Re: Seattle Boat Show
Boatist - I dont think I will waste time on a Bay Area boat show again. The Seattle show was big and busy, somewhat overwhelming initially. Talked to a couple booths that do the boating trade show circuit (all the show) and they both said Annapolis on the East coast, Seattle on the West, everything else it limited. One of the coasties in the USCG booth mentioned the boat trade was larger in Washington than it is in Florida.<br /><br />Didnt see your post until I got back. But now that you mentioned it, I didnt see any Johns or rudes on any of the boats, only Japanese motors. But I wasn't looking for them so if there were any, there wasn't much of them. If I had seen your post I would have looked for the John/rude booth but as it was I wasnt there for outboards.<br /><br />The vender booths total floor size was about double that of the entire Cow Palace arena, not including the exhibit halls. Indoor boat section was about the size of the Cow Palace floor plus a couple exhibition halls. A lot of aluminum boats, small ones to big ones. Just a lot of boats. Free shuttle down to the boats at the pier, but we didnt go because it got dark early. It was funny to see a guy selling kayaks next to one of the largest boats on display indoors. Almost everything was powerboat related. Maybe both sides of a 30-ft isle was dedicated to sailing paraphernalia. One booth for wooden boat building. <br /><br />Seems like everybody was there, either with a factory booth or represented by one or more venders. Its nice to be able to bounce the same questions off of several knowledgeable sources; each has a little something extra to add.<br /><br />If you book 14-days in advance on Southwest Airlines the roundtrip costs $160/person, or less. A room downtown is about $80/couple per night. You dont need a car, free bus all over downtown Seattle and to the boat show. Take the wife and make a 3-day weekend out of it. Its less than a 2-hr flight from the Bay Area. Theres tons of stuff to see and do, all within 15-min walk around downtown. Good food (and coffee) everywhere. Caution: one of those Pyramid brewery/restaurants is across the street from the convention center/boat show and if you go there for lunch (and beer) it could slow down the rest of the day.
If you wanted to do it less expensively, you could fly up in the a.m., for a couple bucks take a bus to the show, then fly back in the evening.<br /><br />Woman brought her Feng Shui book so I was let off my leash to roam at the show. Garmins new radar is just flat out scary! Its a huge, flat radome! As more of that Garmin radar are sold, I can imagine an increase of reported UFO sightings in the harbor. I talked with ACR about EPIRBs, learned how they work, why the differences in product designs, etc. A lot of misconceptions about those critters; i.e. internal GPS function and auto-deploy. Awl Grip and Interlux had booths on different isles. I asked why, they still pretend they arent talking to each other (theyre owned by the same company). The two companies are being redirected; Awl Grip is coming out with some interior marine paint products and will be targeting the boatyard market with their product lines; Interlux has already begun updating their product line and will increase marketing targeting the D.I.Y. folks. I spent a lot of time in the Simrad booth talking to techs about interfacing radar to their autopilots for collision avoidance, updating my AP-20. Also curious about Simrad caving in and allowing radar overlay of charts. Fwiw, Simrads new wide-angle transducer wasnt there! It got lost in transit from the NY boat show to Seattle
so they say. I think the Florida office sold it at the NY. Got the low-down from Wesmar about stabilizing fins for the Rabbit. Its going to be a little more pricy than I thought.<br /><br />Next year well probably go again, make another 3-day weekend out of it. Well use the boat show as an excuse to go wonder around downtown Seattle and relax for a weekend. The boat show ($20) is open until 8pm so one long day there should be enough. Id like to go down to the docks first thing, while its still light out (short days in January), see those boats, then spend the rest of the day indoors at the boat show.
