[ShabahZ280]

So, I visited the International Exposition (IX) Center in Cleveland OH on 1/21/12. The show seemed a little smaller than previous years, but still a lot larger than Cincinnati's show, which I didn't even bother attending this year.

Didn't get a chance to take a whole lot of pics, was mainly there to get on board my friend's new Hunter e33 sailboat. Part of his deal was the dealer could use it for their display this year, and this would be his first time ever onboard, so that's pretty much where I spent most of the day.

Here it is:

The interior's absolutely beautiful, but I won't bore you guys with pics of sailboats.

I visited all the big booths, Marine Max, SkipperBuds, etc, and hit the small dealers and brokerages as well. The loser for me this year, and last year was Regal. Speaking specifically towards their large cruisers (30+), things are great layout and design-wise but there's one thing that drives me nuts about their cockpits. They've got this beautiful boat loaded with twin volvo diesels, IPS, joystick docking, infrared bbq grill, air conditioning, refrigerator, ice machine, flat panel TV's, power sunroof, and everything you can think of under the sun, that you'll pay easily a minimum of over 250k for, and they find a way to integrate a $20 plastic igloo cooler into the cockpit. Seriously?!?


(thanks to regal for the promo pic for illustration.)

Also, I saw the new Sea Ray 470 Sundancer. Impressive, but not worth the huge price tag, or the 30 minutes I stood in line. Also had to sign up for a "boarding pass" to get my name put on the dealer's mailing list. But Here's an interesting pic I found of the actual load-in process. Pretty intense.


This year's show winner was Monterey. Specifically the 320 Sport Yacht. Absolutely gorgeous, everything is extremely well thought out and engineered. For example, the rear bench seat is a large sunpad. The backrest against the transom folds forward, and you can use the sunpad to face in reverse, which is clever. I know Wellcraft had done something like this back in the 90's, but this was very well designed. The interior had some amazing features, like an integrated fold up armrest/glovebox/cupholder combo in the setee on the starboard side. I can say I've really never seen anything like this inside the cabin, and I really dug it. The aft cabin was in a u-shaped seating arrangement, and then converted to a bed by pulling the panel forward, which turned it into a queen-size bed. Pretty sweet. The wood, accents, and everything inside the boat was beautiful and if I had the $217k, that'd be the boat I would have walked home with.

Here's the link, definitely deserves a look!
320SY | Monterey Boats

Didn't see any Mariah's there, as expected. However there's a company called Freedom Boat Club that specializes in a location based fractional ownership program. It's basically like a Timeshare for boats. They have locations all over the country, and judging by the photos in their information, some of the boats in their fleet are SF Mariah's.

Also, in talking with many of the dealers, when I mentioned I had a 2000 Mariah Z250, I got a lot of "Wow!!", and "I remember the old Mariah's"

[Dredd]

Thanks for the pics. I would be happy to see more of the sailboat. She looks pretty sexy.
I really dig the convertible top on the Regals. I talked to an owner from here in the midwest and she said they shut theirs and use the AC quite a bit. She admitted that when they bought it, they balked at the idea of closing yourself in and using an AC on the lake. I thought that was interesting.
Funny, we also thought that same Monterey was the overall show winner. I didn't notice I didn't have pictures of it until after I got home. I guess I was so busy taking in the boat that I forgot to take pics of it... and I was on it twice. When I stepped down into the cabin, my jaw dropped at all the room. It was roughly the same price as the Fastech... and people wonder why go-fasts are fading.