April 11-12, 2013: Strictly Sail Pacific Boat Show

This is always so much fun to go to, and so expensive!  We ended up putting money down on a Monitor Wind Vane, a self-steering mechanism we figure is essential for long passages.    It takes up a lot of room on the transom, and we need to build our towers to support our solar panels and wind generator around it, so we needed to buy it first.

Having a boat already, and not even wanting to be tempted in any way by other boats for sale, we really didn’t go to the boat show to see boats.  Instead, there are dozens of very interesting hour-long free seminars taught by the who’s-who in the sailing world, on everything from sail trim to indigenous tribes of the South Pacific.  We tried to hit as many of the seminars we could.  And then there were all of the makers of every type of sailing gear and equipment you can imagine, each offering substantial boat show discounts.

And finally, one of our major objectives of this boat show was to make fools of ourselves by walking around the entire boat show with signs around our necks saying “Rick and Cindy, Available to Crew the 2013 Baja Ha Ha”.  We are planning on joining this 2-week long flotilla from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas in 2014 in our own boat, but we want to do a “dry run” as crew on someone else’s boat in October, 2013.  We were introduced to a very nice man with a good boat who may be interested in using us as crew, but he would prefer crew who will continue with him after the Baja Ha Ha has concluded.  We can’t.  So, we are still looking.  If anyone reading this, knows of anyone who is doing the 2013 Baja Ha Ha and wouldn’t mind a couple of extra hands, please let us know!  We have put our names on the Latitude 38 Crew List, but have yet to confirm a ride.

We could only participate in the daytime activities of the Boat Show for Thursday and Friday, because Saturday and Sunday, we were scheduled to begin the first of four days of our Celestial Navigation class.

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