News & Bulletins

Miami IBEX

I did IBEX this year and I'm glad I did. I had skipped the last few as I was too busy, and I could always use the extra thousand dollars the whole trip costs. This year was worth every penny. I can't think of a better way to stay up with the new products and technologies.

It also had the extra presence of the hurricane about to hit. We were all watching the forecasts.

At first impression, the trends I saw were, one, infusion. Everybody is doing infusion.

Two, urethane core. No doubt because of the high price of PVC and sen cores, many builders are looking at urethane. As a hull or deck core I see urethane has having a short life in a dynamic environment. Urethane cores are friable (meaning they crumble under repeated loads) and I have yet to see any test data telling me that a urethane core can still perform its task after say one million use cycles.

New products

I did see many new products that startled me with their ingenuity.

• New deck ports that only need a hole of any shape, no on deck fittings are needed.
• Inexpensive plastic solar powered vents. (www.VentSolAir.com)
• LED lights of all kinds. (These are not really new, but they have matured rapidly and are everywhere now)
• Individual sunshades. OK, maybe they are not new, but I had not seen them before. Imagine a charter cat with 50 of those on deck. (www.pro-techt.com)
• Marol. Not really. My favorite hydraulic steering manufacturer had been slipping in quality and service according to my builders. I had stopped specifying them. A group of mid-westerners who were the vendors of Marol before, saw what was happening and launched their own company.
• Unikas. (www.unikas.net) They not only have American made rotary steering systems, but you can actually talk to someone who makes decisions there. I might be able to convince them to build rotary actuators that the rudder shaft actually slips through. Imagine how simple and compact that can be.
• Thermo formed everything. Again, not new, but I was impressed at the vast range of thermoformed boat things available, from sinks to lockers to receptacles of every kind.

The best part of IBEX is the people.

I got to sit down with the forensic team dealing with the Kona boat, Bruce Pfund and David Jones, and trade thoughts with them. They introduced me to another northwest builder who could do larger cats quite quickly, Vic Duppenthaler of Padden Creek Marine.

I spotted the legendary Alex Kosloff and as we were talking, a kind of multihull eyewall formed. Roger Hatfield showed up next, then Roger Strube and Tom Mestric. J.R. Watson stopped by. He later presented several great epoxy tips that I will forward soon. Fabric and resin whiz Robert Chlipala joined next.

I also met multihull luminaries John Marples and Roger Hatfield's partner Rich Diffide.

Al Horsmon who I send technical articles to for comment, was presenting the new SP CoreCell lines of foam. (It's not ATC foam anymore)

I did meet several people who have been sailing KHSD boats and thank them for the support.

Finally I met the Structural Composites/Prisma team again. They put on the MACM composites conference every other year.

The displays of products were arrayed in three halls. I planned to allow one day for each hall. There were so many displays that I saw about one and a half halls in three days. I guess I better plan on seeing the rest next year. Then again, Barbara Jean (the shows prime mover) said something about "see you in Seattle in March". I'd better look and see if one is planned on the west coast again. (It is and I will be speaking at it.)