The Toronto boat show ends this weekend, we went down Friday on the annual shopping and gawking trip. Headed right for the sailboat section where Catalina had a 355 and a 445, first time we've had a chance to see either of them. Both very nice boats with a lot of really well thought out appointments.

The 355 feels smaller than the 36 inside and especially in the cockpit, sales guy said it was more intended as a 34 replacement, the 36 being replaced by the 375. The 445 was very nice, I like the way they have gotten away from the excessive beam of boats like the 350. There were so many drawers and storage areas inside that boat it was incredible. Lots of really thoughtful little touches. We looked at some other sailboats after that, all high volume production boats and they just don't compare well to the Catalinas especially in the area of the quality of the joinery. If you look closely the differences are apparent, a lot of "synthetic wood", for lack of a better term, being used elsewhere and it looks cheap. Still think Catalinas are the best of the volume built boats, but we're biased.

There was a Gemini 105MC cat there, first time we've ever seen a cruising cat at this show so we had a look at it since they seem to be very popular. After seeing it I have to say I can't see what all the fuss is about. It felt no more roomy than our boat does and in fact in terms of headroom in the main cabin, well, there is none. You walk in from the cockpit, have about 4' of standing headroom and then you duck to get into the dinette. Both aft cabins had small berths, doubles at best, the starboard forward berth was bigger but still no screaming hell for size. Wasn't really impressed with the fit and finish either though they're not a high end boat. This thing was $170K for a stripper, I believe it was $220K as shown. I guess most people like them because they don't heel but a 4' foot wave is the same size to a mono or a cat and they're both going to move around a lot, heeling is only one part of the equation. We certainly wouldn't trade and for that kind of money you could get a hell of a lot of monohull boat.

Sales guy told us it had been fairly quiet, wasn't too crowded when we were there. This is mostly a powerboat show and we don't go into that end of the hall but walking past it there weren't many people around. Kind of odd because our economy is doing well and the buck is very strong at the moment. Prices were very good, we got some stuff for way less than we thought it'd cost. Perhaps a sign of a slow show.

Best thing though is even though we've hit today's predicted high of -16 it now feels like we're heading for summer!