Blue Turtle crew wrapped up another TrawlerFest Stuart the first week of March. This year, we were slated to give our Dry Tortugas presentation on Saturday instead of mid-week like years past. Since it was the weekend, I wasn’t able to attend the Admiral’s Roundtable discussion for ladies to field questions from the group. Still, Randy and I had a great time visiting Stuart for the weekend and attending the show.
We were wondering how the attendance of this year’s show would be affected by the impending Cornavirus, COVID-19, but surprisingly we has a great attendance to our presentation. We had roughly 30 attendees and a great group who asked a lot of helpful questions.
After the show, Randy and I walked the in-water show. That weekend we had a cold front come in and the winds were pretty high. Large trawlers were seen bobbing around in their slips. The usual boat manufacturers were there, Nordhavn and Kadey Krogen, as well as brokers, Jeff Merrill Yacht Sales, Denison Yachts and Seattle Yachts. Other trawlers we saw were Beneteau Swift Trawlers, Ranger Tugs, a Grand Banks and an Endeavour Power Catamaran.
Since we’ve been on many of these boats before (and they are always out of our price range) we are choosy which ones to board and take a look. This year, they had a 1994 Kadey Krogen 42′ wide body that we had to take a look at. When Randy and I first started looking at trawlers 8 years ago, we looked at a few 42′ Kadeys (they were in the 1980s age) and we fell in love with this boat. We realized that we couldn’t afford them but we always said that this would be our ‘forever’ boat. What we love about this boat aside from the gorgeous lines and bow is the pilot house and hourglass shape of the hull. These are exceptional yachts and are made for blue water crossing. The wide body (allows access from the bow to stern on only one side) gives you so much additional interior space and we love how easily accessible the “back porch” is through the wide door from the interior.
Overall, it was a great weekend despite the blowing winds. We always enjoy getting to connect with other cruisers or wanna-be cruisers. And we’re always so honored to be asked back each year to share with other cruisers why we love the Dry Tortugas so much.
