It’s not that often that I get to brag that the Pacific Northwest weather is nicer than California, but after a couple days of showers and breezes while visiting friends in San Francisco and checking out the boatshow in Oakland, I returned to a sunny, almost balmy spring day here in Port Townsend. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my time, and succeeded in shooting video of several neat things that I’ll be posting as we get them edited and uploaded. I hope you enjoy this experiment in a new format for Navagear, and find the video segments informative if not a little entertaining.

A few days ago, one of my favorite sailing bloggers, Zen, posted that he was thinking of going to Strictly Sail on Saturday, so I was very happy to spot him walking the docks and got a chance to introduce myself. He’s written some posts and shared pictures of people and boats that caught his eye at the show, which is a nice contrast to the gear and gadgets I focused on this time.

One general observation that friends and I have noted about the show is that boats and boat stuff sure have gotten big and expensive. There were many huge, luxurious, high tech boats, which are fun to see, but you can lose sight of the pure joy of being on the water with a well-found boat when you are focused on the dream boat and tricking it out with all the coolest new equipment. Being a gear geek and writing about all this technology stuff, I’m afraid I’m contributing a bit to this distraction. And that’s one reason I like to read Zen—to remind me of the essential nature of sailing.