Our first båtmässan!
Our instructor from this fall’s coastal yacht master class said “in the spring, we prepare our boats. In the summer we sail them. In the fall we take classes. And in the winter we go to boat shows”. So it being winter in Sweden, we attended the Gothenburg båtmässa.
Reader, it was a blast! Walking in was intense, with so much to see and do. So! Many! Boats! So! Many! Gamma Gubbar!
Highlights included:
Remote controlled sailing. Kalle had told us about this: there is a small pool with a set of fans at one end, and you get to play with 30–40cm long boats with very simple controls, but that really give you a birds-eye view of how a boat moves in the wind and the water.
Beautiful old wooden boats and models with a wonderful pine-resin smell about them.
Pretending that we own an 8 million SEK yacht.
Talking with folks that hire out boats for various ocean crossings.
The various old sea folks (and some not so old) and all of their neat creations and works.
Over all, it was a lot of fun. We saw a few good ideas for things that we should get for our boat, and had a lot of inspiration for future sailing plans for the two of us. Why stop at an Atlantic crossing???
We also had some good discussions about getting an electric motor. It was nice to actually see and touch these motors, since information online is sometimes a bit hard to parse.
One main downside is that there really weren’t all that many sailboats; it seemed to be much more of a motorboat show. And they were lovely! But not quite what we would want to ogle.
