my wife pam and i are getting ready to go to the miami boat show on thursday. one highlight will be a "mini" reunion with pat reischmann who designed and built our last boat, the manta "42", hull # 70, which gave us more than 8 years of trouble-free cruising delight! at the show we have a couple of tasks to accomplish such as choosing our electronics package - we've decided on having an all-garmin boat - we need to order helm seats, choosing systems for long-range communications and weather info, and there are a bunch of other things as well that need to get done. we expect to be busy but will hang out alot of the time on the P-47. should anyone wish to chat with us about how we're setting up our boat we'll be pleased to talk and listen. dick vermeulen, the builder, has sea trialed hulls # 2 and 3 fairly extensively. we are always interested in how the boat does at sea. a gulfstream crossing usually is a good test. when he arrived in miami monday afternoon dick sent an email concerning several subjects. the following paragraph from that email summarizes his trip. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- Had any easy crossing today starting from a cove on the east side of Great Harbor Cay behind Petit Cay and Hawk's Nest Cay going across Great Bahama Bank and between Gun Cay and North Cat at 19 knots. Did 140 n.m. in 8 hours. Great ride. Had some 9 footers the day before after we came around Hole in the Wall. Had to slow down to 12 knots, but the boat did very well in some big and confused waves. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- this morning i spoke with dick and he told me the entire trip took two days and was 210 nautical miles. it took him 15 hours total running. day two was the run of 140 miles for 8 hours described above. upon arriving in miami they refueled and took on all that they burned which turned out to be 130 gallons.