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.
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.
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.
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.
