Nashville Boat show

[Uplate]

Just returned a few hours ago from the show. Very busy for downtown with the Titan playoffs, Predators Hockey Game, and the Boat show.

This is the first one I have been too, but given all the doom and gloom of the boating industry I was quite pleased to see a very respectable turnout.

Erwin Marine, our local SR Dealer had all of the trailerable boats (seemed about 20 at least and real nice boats) and a 270,310,350 and Carver (36?). the 310 with Axius was on sale for about $210K.

Malibu had a Corvette Boat with an L57 engine and the rear end looked just like a new Covette Flat Butt. Tailights and all. Heated Seats as well. A cool idea, but certainly a boat for posing only. Not practical for anything other than that pupose I think.

A lot of the trailors for boats had LED lights pointing up to illuminate the boat. Only practical use I can see for this might be when trailoring at night, and being able to see where the trailor is while under water.

The other larger cruiser styles were a Crownline 32, a Regal 44 (on sale $550K) and a Regal 40 (on sale $365K). I had a long conversation with the Regal Salesman about the IPS drive. they had pulled one of the drives out of the 40 and had it on a stand. Mind you I am not up on everything boating, but this is the first time I had heard of a forward facing pulling prop system. It was hard to wrap my head around at first. Salesman bragged on the incredible mileage and high speeds of this system ties to twin Volvo Diesels.

Both the Regal 40 and 44 had engine hatches that opened from the aft . This allowed work to be done will on the swim deck and not from inside the cockpit. This made a lot of sense to me as far as keeping oil, etc out of the cockpit.

Regal also had a docking simulator setup with the same joystick control in the boats. That was a lot of fun to play with.

thats covers most of the what I saw that stuck in my head.
Again, I was really happy to see a lot of interest, although I have no idea what was actually selling.

 

[Times Like These]

Erwin does a great job. That is were we bought ours a couple of years ago, and just recommended them to another couple today! I'm looking forward to the Chattanooga boat show, although I heard Sea Ray is closing its Knoxville plant.

 

[chuck1]

Erwin does a great job. That is were we bought ours a couple of years ago, and just recommended them to another couple today! I'm looking forward to the Chattanooga boat show, although I heard Sea Ray is closing its Knoxville plant.

Not sure if you have ever been, but you may want to check out the Atlanta boat show. It must be 3 to 4 times the size of the Chattanooga boat show. I go to both of the each year. Erwin sure does a great job.

 

[Chris R]

Interesting. I was in Nashville this past weekend for a wedding and was going to try to go - on the way back to the airport, but time ran out. I noticed Erwin has a decent selection of larger boats in their inventory and was curious if they were going to bring them to the show- sounds like not.

Anyway, glad to see it was a good turnout

 

[KayKook]

It does not sound like too many "new" products at your show. Most of what you describe, I saw at two midwest shows last year. It is good to hear there was a decent turnout for the show. I wonder how actual sales were?

 

[tmhudson2]

Wednesday night, crowds were very light, very few people. Thursday was very slow, particularly after 6:30pm. Friday was excellent, Saturday morning good, and nothing Saturday afternoon. Sunday 11 to 1:30 there was pretty good traffic, which was building after lunch/church. Conflicts with two Predators hockey games and the Titans playoff game, together with generally lousy weather and the difficult economy hurt attendance overall.

The Sea Ray dealer, Erwin Marine, had fewer boats on display this year than last, with the emphasis on the sport boats line; they had three Dancers displayed, and one smaller Carver yacht.

There were four fewer boat dealers than last year; three of those dealers have gone out of business, I’ve heard. There were fewer small booths rented by non-boat dealers as well.

One large local broker of used yachts reported that although turnout was light, the visitors to their booth seemed to be serious prospects, and that qualifying prospects was much easier this year than in previous years.