A short report on the 2006 Miami Boat Show by Phil and Liz

Being in Florida Liz and I went and attended the Miami Boat Show which is billed as the biggest boat show in the world. We cannot, of course, vouch for this but we can say it was the biggest boat show that we have ever attended. With three on-the-water display’s in various parts of the cities waterways plus the entire inside and outside of the Miami Convention Center filled to the brim there was going to be a lot to see. With a show this size one needs to narrow options down as the show was to be on for five days only. Our plan was to check out all the equipment on offer to see if there was any innovation that we could apply to our boat and the builders of the designs in this website and to check out the design changes and trends in the new boats on display.

The first thing that caught our eye was inflatable fenders. On long distant voyaging the storage of fenders takes up quite a bit of room. When in more primitive areas oversized fenders are good things to have on board. These solved the problem. Strongly built they are easily inflated with a standard dinghy pump but then can be deflated and stored below on ocean crossings. Rubbing against a sharp object would damage them but this is also true of the standard PVC fenders. All in all a good idea.

There was a great increase in the number of manufacturers of LED lights. These have a number of advantages over standard incandescent or fluorescent lighting, notably reduced power consumption, reliability, and a much longer life. The down side has been their cost. They still are a lot more expensive than standard lighting but if your budget can stretch to include these you are sure to benefit in the long run. The good news is that with the increased competition these lights have halved in the last two years and we do believe that we haven’t seen the dropping in price finished yet as other firms join the market.

An innovative item on display, shown to us by the head of Davis Instruments was a ‘Shipping Light Identifier’. This item, that retailed for around US$20, allowed one to quickly and easily identify what any combination of lights indicated. E.g. A fishing boat trawling a net, a dredge, a tug towing a barge, etc. The cruising inventor had made a cardboard prototype and shown it to Davis Instruments at a European boat show. They struck a deal with the inventor and now manufacture it. It should make waking up the skipper to identify lights up ahead a thing of the past

We also came across Titanium hose clamps. Many a boater has cursed the standard S/S hose clamp when the bolt turned out to be ordinary steel, or the screw stripped, or the band broke. These appear to stack up against the top quality S/S hose clamps manufactured by AWAB; the premier S/S hose clamp manufacturers and are a similar price at a claimed 40% more strength and a 40% lighter weight.

Phil discussing the merits of S/S hose clamps with AWAB.

For do-it-yourself sailors the new Sailrite Sewing machines were very impressive. For a time, in the 1970’s, Bruce Roberts International use to send out Sailrite sail making manuals with every set of plans. The company is still family ran, with the son’s of Jim Grant, the founder, now in control. On a test run we found no trouble zigzag stitching eight layers of 8.5 oz Dacron sail cloth with a couple of webbing straps thrown in for good measure. And this was by hand cranking! With power it was just as impressive.

New boat design was rather uninspiring with most of the major manufacturers opting for very similar designs we did not notice any breakthrough designs or styles in the monohulls on display. If anything a slight regression away from racing hull type forms was apparent and it was pleasing to note the trend that transoms appear to be narrowing slightly on many designs and drafts seam to be increasing slightly. Nearly all of the vessels had masthead rigs with most of the larger boats also sporting a cutter rig. Also the majority of the vessels over 40 ft were designed around a centre cockpit. Many interiors appeared overly open for open passage making. The compromise here is of course the more open inviting space that appeals to the ladies. Of all the boats on display the standout’s for us were a Herreshoff ketch built by the Covey Island Boatyard in Nova Scotia and an innovative catamaran, the Gunboat 48.

Being Miami, the power boats displayed were predominately planning hulls. In fact we only saw two displacement hulls in the entire show. So different to the Seattle Boat Show we attended in 2004. Horses for courses though, and the styling, especially on the larger boats, 80 ft and up was quite impressive.

All in all, a good indication of current trends and the latest innovations on offer.

Phil and Liz