S/V Deep Playa - Pearson 424

The boat show is much improved over last years noticeably smaller event. The show is more fleshed out and I believe there are more new seminars than in years past, but I've not done my spreadsheet magic to verify that. Saturday Dawn and I focused on walking the floor and seeing what the deals were. I have a short list of needs including getting quotes on the wire and connectors for our NMEA 2000 instrument network.

We attended Carol Hasse's sail inventory seminar. She gave a great talk explaining the different sails a cruiser might want aboard given their rig type. Dawn found the very helpful as Carol does a great job of explaining everything with just enough but not too much sailing jargon. We had previously received a quote from CArol and she was the cheaper of the high-end sailmakers. We're about 99.9% sure we plan to buy our sales through Port Townsend Sails. I'll do a write up of our sail plan in the near future.

At Hasse's talk we also met Nicole and Aaron from s/v Bella Star we also had drinks with later that night back at the marina on s/v Palarran. Aaron found me through this blog. He and Nicole are taking the Seattle Maritime Academy's diesel class taught by professor grumpy and they confirmed he is indeed still a nut. We told them to tough out the lecture , the lab is worth it. We also ran into Craig from s/v Luckness who we originally met when Dawn and I took the diesel class.

LArry Brandt gave a great talk on cruising the sound. He covered Olympia and Shelton. I want to make it down to Olympia one of these times so I'm glad we got some local knowledge form Larry. Larry is also a teacher for Starpath and I have a feeling we'll be seeing him in the future as we take a few more classes.

Great first day at the show! We're headed out the door right now for day two.

The Boat show started yesterday and today will be day one of a multiday journey to the show. If you're not alread, check us out on Twitter at @DeepPlaya. I'll be sending out pics of cool things and comments on the show and seminars. Also check out the hashtag #seabtshw to see if anyone is also tweeting.

Whew that was a long day of walking around and talking about boat toys. The show is all outside with some individual booths open to what is a public walkway (no way to enforce tickets) and most of the booths in larger tents. The tents themselves were very musty\moldy smelling though including the smaller seminar tents. For that reason and that it was 70 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze it was great to be able to get outside so often as we wandered around.

I’ve made a couple of decisions already and will be shopping for best prices or placing orders when I get home next week.

ICOM VHF – I’m going to go with the M504 with the rear panel microphone and Command Mic III in the cockpit. . I don’t think I need the extra functionality in the M604, the 10-keypad would be nice but that’s the only extra feature I found compelling. Ben at the Icom booth was very nice and super helpful!

Stern Anchor Line – I’m going to order the 400’ Dynemma model from Quickline. There is a discount code you can get at the booth which you can use to order online and includes free shipping.

Rescue Tape – Plan to pick up a couple rolls Saturday. I just didn’t have any cash on me today.

RADAR – No decision here, but I ruled out RosePoint because they have no compatible chartplotters that you can use along with the PC solution. That’s unfortunate as their software is pretty good. Saturday we’ll look around at the nav software programs and chartplotters. I’ll be doing some spec comparisons (most interested in power draw) offline.

NEMA 2K – I had a good talk with Ben about Maretron gear as well and he helped me settle on a cable size (Mid) and validated for me that I can start small by getting my GPS antenna replacement an 0183 adapter for the ICOM and a USB gateway for the laptop and then add the whole backbone and upgrade the rest of electronics later.

Capehorn Windvane – Yves was delightful to speak with, but I'm a sucker for a French accent. The design of the Capehorn is solid and I love that it doesn’t put a jungle gym on the back of the boat. Right now I’m 99% sure I’ll be going with the capehorn, but I don’t need to be ordering it today.

PFDs – We already have a couple of auto-inflating PFDs, but the Mustang Deluxe hydrostatic model with harness with are super comfy so we’re going to get a couple more and have the others for friends to use. West Marine is selling them for $249, Svendson’s also at the show for $229. $229 is cheaper than I see it online or back home. I need to figure out if we’ll be able to check them on the plane though.

We’ll be back on the floor Saturday and in the seminars. We’re headed to San Francisco for dinner tonight. I’m going to upload pics to Flickr in a bit.

Dawn and I are headed down to Oaklands for the Strictly Sail Pacific show this weekend. It partially just to get away and partially to get stuff done. Although as usual when you plan to leave rainy Seattle its going to be beautiful in Seattle during that same window. Oh well... at least we won't have to make the bed.

Here some of the things we're going to be looking into at the show:

• CQR Anchor and Bow Roller - We need a 60 pounder to go with our undersized 35lb Bruce
• ICOM VHF - We sold our cheap VHF and I'm set on ICOM. I just need to decide between the 504 and 604 and of course we're looking for a deal!
• NEMA 2K - I'm not ready to do all of this all at once so what's the best place to start. Can I get a breakout box a GPA antenna and a USB module as my starting point?
• RADAR \ Chartplotte \ Nav Software - At some point we nee dto upgrade our old power hungry RADAR and when you pick your RADAR you're also picking your chartplotter and nav software (if you want to do any overlays) because RADARs are all proprietary and only work with their brand plotters and software. At least that's what I recall the speaker from Rose Point Navigation saying at the Seattle boat show.

That's a lot of the bigh stuff, there's lot of small stuff too.

I'll be twittering deals and cool stuff as I move around the floor. My twitter account is DeepPlaya. Another good account to follow is StrictlySailPac. If you're also going be tweeting at the show use the tag #SSP09 on your posts so we can all follow along with each other.

One of the things about making this decision to go cruising is all the cool stuff you get to learn.

Tonight was the last of our Marine Diesel class at the Seattle Maritime Academy. The class was 11 weeks long (roughly) and was about 1/2 rambling lecture and 1/2 hands-on completely unguided lab work. The class could have been much better run and organized but in general coming out of it I feel like I know a lot more about Diesels to the point of being knowledgeable enough to do some of my own work, to have an informed conversation with a mechanic and to have a sound basis for doing research to figure out how to do things I can’t do right now. I’d give the class a C+. I' was going to go lower, but I think the fact they actually have smaller diesels (like we have) was worth the C+. So it was passing, it accomplished the goals, but it also had a lot of wasted time. Judging by the amount of people who dropped out and frequently didn’t show up; I think many might score it lower.

One of the big outcomes of that (and of the Brion Toss Rigging workshop) is that I put together a big tool order tonight and will stopping in to get some Craftsman toys tomorrow. I like Craftsman tools, I’ve never broken one yet, they are reasonably priced and if I did break one they’d replace it! Did you know on www.Sears.com you can order things and pick them up in the store? Very handy and saves shipping since I wouldn’t have been saving sales tax. I’ll post some list of things and pics of things when I do a full tool inventory.

Next on the course of learning is the Mahina Offshore Cruising Seminar 4 April 2009 in SeaTac, WA. I have good things about this seminar, I’ll let you check out the site yourself and I’ll post more when we’re back.

We stumbled on to the upcoming Mahina seminar because we’re also going to the Strictly Sail Pacific show in Oakland, CA 17-19 April 2009. I didn’t want to invest a whole day in SF on the one class so taking it here in Seattle is ideal! We’re very stoked (they say that in CA right?) to be going to the Strictly Sail show as we’re going to also use the time as a little mini-vacation as well. I’ll post more about that when we’re down there or when we’re back.