San Diego secrets revealed

We are parked on the main street on Shelter Island (map), adjacent to the fishing pier and with million-dollar views of the city and the harbor. We are also in front of the Island Palms hotel, and thus, no doubt, interrupting to some extent their million-dollar views.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, this is a rather anti-climactic ending to a lot of anxiety about where we were going to park for the show. We've been here all three days, and we are prepared to leave when our 72 hours are up, although our observation is that some rigs have been here longer than that already without being hassled. I expect we will stay right here until tomorrow morning.

Of course, it cost us nothing at all to park here, which is why the street is lined end-to-end with RVs. That makes the Kona Kai resort's decision to deny us parking (for, it turns out, $32 per day) seem rather short-sighted. We did notice a Prevost belonging to one of the exhibitors slip in there Thursday night, apparently over the objections of hotel security. I'm not sure how they got around it -- perhaps the fact that the show had booked a certain amount of the parking lot for the exhibit tent came into play. We certainly weren't going to follow suit, when parking across the street is free and the view is nicer.

We've had a good show, and met lots of nice people. We are somewhat disappointed, though, that the shortage of guest dockage at the host marina meant no attendee boats could be there, and thus the "trawler crawl" that we remembered so fondly from Poulsbo was not a part of this show. For that reason, we got much less out of this show than the last, both information-wise and socially. Next time we do this, we'll choose a venue where attendee boats will be accessible and the trawler crawl is a scheduled part of the festivities.

We were also a bit disappointed with the selection of exhibitor boats available to tour. Although we did see a couple of boats that we felt we could sail away in today, had we been ready to do so. Also, there has been quite a visible shift in market dynamics in favor of buyers. We feel this trend will continue, and it will become even more of a buyers' market moving forward.

We met one other couple who had taken the same trawler school charter that we did in Fort Lauderdale, and came away with the exact same impressions of it, which was reassuring (and I realize that I have yet to post our experience and impressions here -- I still hope to do so, but I've been a little behind). And we connected with some folks associated with the biennial power boat rally to Baja, on which we'd like to crew this November.

The show is over now, save for the final cocktail hour and dinner, about half an hour from now. As usual, we've come away with more questions than answers, and there is much more research ahead of us. With each of these events, though, we feel incrementally more ready to hit the water. For the first time, I think, we can honestly say that if the right boat came along at the right price, we could make the shift. That being said, we'd really like a few more years in Odyssey, and so we will continue to watch the market patiently, and get in whatever sea time we can as the opportunity presents itself.

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