BOAT SHOW LAUNCHED A FLEET OF
ALUMINUM BOATS AND INFLATABLES
Fred Dyson – Dyson's Starboard View – Messing About in Boats
Good show this year: new boats, new gadgets, and several dealers were making sales. I guess splashing through the first mud puddles of the spring turns a young man's thoughts to boating.
It appears, to this old sea dog, that the Alaskan boating market continues a long pattern of more aluminum, work-type boats, and more inflatables. I suspect this relates to the Alaskan preference for action and service over glass and appearance.
The inflatables continue a twenty-year evolution from life rafts to being real boats with excellent performance. They certainly have ceased to be something that you carry in the trunk of your car and set up at the shore to let your kids play. These boats have gotten so big and with so many rigid components that users leave their inflatables blown up on a trailer for the entire season. Aluminum boat builders are multiplying like barnacles, and buyers should watch out for boats that can't take the beating we give our craft in local waters. Particularly watch out for boats that twist easily, for they will surely start having structural failures. Some manufacturers use foam to try and stiffen weak hulls. This makes hull repairs difficult. I personally don't like riveted hulls, and I am wary of butt-welded chines. The best builders are using extrusions to join the bottom and hull side plates (chine) and it seems to work very well.
I ran into an old shipmate, known on the "chain" as "Bilgewater Bob" at the show. "Bilge" said that too many of the aluminum boats had ''Woody Woodpecker Hulls."
When I raised my starboard eyebrow, he explained that a ''Woody Woodpecker Hull" was one where the hull and bow bent up about halfway forward and they look unnatural.
I continue to be impressed with small things that are making stock boats more practical. Many have a forward self-bailing cockpit or a passageway through the windshield to allow you to walk forward to tie up or go ashore or drop the anchor. I also like the vastly improved "canvas" that is now available.
Many of the newer fiberglass boats have tiny but functional cabins that give you someplace to get in out of the weather and or a place to lock up some of your gear when you are away from your boat.
The hull lines look like they will handle well in a seaway and the interior appointments are spectacular. "Bilgewater Bob" said all they needed was a little perfume and he would think he was in a French cat house. I do not know what an old sea dog like him would know about cat houses.
I always look over the boat show for things I can't live without, and I found a few this year.
WATER-FREE FUEL FUNNELS
I bought one and will test it and give you faithful readers a report.
Alaska Products 688-1555.
GO-DEVIL
This marvelous device has a four-cycle engine attached to a long shaft and prop. The thing sits up on the transom and is balanced so that you can use it to steer and raise it up for obstacles and shallow water. I am told that these devices are used, with great success, all over Southeast Asia.
D.J. Enterprises 694-2380.
MARINE BINOCULARS
Take my advice; don't ever look through a pair of Zeiss or Fujinon binoculars. It will ruin your relationship with ordinary units. The clarity, light gathering, and incredible depth of field will induce lust in the experienced seafarer.
Locally, Aviation Electronics (248-0098) has the Fujinon glasses at prices better than I have seen in national discount catalogs. I like the Polaris 7x50 model with the built-in compass. I will have to skip a couple of house payments and buy a pair.
GPS
Satellite navigation for us little guys, now down to $1,500. Great accuracy, and the Feds are not shutting down the satellites during coffee break anymore. Soon and very soon.
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