Seattle Boat Show!

Every year Seattle Boat Show has two shows – one in January and one in September. Typically the January show has terrible rainy weather, but we lucked out this year!! Seattle hit an all time record for Jan 25th hitting 68 degrees!

The show is split into two locations: the convention center and then down on Lake Union. At the lake, you can tour a lot of motor yachts and sailing boats, previously owned. While we are not in a position to buy a boat today, our goal at these shows is to make contacts with brokers, get ideas and see if any of the boats would make good “live aboards”. Our plan is to find a 48′-65′ older motor yacht and live on it here in Seattle before we buy a catamaran. We figure, we better make sure we like living on a boat, before making that kind of investment.

I’ve been using Pinterest for capturing ideas for storage, boats, destinations, etc. You can follow me at allisonreeveshe. I use both this blog and Pinterest to record photos and information.

Sunday at the boat show, it was warm and sunny! A day certain to get you in the mood for going boating!

There were certainly plenty of navy blue striped shirts at the show this year too! We attended the show with my sister and her husband. They own a 37′ trawler that is moored up in Anacortes.

We’ve known for awhile that the Meridian motor yacht seems to a great live aboard and every show, there’s a few on show. This year we found a 2006 Meridian 490 Pilothouse. 
The galley overlooks the salon which is perfect for a live aboard. 
This particular boat was a 2006 and had 3 staterooms and 2 heads.
The master stateroom is connected to a head with a bath tub! Not that we would take many baths on a boat!

It also had a very roomy guest stateroom and another with bunk beds.
We thought all this time, that the Meridian is the only boat we’re interested in, until we stumbled upon this 1999 53′ Navigator

It too, had a fantastic galley that opened up to the salon. Surprisingly, though it’s sixteen years old, it didn’t have that “old feeling or smell” that many older boats have.

The staterooms and heads both had great storage – remember, living on a boat, space is very limited! So it is definitely a priority to find creative spaces for all of your things.

While the master stateroom did have a television in it, you have to wonder how old this thing is?! LOL

One priority for us, is the head (bathroom), must have a separate shower. Many heads just have an all in one and you basically get everything wet. That won’t work for a live aboard.

This boat also had a roomy guest stateroom and a room with bunk beds.

After looking at these two potential boats, we visited some mega yachts & trawlers. There were some fun luxury items to look at, but we also found some creative ideas. The yacht below required a personal tour and you had to sign up early in the morning, so we didn’t get to see this one. We’re hoping there will be plenty to see at the Miami Boat Show next month.

This is a luxury trawler, which are very ocean worthy. It had a great layout, including the head just for the flybridge.

Here are some other cool things we grabbed photos of for ideas:

This is an awesome stove and it’s only 22″ wide! But wonder what it costs?

One custom boat we went on, the entire galley was stainless steel and all of the racks were magnetic to hold knives, etc. Almost looked like a surgical room.

So that’s a summary of some of the things we liked. We are hoping that there will be quite a bit more boats (both power and catamaran) at the Miami Boat Show next month, that will give us more information and knowledge. Til then……