Konza Sailor, March 2004, page 7

A casual conversation with Bob Mullen and it was set. We were going to the Chicago Boat Show. The drive, 1400 miles round trip, was long for a one-day visit to look at boats, but well worth it. We broke up the trip by driving around 8 hours and stayed a couple of hours outside of Chicago. We then drove in and out of the city the day of the show. This allowed less of drive and the lodging was much more reasonable.

The show opened at 11 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m. with only a 15-minute lunch break, we spent the whole day climbing on boats and talking to vendors. The show was great, having never been to one of the sailboat shows advertised in the magazines, it was nice to do side by side boat comparisons and see all the stuff in the catalogs. We only waited a couple of minutes to board the new Tartan 4400 and didn't have to wait to board any others. I read that on the weekends the wait can be up to 20 minutes to get a chance to get on a boat. It felt good to get behind the wheel and look around the cabins of some really nice boats. Bob and I have slightly different tastes in boats; cruise vs. race, so we just crawled on all of them.

The only disappointment was the inability to buy things other than clothing. Most of the dealer representatives displayed items but had nothing to sell. We didn't attend any of the seminars that were offered at the show, as time went by quickly as we dreamed of sailing on one of the new boats; maybe next year. The "best of show" "if I was