The Southampton Boat Show

What better way to celebrate our 16th Wedding Anniversary than to go to a boat show?

Well, there are better ways, but the days matched up and we’d really been wanting to visit a European boat show as we had a number of things we wanted, but couldn’t find in Madrid or Porto.

After a bit of logistics due to an unexpected trip to the US three days prior to the boat show, we ended up flying directly from the US to London and took a bus down to the south coast and Southampton.  It turns out our hotel, a Holiday Inn, a free stay thanks to reward points we’ve racking up lately, was literally in the middle of the Boat Show.  That had several unexpected benefits.  The first was that our stay in the hotel granted us free access to the Boat Show, even on the more expensive VIP first day.  We were easily able to sell our pre-purchased tickets at a discount to two happy boat show attendees and recoup a little cash.  The second was that when our hands got full of stuff, or we got hot as the day wore on, we could just pop up to our room and drop things off.

Our view from the hotel

I’ve never been to the Annapolis Boat Show, but I’ve been to many boat shows in Seattle, San Diego, and Fort Lauderdale and the Southampton show was BIG with lots of sailboats both in the water and out and every conceivable gadget or accessory we’ve contemplated for our boat.  We ended up spending two full days from opening to closing picking up all of the items on our list, talking to vendors about future purchases, and poking our noses in a few boats to find out what is new.

The biggest item on our list was foul weather gear.  It turns out that our 15 year old West Marine gear, despite being stored in a house for 10 years, was not the least bit waterproof anymore.  Fortunately, on our crossing it only rained a few times early in the trip when it was also really, really warm so we didn’t suffer being wet and cold.  We really wanted to try on several pairs of good foul weather gear, find something that fit extremely well, and get a great deal.  The show seemed like a great place to do that.  Within 10 minutes of hitting the show booths we’d found the place with every option from Musto, Gill, and Henri Lloyd.  We spent an honest two hours trying on all the potential options and trying on our final selections at least three times.  Chris ended up buying Gill OS1 gear which for the ladies has convenient drop drawer bibs.  I opted for Musto HPX and with plans for the next few years really starting to take shape after the show (more about that in a future post), really good foul weather gear is looking more and more like a wise choice.

We picked up a few more key items on our list, like Wichard double tethers.  One tether is 3 feet long and one is 6 feet long.  This makes moving about the boat that much safer as we can clip on at a new location before we unclip from the old.  We picked the Wichard tethers over the Spinlock because for some bizarre reason the Spinlock tethers remain attached to each other for the first foot, effectively making a 3 foot and a 5 foot tether, which seemed like a silly compromise to an otherwise nice system.  We also snagged several nice lines from the remnant bins for pennies on the dollar for our genoa car adjusters, boom vang, and mainsheet.  The mainsheet was especially sweet as we found 35 meters of 12mm double braid with a dyneema core for about 25% of typical cost.  I’ve already put that on the boat and tried it out and it is the bomb.  It looks great too.

Check out that smart looking mainsheet!

Again on the safety front, we found a fire blanket that we will mount close to the galley.  For some reason these seemed hard to find in the US, but they were everywhere in Southampton.

We are on the lookout for a new stove and found several that we liked.  The Plastimo Neptune 4500 seems like a good choice, basically the UK version of a Force 10, but the Levante looks a real advancement in the lineup.  It boasts better insulation, better thermal control, and you can even get it with fore and aft gimbals.  The price for the Levante (w/o the f/a gimbals) was a heart stopping 1800 pounds!  Oof.

Our electrical panel is in desperate need of a revamp.

I count 5 or 6 things that no longer need to be there and we’ve since added 3 new pieces.  We just need to start over, so we looked at the panels on the new boats and switch panel options and eventually decided that a custom panel with the cutouts for our devices would be the right way to go.  That will be a winter project for sure.

I really like this split, hinged panel on a J/122. That’s what I have in mind.

Oh yes, we did go on a few boats.  I think we spent less than 2 hours with boats as we found the gear booths far more interesting.  I also didn’t care for the brokers that talked to us as we were actually considering buying one of their ridiculously expensive new boats simply because we had stepped aboard.  No, I just want to see if you’ve come up with any clever ideas in the last 15 years that I can incorporate into my boat…

This “box” for the bowsprit in the v-berth area of the J/122 is a great idea. A big improvement and another future update for our boat.

I like this lifeline “netting” on the J/122. Notice the line run across bottom to give the red pieces something to grab onto.

The J/111 used a different method for securing the lines at the bottom. We could go either way. Not sure which we prefer yet.

One boat did catch our eye, mostly because it was chock full of clever features.  This is an Ovni 395.  An aluminum, swing keel, swing rudder boat that can beached and would make an excellent high latitude voyager.  But really we just thought some of the features were cool.

The wet locker for foul weather gear and the “garage” aft are great features.

This split settee table seems like a smart idea.

A custom mount for a Hyrdovane and liferaft storage

I found a good deal on a Lewmar V2 vertical windlass recently.  Now I just need to figure out how to mount it, so I kept poking my head in the anchor lockers to see what builders were doing these days.  This Elan 350 had a clever arrangement where the chain pokes through a hole in the deck to get the chain lined up with windlass mounted inside the anchor locker.  I don’t know if it works, and I know I’d prefer not to have that hole in the deck, but it is an interesting idea.

Our laugh out loud boat was this Oyster 725.  The broker scolded us for taking pictures inside.  What, are we spies?  Wouldn’t it be more like free publicity?  Here are a few pics of some of the outrageous aspects of the boat.  Take that Oyster!

Seriously?

Okay, well the LED lit companionway steps is kinda cool.

THAT is an electrical panel!

Easy to forget this is a boat