I just finished IBEX 2012 in Louisville. “Lu vull”, try it again, slower. It is always good to get updated on what the industry is doing. My unscientific guess is that there was about 1/3 the vendor display area that there was the last time I went, i

n Miami in ’09?. A couple of items that I actually wanted to buy this year were no longer there; plastic sinks from SSI Custom Plastics. One word, dot com, on the web. Lots of cool stuff but I’d have to order 20 sinks to make it worth it to them. And the inexpensive plastic solar powered vents; gone.
LED lights were ubiquitous. I liked that as I’m drawn to bright shiny things.
In the multihulls, foils were all the rage.
Again, was good to see what everybody else was up to and to catch up with friends and associates. David Gerr tells me the new prop book comes out next year. Nigel Irens told me he no longer does race-boats. All his work now is high end yachts, especially in Dubai. Nice. Ted Pike has his eyes on a certain KHSD 31 in Port Townsend. I got to talk story with Eric Sponberg several times. John Marples remarked that I was fat now.
And, drumroll.
I got to tell Dick Newick that, in my opinion, he created a new visual paradigm for multihulls, totally by himself. He was agreeable, but I’m not sure he knew who I was.