Breaking News

2010 Miami International Boat Show

Marilyn Mower

February 10, 2010

On this Web page, you’ll see something we’ve wanted to do for a long time—give you access to breaking news. The opening of the Miami International Boat Show and the Yacht and Brokerage Show seems the perfect time to do it. Check this page throughout the Show, February 11-15, to find out what we’ve been seeing and hearing.

Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing the debut of some new boats that promise to be interesting: Marlow’s 76LR tops my list. Close behind is the new Meridian 541.
Mercury has a new concept boat that’s hush hush until Friday. Regal is unveiling a new 40-foot sport coupe on

Thursday and Jupiter is taking the wraps of a new 26-footer and an updated 29, both designed to fly with less horsepower.

The new management of Vicem yachts seeks to be shaking things up and this Turkish builder is showing a number of beautiful cold-molded boats.

If you are interested in something new that you can trailer as well as cruise, don’t miss the Ranger Tugs display. They will have very smart 25 and 29 footers on display.
Check pages 52 to 63 of our February issue for more information.

2009 Fort Lauderdale

International Boat Show

Marilyn Mower

October 22, 2009

Ah fall. And this year marks my 21st Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. I love this show and one of the reasons is because it’s my hometown show. Almost anybody who is anybody attends this show and I don’t have to drag a suitcase and live in a hotel to work it.

Yes, the show will be a bit scaled back this year (my feet will be happier), but most of the manufacturers are showing up, even if their booths are smaller or they display fewer boats. I believe there is pent up interest in buying boats and accessories. Most of the older models in inventory have “gone away,” although new commercial lending plans that that make it economically feasible for dealers to floorplan new models did not arrive in time for many dealers to place orders before the show. Still, that means that soon more builders will be calling furloughed workers back to the factory, and that’s a good thing. The upturn has already started in the RV market and historically, recreational boats follow close behind.

As the world learned to cut back and do more with less, I believe that many people learned that the quality of an experience is more important than the quantity of experiences. When it comes to quality experiences, you have to look hard to beat things that involve boats and water.

The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show begins October 29. You can pre-order tickets online at a $2 savings by going to  showmanagement website

Between the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) Show and the International Boatbuilders Exposition (IBEX), there were several new products that caught my eye and you are going to want to check these out for yourselves.

FLIR has a new small thermal nightvision system that looks like R2D2. This cute little guy lets you see clearly in total darkness and has twice the range of earlier systems.  flir site.

SureShade, which last year debuted an electric roller shade that slides out on telescoping tubes to cover cockpits, this year introduced a smaller product for center consoles and small cruisers under 35 feet, This time the shade rolls out with a hand crank. The manual system is three times lighter and costs 40% less than the automated version.  www.sureshade.com.

Navico’s AP24 and AP28 series autopilots for Simrad were judged top of the class at the electronics show, and with good reason–www.simrad-yachting.com. Furuno took home several awards including top radar for the Furuno NavNet 3D Ultra-Hi Def, and its accompanying NavNet 3D display in the navigation category.

The 2009 Technology Award at the electronics show went to Simrad’s Broadband Radar, which we debuted to you last February.

At the IBEX show, we saw Raymarine’s E-Series Wide-Screen displays, which  are pretty nice and useful, too. If you want to upgrade your plotter but don’t want to waste the money you already have invested in chart chips, you’ll be glad to know these units use both Jeppesen C-Map 4D charts or Navionics Platinum Plus. The screens come in 9”, 12” and 14” displays. They also have both touch screen and keypad controls and the visuals are great.  www.raymarine.com.

The next two are for a more limited audience, but could be the answer to someone’s distress.

Several months ago one of our readers inquired about ways to hook up a alternate fresh water rinse to the onboard toilets on his brother’s boat. Seems they boat in stinky water. He’d MacGyvred something with a garden hose and a valve, which didn’t look very practical to me. Hope he sees the latest Marine Elegance electric toilets from Raritan – this has a very nice control system with a solenoid and double check valves built into the toilet’s base–along with the extra hose– so that you can give your raw water toilet a fresh water rinse, or in cases of extreme grassiness, use fresh water exclusively to flush.  www.raritaneng.com
.

Those of you who are thinking about doing the great loop next year might really appreciate Kimberlite’s Signal Mate automatic controller takes the guesswork and recall out of sound and light signaling for reduced visibility conditions. With modes for boat inland and offshore, the Signal Mate controls a 360° light and your air horn. You punch up the problem from a menu, and Signal Mate makes sure you are displaying the right light combination and sending the right horn blasts for various situations such as powered, not making way, towing or under tow, danger, etc.  www.signalmate.com.

If you are attending the Lauderdale show, stop by and say hello at our booth in the 400/500 Tent. If not, get out there on the water and have some fun.

Electronic Gremlins

Time to catch up on a few things. . .

Marilyn Mower

September 19, 2009

Southern Boating readers have the chance to visit with the crew of 64-foot Ocean Watch on its 13-month Around the Americas tour to draw attention to the changing condition of the ocean. Ocean Watch left Seattle June 1 for a 25,000 mile clockwise circumnavigation of the Western Hemisphere,

This project represents the efforts of a consortium formed to make the public more aware of the Oceans. The founding partners are Pacific Science Center, a nationally-recognized leader in environmental education, and Sailors for the Sea, a non-profit organization that educates and empowers the boating community to protect and restore our oceans and coastal waters. They have joined in this undertaking with Mark Schrader, a world-record-holding, solo circumnavigator and ocean race director, and his experienced, professional crew of three.

David Rockefeller, Jr., co-founder of Sailors for the Sea, said, “This project is definitely an expedition for our times. The health of our oceans is important to all of us, not just those who live by the sea. Our food sources, our climate and even the air we breathe are dependent on the vast ocean systems. Around the Americas will demonstrate both the current deterioration of the ocean condition and what we as individuals can do to reverse or at least slow the negative effects.”

The official suppliers to this project reads like a Who’s Who of the marine industry and I’m glad to see several Southern Boating advertisers on the list, such as Jeppesen Marine Navionics and Winslow Life Raft Company.

Ocean Watch will be in Charleston, SC, on October, 12, in Miami, FL on October 18 and in San Juan, PR on November first on her way south to round Cape Horn in January.

Check out the Web Site www.aroundtheamericas.org or  ” www.sailorsforthesea.org for information.
Also sailing related, I’m rather fascinated by a couple of sailing boats at opposite ends of the racing spectrum. I admit I used to view multi-hulls with disdain and I still do not find them particularly attractive under sail, but the science and the physics in the R&D and the sailing of Vestas SailRocket and BMW Oracle’s 90-foot trimaran have me captivated. I am especially intrigued by the fact that the tiny Vesta and the enormous Oracle use the same curved shape on foils of their outer hull(s).

Vestas SailRocket is a one-man, 28-foot proa-type boat that has previously clocked the speed of 45.7 knots sailing off a beach in Namibia. On October 2 the team will start open a 28-day racing window to try and achieve sailing 50 knots in 20 knots of wind and slso attempt to break the current speed record held by the French boat, Hydroptere. I find it fascinating that SailRocket is an outgrowth of testing programs to build better wind turbine blades by the British manufacturer, Vestas. Just treat yourself to a few minutes of video watching from the cockpit as the boat sails at 40-plus knots. You’ll find yourself grinning, too. www.sailrocket.com

For a jaw-dropping experience visit BWM Oracle’s home page and get a look at 2/3rd of the boat out of the water. I wouldn’t know how to begin to calculate the loads on the cross beams, but I would  love to have a front row seat.   bmworacleracing.com

While I think that the 33rd America’s Cup has become a nightmare that has almost nothing to do with competitive sailing, the knowledge generated by the development of the two freak boats for the battling billionaires will no doubt advance all sailing technology.

That Old Inventor, Necessity

Marilyn Mower

July 29, 2009

At the recent Marine Aftermarket and Accessories Trade Show, I was delighted to see how fast new products are being turned out to meet new needs. Some of those needs are in response to new regulations for safety or environmental protection, such as the BluSkies outboard motor fuel primer, a little pump that takes the place of the squeeze bulb for getting that first gulp of gasoline to your outboard. Readers of Southern Boating’s July issue (Engine Room page 26) know that the EPA is now including boat fuel systems in its controls on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) leaking into the air.

Remember when auto fuel systems were changed to positive locking gas caps and gas pumps were refitted with new fillers  that featured collars around the fuel fill nozzle? It’s the same principle. Fuel hoses, primer bulbs and non-metallic fuel tanks are going to have to be “non-permeable” in the future and fuel fill caps will change. Those aren’t big issues to the boat builders or the boating public and in the giant scheme of things, will likely go unnoticed by most consumers, although some of the other links in the chain to reduce VOCs for gasoline powered boats will likely cause engineers and boat builders a few headaches as they prepare to revamp product to meet the 2030 deadline.

Which brings me back to BluSkies’ invention. A hard, non-permeable polymer (plastic) device that fits in the palm of your hand and with a patent-pending piston pump, pushes fuel through the line to your outboard to prime it. It’s brilliant in its simplicity  but to BluSkies’ Company President Chris Brown, it’s just another day at the office; his other company is called Enbarr—Solutions through Innovation, which thinks up ways to use nano-technology to solve problems with vapor barriers and injection molding, terms that cause my eyes to glaze over.

But here we were at MAATS chatting away, me, the person who almost flunked high-school chemistry, and Chris, a guy who dreams in carbon chains. It was yet another example the interconnectedness of technology and leisure. I remember having to stay after school on several occasions to repeat chemistry experiments and my struggles with the slide rule were legendary. I vividly remember asserting—at substantial volume—that I was never going to use those formulas once I finished that class. No, I never again touched a slide rule or a Bunsen Burner or thought about the molecular properties of any chemical, but I’m glad Chris Brown didn’t feel the same way. Thanks to Chris and people like him who think unraveling chemistry is a sport, we get to keep boating and have cleaner air.

Electronic Gremlins

Marilyn Mower

June 17, 2009

Just when I was ready to post new information on the fight against more ethanol, we ran smack into another bureaucratic nightmare—the phone company. Southern Boating has been utilizing the services of Bell South to connect to and from our web site. OK, maybe it wasn’t the fanciest solution, but it worked. As you know, Bell South is no more, having been swallowed up some time ago by AT&T. There’s a subset of “trickle-down theory” that predicts the successes of  giants will create problems for little people.

So, last week when our web site faded to black, our Circulation Director Kellie began calling the usual list of suspects. I’ll spare you the grim details, but at the end of the day it turned out that our web servers were mindlessly directing communication to Bell South receivers–receivers that were no longer listening because they had been turned off by AT&T.

Of course the first question was along the line of, why weren’t we notified? The answer was: You were, on three occasions.

US: Oh really, and who did you inform?

THEM: E. P. (no sense sharing his real identity as it wasn’t his fault)

US: Why did you notify E.P?  He hasn’t worked with us in more than 18 months. THEM: Well that’s who we show as your IT reference.

US: Really? We sent a certified letter as per your request stating the change in responsibility. We sent photo copies of the Driver’s Licenses of your new contacts for our account. We have copies.

THEM: Oh, well,  given that time frame, you must have sent them to someone at Bell South.

US: We sent them to the office that requested them. By the way, we’ve been knocked of the air for three days.

THEM: Send us copies by e-mail stating that you have the right to discuss your web site.

US: Sure, as soon as you tell us how to connect our e-mail server to the Internet again.

For brevity’s sake, I left a lot out the exchanges, but the amount of time and effort required by multiple people to do the detective work and then fix the problem is simply staggering. It was a lesson in how dependent we have become on the Internet to manage and speed our work flow.

The Internet is a blessing and a curse and we were seeing its dark side. We had to resort to doing things the old fashioned way, phone calls, faxes, face-to-face meetings, off-site research. It was frustrating to be back in the age of the dinosaurs. . . at first.

Little by little, I found myself enjoying talking to people and reading information off of paper, rather than off a computer monitor. Imagine that. . . ink on paper.

Most of the editing of this magazine is done electronically, every single photo and ad arrives in electronic form. Yes, it’s faster and yes, I am bleary-eyed. The darn thing is fixed now, sort of. Some of of the ones and zeros that created part of the content have become lost in cyberspace, apparently forever. I imagine them running free like kids who have just heard the afternoon school bell ring. I think that bits of boat reviews or Carrie Hanna’s recipes will probably float around the electronic universe as random code and pop up in other web sites for as long as there is an Internet.

But back to ink on paper. . .I admit I like it. It won’t disappear before my very eyes if someone flips a switch. Someday, we’ll probably be able to beam the entire magazine into a microchip in your head that you can access at will. Until such time I think I’ll muddle along with the best of all possible worlds—a beautiful arrangement of ink on paper that shows up in your mailbox and on newsstands once a month, and a collection of ones and zeros available to you on the Internet 24/7 . . . at least until something swallows up AT &T.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused as we negotiated the switchover.

Ethanol, again

What part of “NO” don’t they understand?

May 11, 2009

Marilyn Mower

Just when you think it can’t get worse, the Feds are asking if we’d like more ethanol in our gasoline. Uh, that would be “NO.”  I’m referred to as a treehugger around this office but it doesn’t pain me to say “NO” to more ethanol. Look, this isn’t a case of where two negatives equal a positive; more ethanol is just – worse. Ethanol is a mess in the marine environment where open vent fuel systems just beg water to enter the fuel supply. Even though the EPA has mandated closed loop gasoline fuel systems by 2012 in all marine applications, any gas powered boat built before then is a sitting duck for fuel problems. Why not take a page from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and reject ethanol?Aircraft with bad fuel fall out of the sky and that scenario was enough to exempt private aircraft from ethanol. Well, boats with bad fuel will sputter to a halt just the same and the results could be being swept out to sea, overturned in an inlet or rundown by a freighter. Same potential for tragedy. Write your representatives at the state and federal level and say “NO” to more ethanol.

Palm Beach

International Boat Show

April 2, 2009

Marilyn Mower

I found some things to get excited about at the Palm Beach International Boat Show last week, and it wasn’t just the weather. If we handed out awards, I’d give a “Best Engine Room” prize to Nordhavn’s 75-foot yachtfisherman Hull #2. Jim Leishman showed me around this engineer’s heaven and I’m sure my jaw dropped more than once as I inspected the installation. It’s a spectacular and suitable for ABS or MCA class should the owner choose. So much space to work. . . such beautiful piping and manifolds. Rather than throw in redundancies on every system, Nordhavn’s approach is to upsize primaries so that they won’t fail at an inopportune moment, say halfway to Tahiti. Yes, this big girl can make 4,000 miles on a single tank. We’ll be having a full report soon. As for “Clever Electrical Panels,” the installation aboard the new Offshore 64 Voyager would be hard to beat. At the end of the helm station in the pilothouse, a short little section of cabinetry juts out to keep folks at the console from stepping over too far and falling down the stairs to the accommodations. This little half wall is fitted with the main electrical control panels under clear Lucite covers. The 12/24V DC breakers are on one side and the 110/220V AC system is on the other. The best part is that both of these panels hinge open like butterfly wings so that you can actually get to the wires behind both of them either from the pilothouse or from the stairway. Everything is beautifully labeled and tied. And there were some interior features that caught my attention as well. The Sea Vee 43 Express with triple outboards is a sure winner for space planning and finish (I haven’t been away from the dock on her yet). There’s no compromising fishability, but the interior makes the most of its space in a smart galley and a lounge/dining area that morphs into nice, extra sleeping quarters at the touch of a button, two buttons, really. One lowers the table to the floor and the other slides out the sofa into a double bed with a normal rectangular configuration, no filler cushions to wrestle or strange shapes requiring custom sheets. Viking’s 46 Convertible had a great main deck layout with a triangular island in the galley making room for a couple of stools and the perfect spot for morning coffee. The polished Corian counter top lacks fiddles, though, so you have to remember not to leave anything important there when the boat is moving. The arrangement of the owner’s cabin, which puts the head forward and the bed aft, makes a good use of the pointy end of the boat. Of course, the business end of the boat is true to championship form, although there’s a new wrinkle there, too. Prop pockets keep the draft at 4’ 6”. For exterior styling, I liked the upscale approach of the sparkling blue Soluna 46 Coupe. It blurs the line between retro cruiser and Down East lobster boat. The interior is a modern gorgeousness with plush seating, a great galley-down arrangement and beautiful joinery. What makes this boat a star, however, is the effort made to silence the generator. Not only is it back under the cockpit, but it’s so well shielded you’d be hard pressed to know when it’s running.

Boston Whaler Thinks Innovation

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Marilyn Mower

A few months ago in our sister publication, Marine Business Journal, I wrote about the need to create new products for changing times and changing audiences. I challenged readers to think about what new product or service they could bring to market to distin

guish their companies. Tough times, I believe, always bring out the best ideas. As boatbuilders go, the group of companies that make up Brunswick Marine have certainly been having tough times and big boss Dusty McCoy has had the tough task of reducing the number of brands in the Brunswick basket. John Ward, the CEO of Boston Whaler, is one of McCoy’s most nimble leaders and John should get kudos for shaking things up and bringing new ideas and products to market. The first of his new ideas was to look at the venerable 13-foot Boston Whaler in light of today’s generation of entry level boat buyers. After all, expectations have changed since the unsinkable Whaler his the market 50 years ago. I urge you to have a look at the colorful, adaptive new 13- and 15-foot Whaler Super Sports for 2009. Even their sales pitch is new: Buy your idea of a base boat and purchase accessories later on-line. Hey, a tower rack or a rail-mount livewell could make some teenager a cool birthday present. Whaler put it together as a package that gets people on the water for less than 10 Grand. Brilliant. At the other end of Whaler’s spectrum are its Outrage customers, folks looking for a very well appointed (read, high end) express cruiser. Those buyers were treated to the unveiling of the prototype of Whaler’s largest Outrage yet, a 37 footer. But not secure in the bigger is better promotion angle, the builder hedged bets by debuting its first modular deck option with this boat. Yes, you can always fish it, but if your family’s tastes run more toward entertaining friends pulled up to the local sandbar, the entire seat/livewell and tackle center can be replaced with a seat/summer kitchen option with twice the refrigeration, sink, grill, ceramic cooktop.  This was innovation from the shop floor by employees so excited to bring it to market they finished it hours before the Miami Boat Show opened, threw it in the back of a pickup truck and drove all night to get it on display. Doubly brilliant. See  http://www.whaler.com/boats for more. These are the kinds of innovations that will keep us all boating.

It’s an economic stimulus for boating

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Marilyn Mower

Kudos to those who worked tirelessly for eight-that’s right, eight–years to fix a problem with the U.S. Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act that has cost you, me, and everyone else who has ever had a boat hauled, repaired and repainted untold gob-lots of money. The short story is that employees and subcontractors working on boats and yachts have been subject to the same injury insurance as those maritime workers toiling away on massive commercial ships or handling cargo. Longshore insurance coverage is, A) difficult to obtain and, B) expensive, often costing the individual independent contractor or a small company or boatyard anywhere from $12,000 to $50,000 per year or more, as their employees did not qualify for coverage under state workers’ compensation injury coverage. Eight years ago, at the urging of its members, the Marine Industries of South Florida (MIASF) took up this cause. Sometimes working alone, sometimes partnering with other marine trades associations around the country, MIASF lobbied and bantered making the case with human resources departments, insurance boards, labor relations groups, government committees and government officials to explain that the guys who pressure wash the bottom of your little boat aren’t longshoremen. In 2008 their arguments picked up steam and around the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, word came that all opposition to granting an exclusion for recreational boat and yacht workers had evaporated. All that was needed was sponsorship in the U.S. House and Senate and attachment of the exclusion to some piece of legislation. In addition to the volunteer board of directors and the employees of the MIASF, the hero and heroine of this tale are Representatives Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) and Robert Klein (D-FL) who seized the opportunity to put the legislation into the President’s economic stimulus package because U.S. boat yards are losing work to yards in Mexico, the Caribbean and South America where longshore regulations do not exist and hourly wages are a fraction of what they are in the U.S. The package was signed into law February 17. So there you have it. On page 830 of the some thousand-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 21 lines spell out the amendment. Those 21 lines will save the average boat yard and the average independent marine tradesman 55 percent annually in insurance costs. It’s a move that saves livelihoods and should save you $$$ on your next trip to the boatyard. And the best news about this part of the economic stimulus plan is that it doesn’t cost taxpayers a cent.