The Boat Show

Today's Sea Shanty is Botany Bay, by some unknown group. This is one of the things that sucks about P2P networks. Sometimes people are dumb and do not know that The Beach Boys DID NOT sing "Little GTO" or that they DID make "Sloop John B". Or as in the case of today's shanty they leave out the group all together. Or the sound quality sucks. And so on. But on the other hand, without P2P I would not know about this shanty at all.

Anyway, seeing as how I secured the day off using the top secret ninja skills (lifesize full color cardboard cutout left at work is a good way to fool people into thinking you are on the clock) - I went to the Miami Boat show Friday.

I like the boat show. It is here every year and it is large. HUGE. How large? Lets just put it this way - I have never seen the entire show. The entire show is spread over three areas - the Miami Beach Convention Center, Sea Isle Marina, and Bayside Marina.

I always go to the convention center part of the show. Bayside has "strictly sail", which as you may have guessed is for sailboats. Not those open day sailor boats, but 25 foot and up sailboats with cabins. Sea Isle Marina is for the big ass motor yachts.

The Convention Center is where a lot of manufactures are. All kinds of crap is there. There are boats large and small, the big outboard manufactures are there with all their products, there are HUGE diesel inboard engines to look at, all the electronics dealers are there, and of course most of the stuff is for sale. If you are at the Mako booth and you see a sweet 25 footer, the Mako people will tell you which local dealer will sell you that boat with everything you see on it for the price listed.

This is the main floor of the convention center taken from a second floor walkway. The phone cam is shitty, but you can see the boats.

This is another shitty phone cam photo. But again, you can see the floor. By the way out these two photos together and you have less than HALF the main floor.

And then there is the outside area. What is usually used as a parking lot is taken over by the show. There are a lot of booths, featuring everything from Carib Beer (NO FREE SAMPLES! BOO BOOO BOOOOOO) to boat dealers, to people selling boat related crap, to people selling stuff that has nothing to do with boats at all. I found a sweet ass power cat, but the phone cam photo is just as crappy as the others.

This is a nice power cat! It is a 25 footer with a cuddy cabin. It is powered with twin 115 HP outboards, but it can use up to twin 140s. This boat is made in Florida and if I had bought the thing I could have gone to the factory to watch my boat getting built. Sweet huh? The dude at the booth hooked me up with a local dealer that can give me a test run in a similar boat so I can see how nice the boat runs. Power cats are LEGENDARY for their ride. I want to do this.

I also looked at a lot of waverunner type PWCs. Sea-Doo makes a nice ski that has a closed loop cooling system. What this means is that raw water is NOT used to cool the engine - regular automotive anti-freeze is used. In my case this would mean sea water would not ever be circulated through the engine block. For $8.5 large I can get a three person Sea-Doo PWC with closed loop cooling and a 150 hp engine. This is as much power as my 18 foot boat has - but the PWC has a jet drive which is not as efficient as having a conventional propeller. So it will only go 50 - 60 mph depending on the weight load on the thing.

I also looked at Yamaha PWCs. They use raw water to cool the engine - but Yamaha has made marine engines for years, so they know what they are doing. Also if you properly maintain your PWC by washing it down and flushing the engine after using it the salt water should not be a problem. The Yamaha PWCs are slightly more expensive than a comparable model by Sea-Doo. Once again, I was told of a local dealer in the Keys that sells both Yamaha and Sea-Doo stuff - and they do offer test runs on floor models. I may do this once it warms up a bit. it is like 50 degrees outside now!