"Don White" wrote in
:

Boy...you must be a real 'ray of sunshine' at the boat shows! Do they
pay you to stay away?



No, but my Sea Ray dealer refused to service my crappy Sea Ray because I
didn't pay him $3500 more for it than I paid for it.......a great
reflection on Sea Ray, wouldn't you say?

Two boat shows ago, I took a friend who used to own a Hatteras 56 to the
local boatshow. I told him to please dress in the same clothes he mows his
lawn in, instead of that doctor's suit from Brooks Brothers that would be
SURE to attract the drooling sales wienies to trail us around and ruin the
show. He agreed.

Three dealers wouldn't let us look in their boats. Most of the others,
seeing our jeans and T-shirts, just ignored us as rabble. One young
salesman at Seel's Marine was nice enough to ask us if we had any questions
about the nice Grady-White (with Yamaha 150 Ocean) runabout we were looking
at. He wasn't threatening, wasn't nasty to us like most of the rest and
seemed genuinely interested in selling us this boat. As he came up to us,
I was head-first inside a cabinet looking at the fine fiberglass work the
Grady-White employees had done to a first-class hull. My friend says,
"What do you think, Larry?" I snapped my fingers while still hiding in the
cabinet and said, "Check Book." He wrote the kid the check for the show
price discount, about the time one of the bigshot suits came wandering over
to see if he needed to call the cops to get rid of us. We made sure the
kid got the commission for the sale as he was the only person we would talk
to. His boss seemed impressed...(c;

They brought the boat over that night and we headed out for the Cadillac
dealer to buy him a new Escalade to tow it with....just in case....(c;

I'm afraid I am a little embarrassing at boat shows, however. If I see a
piece of crap, I call it a piece of crap. Most new boats are, you know.
However, if I see a real beautiful machine, like that Hackercraft classic I
couldn't stop running my fingers over, I'm an exceptionally nice and
enthousiastic supporter. God they are beautiful. It almost seems criminal
to float them off the trailer, along with the Hinckleys and
Nissens.....(sigh)