Open Yard 2017

The last weekend of August the boat yard at Ellös Sweden comes alive for 3 days with Scandinavia's largest sail boat show (According to the website :) ). Anna and I were there last year and were introduced to Najad and fell in love with their boats. At the event last year, Öppet Varv August 2016, we were introduced to the Najad 395cc. This is a new design for Najad and at that time it was mostly in the design phase. At that time there were no pictures or any real information available.  The info we received was mostly generalities. Like, the new boat is like this boat over here but a little bigger in the aft cabin, or you will have more room here and this has changed, etc. During the year, we have been in regular contact with Najad. Getting updates on options for the 395cc, receiving renderings and just a few months ago, the official brochure. Najad also informed us that they had more info about the new 395cc so Anna and I could not wait to get up there to talk to them more about the new boat.

Öppet Varv opened on a Friday and since we have to both work, that is until we win the lottery, we decided that we would leave early Saturday morning and then stay the night. This way we could get two full days, Saturday and Sunday, checking out the boats and vendors.

It is about a 4hr drive from Malmö to Ellös, so at zero dark 30 we stated the drive up to Ellös. It is mostly freeway but the last part is on a two lane winding road that can get pretty congested due to everyone going to the boat show. We made good time up to Gothenburg and once we got through Gothenburg and on the North side, are stomachs started telling us it was time for some breakfast. Good old Mickey D's to the rescue. For some reason, it seems like Gothenburg has a McDonald's on every corner so we had no problem in finding one.

Since it had been ages since I had a proper McDonald's breakfast, I was jonesing for a bacon egg cheese biscuit. But since they do not have them here in Sweden, I got the next best thing, Sausage egg McMuffin. Breakfast of Champions.

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We arrived at the boat yard a little after 10:00 and to our surprise, there were not many people there. The weather was overcast, windy with a good chance of rain, so basically a typical Swedish summer day.

As we came in, they had one vendor that looked like it was having a going out of business sale. Clothes hanging on make shift rails and in piles on the tables they set up. In order to find something you had to fight your way in, dig through piles of clothes hoping to find something that would fit you. Since we would rather not have to fight to the death in order to find some clothes, we keep on walking by. We had more important things on our mind, the Najad boats.

Once you past some vendors, there it was, the Najad customer tent.

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We headed straight there since it was not that crowded. We meet up with Frida, the Najad PR rep and talked to her for a while. It is always good to see friends that you have not seen in a while. After talking with her we went onto the 410 and talked to some Najad salesmen regarding the 395cc. Since there was hardly anyone on the boat at that time, we could really look at the boat. Lift up the deck hatches, look into the bilge and engine room, look behind electrical panels, really give it the once over. The craftsmanship is impeccable. Just have a look at the wiring.

Wiring
Wiring

After spending a few hours talking with Najad and looking at the boats they had on show, we wandered around looking at the other boats. Even though we pretty much have decided on getting a Najad, we like to look at other boats just to see what they have and compare. Sometimes you see something that is on another boat and say to yourself, "That is really smart how they did this" or "That is really cool, and I want it".

Around early afternoon, the sun decided to show itself and Anna received a call from her big sister. Anna's sister and her husband were also at the boat show. We meet up with them and spent some time catching up. At the boat show, Hallberg Rassy allow you to take a tour of their workshop so you can see how some things are made. We all decided to go on this tour. It gave us a chance to hang out and look at some of the boats that were being built. Especially the 64' boat they build. It is a monster.

Once done with the tour, it was getting close to closing time for the day. So we headed over to the local pub to get some dinner. After eating a very expensive hamburger and fries,(not worth the price) we drove to our hotel. It was in a town about 10km away. The rooms are standard but they do have a nice courtyard.

Unfortunately, there was a family next door to us that had a kid that would not stop screaming. At least that is what Anna told me. I slept all night but Anna said the kid was crying all night and needless to say, Anna was a little tired come the morning.

We seen some older Najad boats online and have liked what we saw and most of them were up in Henån, just the next town over from Ellös. We thought it could be cool to go and have a look at them. Well to our surprise, they were at the boat show. We got to go on them, look them over real good and ask question about them. What a difference in seeing them in person vs seeing the pics on the net. One boat we were really interested in seeing was on the hard at the Najad office. We had an appointment at 09:00 to see the boat so we had to get up at 07:30. Besides the kid screaming all night, this was the other reason Anna was tired. The condition of the boat was great but there were some things we were not quite happy with. We will have to see if we come back to this one or not.

Once we were finished with looking at the boat, we drove back to the boat show. Since we seen the boats the day before, we went to all the venders booths. We took our time and talked with the venders and looked at what they had to offer. We had a really good talk with  UK sails, the ones that supply the sails for Najad. Got to talk about the type of sailing we are going to do and what type of sail setup would be good for us. It was very informative. Once we place our order for the boat, we plan on going on a tour of the sail loft to see how everything is done.

With Anna not getting much sleep the night before and us having a long drive home, we bailed out of there around 15:00. The drive home was pretty uneventful except the for the one or two crazy drivers that you always encounter out on the road.


Status update:

We have sold our car and are trying to sell our apartment now. Hopefully we can sell it in the next month or two. Once we get the apartment sold, we can start some serious negotiations with Najad and put an order in for our boat.

Boat 2017 Jan 21-22

We awoke at 08:00 to a cold overcast morning here in Sweden but the forecast for Dusseldorf Germany was for a few degrees colder but sunny. The train ride to Kastrup was uneventful and the same with out flight. Since our flight was the 12:15 flight, the plane was less than half full. So we had plenty of room. Even if we did not have much room, the flight was only an hour, but it is always nice to have that extra sit next to you empty :) Once we landed, we headed straight for the taxis. Since we were only staying one night, we had only a carryon. This makes traveling so much easier. One can get in and out really quick. We grabbed a cab to our hotel. Lindner Hotel Airport. It was still before 15:00 and our room was not ready, so we dropped off our carry on and hopped in a cab to Messe Dusseldorf where Boat 2017 was being held.

Upon arriving we checked in our jackets and proceeded to go into the exhibition area. We knew that it was big but once we entered, then the enormity of the exhibition hit us. They had 17 halls setup with sailboats, motorboats, equipment and products for all boats. They had a shuttle bus that took you from exhibition hall to exhibition hall. It was that big

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We were a little hungry so we stopped at one of the restaurants and had som schnitzel. Then we were off to were they had the sailboats. We found were Najad exhibit was and signed up for the last time they had, 17:30. With a few hours to kill, we went around to look at all the other sailboats.

We looked at Hanse, Jeanneau, Beneteau, Hallberg Rassy and many others. But none of them grabbed us like a Najad does. We like the price of some of the others, but it is Najad that we have fell for. You can see some video of some of the boats here Boat_2017 video

17:30 came and we meet up with Jörgen, CEO of Najad, and he showed us the Najad 450 CC that was on display. We got to talk with him more about the boat that we have our eye on. The Najad 395 CC. We got to see some more renderings and talk more about the progress of the 395 CC. They are building the first ones now and they should be ready by the end of the year. Anna and I are excited to see on up close.

We spent over an hour with Jörgen and since the exhibition closed at 18:00, we hurried to get our jackets. Grabbed a cab back to the hotel, checked in, ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and then crashed. We both were so tired from all the walking we did.

The next day we decided to look at more of the products and the other fun stuff they had there. In the trendsport hall, they had a wave pool where they were having a surf/paddle board competition. The announcer was screaming something in German so we did not understand what he was saying but it was still fun to watch them carve up the water.

After seeing what we wanted to see, it was getting close to leaving. So we decided to end the visit with some cocktails before we left to fly back home. We got Anna her Piña Colada and I had sex on the beach. (Oh Yea!) :P

It was a really good trip and we are looking forward to going back next year.

Öppna Varv

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This past weekend we attended Öppnna Varv. It is an in water boat show at the Hallberg-Rassy boat yard in Ellös Sweden. Hallberg-Rassy invites other boat manufactures there as well. So there were boats from Bavaria, Hanse, Jeanneau and many others.

Hallberg-Rassy also had the production shop open so that you could walk around and see the boats being constructed.

We have been debating about if we wanted an aft cockpit or a center cockpit. After looking at them we have decided that a center cockpit is what we want. We get a bigger aft cabin and to us, it feels like we are more protected and secure having the cockpit in the center.

Saturday was a nice sunny day and there were a lot of people there. I guess that is because it was suppose to rain on Sunday. But this worked out to our advantage. After we went around on Saturday looking at all the boats, gathering information, we had a some questions that we wanted to get answered and planned to talk more details with HR and Najad on Sunday.

To our relief, it did not rain like the new predicted and the crowds disappeared. There was only a light drizzle early in the morning and then nothing the rest of the day :-) After talking to the sales person on the HR 40 MK II, we went over to look more at the Najad 411cc. Unbeknownst to us, the VD of Najad was there showing the boat to people. We went below to look at the interior and he started asking us what we were looking for. After explaining what it is that we are wanting to do, he offered to take us to the Najad workshop to show us a Najad boat that was under construction.

This was great. We got to see how well the Najad boats are built and Anna and I were impressed with how well Jörgen Ottosson answered all of our questions. Jörgen also told us about a new design that is coming out soon, 395cc. After hearing about this model, it sounds like this will be a perfect fit for us. Needless to say, we can say that we are sold on Najad and we will be getting a Najad.