Welcome aboard to all our salty new subs! This is I'dRatherBeSailing, the sailing newsletter that puts the Fun in VHF. Lets quit squawking and get into it...

In today's nautical niblets we have:

• Boat Show Breakdown: 3 days in 30 seconds

• Gru's New Boat: Supervillains sail too

• PB&Jellyfish: dinner is (not) always under the boat

The Annapolis Sailboat Show, 1 Week Later

As the Painkillers fade, and all thats left are the emails from boat brokers, whats the spicy takeaways we'll be telling our friends?

• Jeanneau and Beneteau - you can do no wrong. Bless your hulls. ❤️

• Bali - I might have drooled in your CATSPACE. Sorry about that. I'm looking forward to chartering one. (That'll be a future newsletter update). The flybridge helms are now lowered, like in the Fountaine Pajots, which gets a double 👍👍

• Lagoons - Hey, your interiors look awfully similar to the Fountaine Pajots 🤔

• Fountaine Pajot - You're beautiful, and I think Lagoon has a crush on you. Or at the very least, they're copying your homework. ✍️

• Excess - Beneteau, whats going on here? I take back what I said earlier. The Excess looks like a boat that Ikea would've built. All the beautiful lines and features of a Beneteau got crumpled up and thrown out of the design room. The helms are outboard, and so far aft you fell like one slip and a prayer from becoming an MOB drill. The saloon is missing a proper interior nav station, and only has a tiny hatch-fridge. The boat is so minimalistic, it feels like half the features got forgotten. And I get its Pumpkin Spice Season, but why all the orange?

  • The Excess Takeaway - For a 1 week island restaurant hopping BVI's trip, in perfect weather, and never going offshore, its probably perfect. We'll call it The... IKEA HËLMS KRÜSAR 

Final Thoughts:

• Going to a boat show is like finally meeting your crush, and finding out her sister is even more beautiful. And bigger. (Well, that analogy fell apart pretty quickly).

• The grass is always greener? That applies here too.

• Look. There's always a bigger boat. I'm just happy to get out on the water. Give me a rusty boat with a leaky Head over no boat any day. I promise the sunsets are just as good.

Speaking of ridiculous boats, this weeks Design Award goes to 🏆...

Gru Gets a Boat

Yachting Monthly calls it a trimaran fit for a James Bond Villain!

I call it Gru's New Boat. I helpfully added Gru to the top of their mockup. they can thank me later. I mean common, once you see it you can't un-see it. And the boat includes the requisite this-boat-can-fit a-plane feature, as popularized by the Lagoon 77!. It even has a submarine berth. That is the literal definition of a Pixar villain feature.

Peanut Butter & Jelly(fish)

A scientist, a Jellyfish, and a Problem:

On a lightly more scientific note, scientists in Italy are trying to figure out the edibility of invasive Jellyfish. Which would be wonderful for sailors, because Jellyfish are everywhere, and would finally make the dinner is always under the boat saying permanently true.

The full article is here, and worth a read. Will be seeing PB&Jelly(fish) Sandos' anytime soon? Not likely. But it did make for a catchy title.

That's it for today, stay salty and see ya soon!

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