Despite a significant snow storm in Northwestern, Illinois on Thursday and Friday, sailors flocked to Navy Pier to see the Strictly Sail Chcago show. I think a few folks may have called in sick.

Sabre has the new, award winning Spirit on display and also the popular Sabre 386. Lines have been short so far but Saturday promises to be a tad more crowded.

Hope to see you there

Attendance at some shows around the USA has dropped and organizers and exhibitors are trying to figure out why. Perhaps some of the boaters who read this blog can jump in here with an opinion? Are there too many shows or not enough? Is the content what you want to see? If you aren’t seeing what you want to see at shows tell me more about what you would like and I’ll pass it along to the show promoters.

One other thought I had was that the Internet now has such great tools available that in many cases you can see the details of lots of boats from the comfort of your desk or arm chair. Is it possible that the web has taken the place of actually attending a show for some boaters?

Yesterday, we received notice from Sailing World that the new Sabre Spirit had won the Boat of the Year Award from Sailing World Magazine. This is a really great thing for Sabre as many previous designs have also won this prestigious award. The Sabre 362, Sabre 402, Sabre 452 and Sabre 386 all won Boat of the Year in their year of introduction. It says a lot about our hull and rig designer Jim Taylor, about Sabre Yachts and the integrity of our boats and about our boat builders who feel are the best in the game.

Great news!

The New York boat show kicks off the season for boating enthusiasts in a few weeks from today. A lot of folks think that running the show through the New Years holiday is a bit crazy but that’s the only time when the Jacob Javit’s center is available for the show. Being in the heart of one of America’s largest population centers helps to make this show a success whether it’s a holiday or not.<p>And New York isn’t the only one with a January date. London, Boston and Toronto all follow within a few days of New York Boat Show. Hope to see you at one of these shows

Both Sailing World magazine and Cruising World magazine have both nominated the new Sabre Spirit sailing yacht to their finalist lists for their respective Boat of the Year awards. This contest is an event for every sailboat builder. New designs are typically timed to enter the marketplace during the fall boat show season. The judges for Boat of the Year test boats in both Newport, RI and in Annapolis, MD (where the Spirit was sailed this time around).

Preliminary inspections are carried out dockside and half of the competitors are knocked out right there prior to sailing for any number of reasons, most technical issues, having to do with boats not meeting build standards. Final results of this contest will be published with the release of the January issues of these two great publications.

I am on my way back from a visit with the engineering guys to CMD (Cummins marine Diesel) down in Charleston, SC. First of all summer travel in the Eastern USA really bites. Hot humid weather creates thunderstorms and the whole system shuts down and tonight we are sitting in Washington waiting for our flight that will get to Portland at 3:00 AM. But it’s all worthwhile. We had a really great visit to Cummins and spent half the day today on the water sea trialing their new and innovative Zeus propulsion system. This stuff is amazing. No more rudders and no more shafts just pods attached in the most efficient axis at 90 degrees to the water it is pushing. A Joy stick operates the boat up to 1800 RPM. You can go sideways, you can even use the Skyhook feature to put the boat in a position and hold it using the Zeus system and a GPS receiver. Autopilots are now part of the system as are automatic trim tabs. It is very cool stuff and we are trying to decide when we will start using the system or one like it from another engine supplier. More to come here this is very cool stuff

I had some fun last winter when I worked with Yachting Magazine on an article titled Blue Fairways. I’m a golfer myself and enjoy playing golf almost as much as I do boating. So the concept of working on this article seemed very appealing. Can you combine these two great outdoor activities? Well the answer is a definite "yes". We had a great trip that started in Charleston, SC and ended in St Augustine. I only wish I had a couple of months to do the entire Intracoastal with my clubs aboard. Maybe that’s the goal for retirement.

We recently held two events to introduce the new Sabre Spirit weekender to our dealers and the sailing press. Since it’s not boat show season we chose this way to start to get the word our about this great new model. We asked the owners of the first two boats if we could use their boats for a match racing event in Marblehead, Mass and they agreed. Day one was a rain out but day two proved to be a ton of fun. Sail, Sailing World, Cruising World and Sailing all put up teams for the Volvo Penta Press Cup. After a series of races Josh Adams from Sail Magazine won the finals against Andy Burton sailing for Cruising World .

In our dealer sail off Jeff and David Willis of Willis Marine, Huntington, Long Island raced to victory in the finals against New Wave Yachts