll gladly have sex with you up to once a month? Now will you please take out the trash?"

Where do I sign?

Tom-

healhustler wrote:
*Throngs of 60-130 ft. examples featured bikini-clad hostesses, but I didn't see a single one aboard a trawler, no matter how big or costly. Gee, what do you think that means? Have we (trawler people) fallen to Fuddy-Duddyness among the boating world?

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You didn't really need to ask that question. *Did you?

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Moonstruck wrote:healhustler wrote:
*Have we (trawler people) fallen to Fuddy-Duddyness among the boating world?

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*

You didn't really need to ask that question. *Did you?

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*OK, OK, so I didn't have to ask the question. *Come to think of it, I guess we haven't "fallen" either.*