It was a pale shadow of the last boat show I attended up there....about 35 years ago. A Dana 24, a few small sailboats, a couple 26' power McGregors. I guess the nice boats were at Lake Union, at least I hope they were. I'd hate to think sailing was dead. There were lots of fish boats and power cruisers, couple in the 35' to 40' class I'd guess. I didn't go aboard any but the Dana 24. All of the small boats were wonderful to see and nice designs from the teaked up long and lean sirens of the small seas with all the bells and whistles to all 'glass and easy/practical construction with very, very low maintenance, mostly just turn it over in the yard to keep it from filling with rain.

I mostly went to see the accessories as I wanted to try out several different binoculars..and did. Man those 7X50's are heavy! I'd maybe have to look fast and hope I saw what I wanted. Squandered 20 bucks on some of that "self sealing" silicon tape to mark my anchor chain with. It was billed as "resuce tape". No ShamWow anywhere to be seen.

Once again I was amazed at the lack of foresight put into the interior of the Dana 24. IMHO for about 150k new they tried, as designer and/or builders somtimes do, to get too much into a small boat and succeeded in cramping it miserably. The interior is molded in pans for the vee berth/table area and some floor pans that the lockers, etc. are landed on. The design is just vee berth-centric and it's not only ugly but IMHO ridiculous and unseamanlike.

The vee berth is mounted up high to get width and for length to OVERHANG the two settees/settee berths which leaves..oh, about ten inches of clearance between the vee berth bottom and settee cushion for a sleeper's legs to slide under. It cannot be done by any decent sized individual. Also, that puts the vee berth up high and forward of the compression post which has to be wrangled around to get out of the berth and then step on a settee or make a BIG step down to the sole. Despite no doubt storage under the vee berth, it just looks like crap to me. A simple double settee arrangement with storage forward would have been SO much cleaner, so much better at sea. It would sleep two in comfort, table drop to make filler and a large double sort of thing for hankey pankey. But no.....that monster vee berth not only looks hokey, I'm betting based upon a lot of experience with vee berths in small boats it is a nightmare to get into the berth, out of the berth, and definitely to have to get to piddle with two in the berth. Shudder....

Otherwise, it was a beautiful boat, beautifully put together, beautiful teak joinery! The cabin/deck molded part is complete and well laid out, looks like a lot of fun to sail.