Saturday - Spent At The Boat Show

We went to the Strictly Sail boat show today and boy, there was a bunch to see and do.

The Strictly Sail show was conducted right next to the Saint Pete Pier.

Half of the show was on land, the other half was conducted from floating docks.

The water was pretty rough, and there was quite a bit of 'pitch and roll' going on, even though the boats on display were in a sheltered area. You can see 3-4 waves on the water in this picture.

Luann, Katrina and Jaime climbed onto several of the boats, looking at the styles and design of the interiors. In this image, Katrina and Jaime are working on getting their 'sea legs'.

After the last boat, they climbed on this catamaran, and were amazed at how stable it was in comparison to the monohulled boats.

Luann was on one of the boats when it rolled suddenly, so she decided to wait for us on land to keep from injuring her ankle she had hurt earlier (can't say that I blame her, the pitch and roll was very strong at the Catalina display). This picture was taken as we had finished looking at the boats, and were heading back to land.

We stopped by the Hutchins Com-Pac display. Unfortunately, there was nobody to talk to from the manufacturer about available options for our sailboat, so we had to content ourselves with taking pictures of their literature display and a couple of the boats they had brought to the show.

This Com-Pac caught our eye because of the unusual bulges at the waterline.

This is the Com-pac literature display.

They were also giving rides in some of the boats at the show under the name of 'Discover Sailing'. The girls decided to pass on that suggestion when they saw the amount of heeling the boats were experiencing while under sail. From the other people on the lawn in front of us, you can see it is something of a spectator favorite.

Yep, just a little bit of a list to starboard...

They were even giving rides on a sailboat similar in size to ours. Talk about a bumpy ride.

We even saw a couple of boats sail into the anchorage to see what is going on.

Here comes another visitor, in for a peek and then quickly back out.

The girls relaxed on the lawn, watching the sailboat rides come and go.

We also attended a couple of seminars, (Onboard Communications & Anchoring and Docking), then bought some telltales and sail bags for the mainsail and the jib. One display really caught my attention as this gentleman had a mini sailboat rigged up to show how to trim your sails effectively. I learned a bunch from him, such as the fact that I didn't have the jib trimmed correctly on our jaunt last weekend. Some other things need to be looked at too, as to how I was working the controls for the mailsail (Cunningham? What is that, and how do I use one?). Things like that. Looks like I really need to go to BKB 101 school to be a better sailor than my ego allows...

While walking back to the parking area, we came across this Com-Pac 19 (named: Champagne) tied up at the Saint Petersburg Municipal Marina.