Boatbuilding and Boat Shows

When I decided to start a blog I made myself a promise it  would not go more than a week without a new post, as is obvious post two is already more than a week after post one. I am blaming this on that seemingly inevitable part of boats and boa tbuilding, promotion and in particular boat shows a designer I worked for in the past often talked about shameless self promotion as a large part of the business something I have never been comfortable with. I am coming to grips with the need to be out there promoting those boats we have to offer and the fact that as the designer and builder they are to a certain extent a reflection of me. Even if you happen to have a better mousetrap if you’re the only one who knows about it there will be only one. So it is off to the shows we go hope to see you there.

 We try to exhibit at a few shows each summer , they are usually smaller ones and we tend to favour shows that feature wooden boats as we are most likely  to find like minded people there, those who seek not only to get on the water but want to do so in a wooden boat. This year we started off on a different tack with the Boat, Cottage and Outdoor Show, in Orillia unfortunately the weather only saw fit to co-operate on one of the three days, tainting rather significantly our experiment in this type of show exhibition. While the third day was enjoyable at 20 degrees C and sunny the rest of the weekend was a sullen gray 14 with a cool wind off the water.

We do need to thank those hardy souls who made their way down to the show and we did appreciate your comments and feedback on our newest design the Steel River 12 which is aimed at the kayak fisherman, the local CTV news channel also deserves a mention and thanks as they used shots of our exhibit in their coverage of the show and it did drive some people down to the show specifically to look at our boats.  Our next try will be in Gravenhurst on the 6^th and 7^th of July at the ACBS show, if you love wooden boats it is a great place to be as there many gather there.