"What the hell do I need to buy gallons of woody wax for?"I argued..... Dawn shrugged and looked a bit disappointed. "But we don't even have a boat yet". I don't know what she was thinking..... According to the smiling guys trying to sell it to us at the boat show, it is a great waxing material to help persevere the luster of stainless steel rails and woodwork. ok. we can note it for the future.. but I don't need any today.. do I??
The Miami boat show has lots of 'stuff' for boats... a never ending chain of booths selling all kinds of new ideas and equipment. It was all a bit overwhelming.. but luckily we don't own a boat yet. So didn't buy a single thing. We did take notes though..
We're just South of Miami in a quiet area called Coral Gables. We had somewhat planned our time there to co-incode with the Miami boat show, the largest display of boat 'stuff' that anyone can see. Unfortunately, the show is mainly geared up for 'Oil Burners'. Mainly small, overpowered boats for running around shores for fun and sports fishing. Sail boats form a small fraction of the vendors displaying their wears and even amongst the sail boats; most of those are catamarans.
Catamarans are becoming more & more popular and taking a larger fraction of the sailboat market, every year. More and more people want to get a bunch of friends together, or a family assembled and shoot down to the Caribbean in Spring, for a sail-about on a luxury Cat. Great fun! But not the kind of boats that can go anywhere... not our target boats.
We spent the day wandering the boat show and discovered some interesting goodies to add to our future boat inventory list.
We had received notice that a brand new "Garcia 45 Exploration v2" boat was about to hit the shores of Nassau, Bahamas. This was our first chance to see what might be the best boat we could possibly find. A 49ft Strong Aluminum Centerboard Cutter, designed for a couple to cruise the world in. So we jumped at the chance to see it. The boat was three weeks away from Nassau however; out in the Atlantic, so we decided to spend some time in the Bahamas in the mean time, just because. Dawn had a good idea to relocate to Freeport first, the capital of the Grand Bahama Island before visiting Nassau. She just wanted to break up the trip to add some variety. It tuned out to be a good idea.
We hopped on a small plane (burned some Oil) and jumped over to Freeport, the Bahama's second largest town. The local Miami Tesla service depot, told us to not worry about our car. They would take care of it, store it, keep the battery topped up, wash it and even gave us a taxis ride to the airport. WOW! What a car company!!!! And all for a fee of $ZERO. I wonder what my next car will be... LOL.
In Freeport, Grand Bahama Island we found a small apartment located next to a Marina. We met some lovely sailor people there, living on their boats. Many of them coming from Canada. Sheltering from the Northern snowy weather by spending a few months in the Bahamas.
The local Marina Cat, 'Hitler' (named for the black spot below his nose) decided that Dawn was a cat person and chose to settle in to our apartment for an hour each evening.... Hitler patrolled the marina every day.. making the circuit past all the boats. Just checking on the gophers, rats and any other scurrying morsels ..
Next trip will be our jump to Nassau and to find 'Pearl' the Garcia 45 Exploration boat....
