For what's its worth worth, three people I spoke to about the NYC show ( in
late December) said it was not so good, disappointing...etc....It's the second
year it was scheduled between Christmas and New Years....Someone else said
there were no large boats there....

Cheers,
Rob Brueckner
1972 Hatteras Yachtfish

Rob Brueckner wrote:
For what's its worth worth, three people I spoke to about the NYC show ( in
late December) said it was not so good, disappointing...etc....It's the second
year it was scheduled between Christmas and New Years....Someone else said
there were no large boats there....

Comment

This is a recurring comment I have also heard concerning  some boat shows.
In recent years  there has been a number of cases where the ownership or
administration of the show has changed.
Can it be that  boat shows are becoming victim of their own success?

The show organizers are looking to make a profit from admissions and display
booth rentals.
Vendors are looking to make an eventual  profit from sales contacts or perhaps
even  direct sales at the show.
Attendees are  looking for  some return on the expense of attending the show.
Admission price is often only a small part of the total cost. Travel, parking,
and accommodations can at times amount to a boat unit or more.

IBEX and the marine manufactures associations  joined forces  last year and
rescheduled the Feb show to last October in the middle of hurricane season  in
Florida.
Out of town and overseas attendees often planned to take in both the IBEX and
Miami boat shows due to their consecutive schedules  on successive weeks.
It seems to me that  often too many shows are competing for attention of the
same and finite number of show attendees.
Show organizers  often judge the success of a venue  by the total number of paid
attendance each day or by the total square footage of display  booth space.
However that doesn't take into account the quality experience  from the
attendee's perspective.

Seems like  the organizers and  vendors displaying at shows need better feedback
from the buying public as to what really makes a good show.

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We attended the Miami Boat Show on Friday as we have off and on for more
than 25 years.  Parking was available as usual within reasonable walking
distance at private yards.  It struck me that attendance was down from
previously years.
We went to see three specific vendors and talk to several of there
representatives to get a different slant on current equipment questions and
problems.  It took patience to get to the right person (sometimes the
President of a small company) to get a glimpse of the future so as to help
us plan.
Having just spent over $600 upgrading our three year old Noveltec to the
current version, the most interesting vendor we saw was Fugawi PC charting
software.  The ability to download completely current government charts
regularly for free makes this chart approach highly desirable.
Unfortunately, charts for our cruising area in Florida and the Bahamas are
not yet available from the government.  Certainly this is the wave of the
future.
Tom Little
Defever 49PH Kalani

We had a great time at the Miami Boat shows, there are two. The bad part was
we couldn't make the Sat. breakfast. And of course the traffic in South Fla
is difficult at best.

But the good stuff far exceeded the bad. With temps 60 degrees higher than
home we enjoyed the sites of the show and later Fort Lauderdale. We really
should have allowed at least two full days to see everything at the Miami
show. We saw the trawlers at the official in-water part of the show. The
Admiral and I paying proper attention to boats in the 42-48 range. We got to
talk with the main Nordhavn dude and Mr. Krogen as well as the Passagemaker
editor. I sure would like to meet Georgs one of these days.

Then we proceeded at trawler speed in a rented convertible to Miami Beach,
thru south Beach, and parked in front of new $500K Bentley. With over 100
mega-yachts one can fall into phenomenon I call the "South Florida boating
blues". Its embarrassing, however this is were Hatteras put their 10 boats
and I wanted to visit. Bless their fiberglass hearts, the Hatteras folks
treated us like real people and it took us 3 hours to get out. And I got an
invitation to go fish the new "Hatterascal" (60 sportfish) and I'm still
having trouble sleeping.

Greatest things we saw.
The pull out draw type refers.
Small 3 inch stone tiles for heads, showers and even galleys.
The new 47 Nordhavn is very tall, 6+ feet (estimate) over her sister 50.
We still like the 48 Krogen North Sea, what a boat and only $900K.

Hatteras now uses a transfer system that pumps from the main tanks to day
tanks. The interesting part is that the transfer is so easy and has several
back ups to keep from overfilling or running dry. If the main tank runs dry
(and they do this on purpose) the pump stops. So you set it an forget it. If
the day tanks over-fill the pumps stops. It a simple system in many respects
as they only pump the tanks to the day tanks, you can't draw directly from
the main tanks. They clean the fuel on the way to the day tanks and the
captain mentioned several times that he always had clean fuel. Course he is
feeding 3100 hp. They are sending me the details on how they do this, I will
try to pass it along. It seems to me at first glance to be an easier and
safer fuel delivery system from multi tanks.

There was more I'll post it later.

Skooch  Hatteras LRC 42
Wonton Creek MD