Oh Yeah....the Boat Show.
The Trawler Port display this year was down from last. Krogen made a good showing with their new 44AE and 52. GB was there with a 48 Trawler and a big Eastbay. Nordhavn had a 47 and 62, Fleming had one, Garcia had their 54" (a new trawler) with a full displacement hull. Leopard had their 39 and 47 trawler-cats, Nordic Tug had a 34 and Helmsman had their first 38 showing. The traffic and trouble one had to go through to see these few boats was considerable in the face of the hundreds of Motor Yachts and go-fast boats. Somewhere in the maze were supposed to be two other new power-cats built for Marine-Max, but I couldn't find 'em. Ranger Tugs and Cutwater were both inside the Convention Center and really grabbing a lot of attention from the usual rows and rows of cabin-cruisers, center consoles and sport boats.
Cruise-Air did a much larger display this year for their roof-top AC units sporting salt- resistant components. Leir had their propane outboards hanging on the back of a few of the dinghy displays, and at least one Marine electric motor builder was there, but I didn't really see much in the way of notable ground-breaking innovation. Most of the refreshing ideas I saw were in builders design efforts to get the most out of a given space. For those, you have to climb aboard the boats with a tape measure and a camera. Color changes, reflective surfaces, light, and thinner (but stronger) walls made for subtle changes to add inches to interiors that were noticeable. I suppose the world must be running out of teak forests, because the turn toward other woods (especially Cherry) was really evident among quality and economy builders alike. Regardless of product opinion, it was good to see Helmsman and Garcia with two previously-unseen trawler-like boats for Miami.
In Electronics, there were pretty good boat-show prices on everything, but Garmin dropped the numbers a lot on 500 and 700 series plotters a day before the show. Disappointing were the un-knowledgeable crews hired to handle the droves of people. We (and three other customers) were grossly mis-quoted the pricing for the Garmin 7215 by $1500, had a relatively disinterested guy doing a boring demo over at Raymarine, and a overly-green rep with Simrad that simply didn't know enough about his product. There were too many people and probably too little time to really train them. We did better at the retail dealers. My two cents.