The show must go on

After what seems like weeks of waiting for a nice day to work on the boat, it finally came.

Of course this was also a great day to take a road trip to Victoria for the Victoria Harbour Floating Boat Show. Can you guess which we chose?
A quick drive down to Victoria.

Pay the, still not too ridiculous, parking fees at Fisherman's Wharf.

A short stroll along the outer harbour till we arrive at the inner harbour and the aforementioned boat show.

Notice the little sailboat that forced the entire city traffic to come to a halt for the drawbridge - is that power or what?

An almost perfect day for climbing around on other people's boats.

What is it that makes us boat-owners want to spend our time looking at more boats? Probably the same thing that makes some home-owners visit all the show homes whenever there is an opportunity. We want to see if there are any good ideas of what we could do with the boat we have, and also to assure us that there is nothing out there that would suit us better.

Of course, there are always boats out there that we would like, but not at a price we are willing to pay.

Actually, this show it not really that large and the number of sailboats is limited. Notably very few used boats at all - just new, plastic coastal cruisers for the most part - not what we are really into.

Oh, and lots of power boats, ranging from little fishing skiffs to an over 2-million dollar mega-yacht. Nice to look at but not really our cup of tea either.

The only boats we saw that we liked were very similar to ours, except that the bright work was immaculate, which just made us want to rush back to Nanaimo to try and make ours look, if not showroom ready, at least more presentable.

So, when we did get back to Nanaimo, we spent an entire day stripping and sanding the woodwork, before the cool and rainy weather set in again.

Is anybody looking to join Gilligan and company? Here is just the vessel that could do it.