Well, it’s that time of year again: cooler shorter days, leaves falling, shrink wrapping, pumpkin spice everything and the marina doors start closing up and the boat show doors start opening. From now right through the end of the year and into the first few months of 2025, boat shows of every shape and size pop up all over the place like traveling road shows. Most are regional in scope and feature what I call “normal boats” meaning those that the average person can afford and I encourage you to attend one in your area even if you’re not currently in the market for a watercraft. But there’s one boat show that needs to be on your bucket list, the one we in the marine trades industry simply call, “FLIBS”: the Fort Lauderdale International Show, the largest in-water boat show on the planet…. with 5 other locations making Fort Lauderdale just seem like one huge boat and yacht showroom. Much like New Orleans during Mardi Gras or Key West during Fantasy Fest, FLIBS isn’t necessarily something you want to do year after year, but at least once in your life you need to experience it. Even for an industry veteran like me, FLIBS is almost mind numbing in its scope and scale.
As a kid, my Dad used to take me to the Asbury Park Boat Show held in the musty old convention center on the boardwalk. After some years I found my way to the Atlantic City show, Annapolis and even the New York show held at the Javits Center, but none of those experiences prepared me for the experience of FLIBS. Much as the NASCAR season kicks off with Daytona, so too FLIBS is the championship event at the beginning of the season. This year it starts October 30th – a little late for attending this year – but think next year.
I first started attending the show when I moved to Fort Lauderdale as the newly installed executive editor of Southern Boating Magazine, a well known regional publication. As such, we were a hometown entity and enjoyed the many perks and benefits of being so closely associated with the show. Our editorial and sales team arrived at the concierge area in the boss’s black suburban complete with door placards announcing our pedigree as we piled out and headed for the docks like a maritime SWAT team, anxious to get all the details of the new models and gadgets on display. What a display it was and what access I had! Fortunately, we did a lot of research prior to the show by cataloging all the various press releases we’d been receiving over the past few months announcing what a each manufacturer would have on display and we then each were assigned our share of things to check out. Not to mention all the “by invitation-only” cocktail parties and dockside receptions held daily after the show closed. At the end of the five days I was exhausted and swore I never wanted to see another boat show again, but in later years when I was no longer with the magazine it was a much more enjoyable event. Plus, living within walking distance of the show’s main venue gave me some unique perspective on this watery spectacle.
Contrary to the impression a lot of people have, Fort Lauderdale isn’t that big of a city to begin with. The heart of it is the beach front that you’ve seen in the old photos of Spring Break back in the 80’s when throngs of kids swarmed the place. It’s a piece of a barrier island actually, not much more than a mile long or so with basically two ways in and out: via Las Olas Boulevard, famous for its high-end shops and restaurants on the north side; and 17th Street to the south where the convention center is located which plays host to another huge portion of the show indoors, more similar to other indoor shows you’ve attended. But outside there’s also the “Splash Zone”, a huge three-foot deep pool where you can test out all manner of small self-propelled watercraft from foot-pedaled kayaks to electric powered waterbikes.
Back to the main part of the show at Baha Mar Marina, with just those two main entry points, as you might imagine patience is the rule of thumb because traffic is well… a bitch. A total, gridlocked bitch. So be ready to do some walking or make frequent use of the beach shuttles, a Fort Lauderdale euphemism for 8-passenger golf carts with Evil Knievel wanna-bes as drivers. But it’s all part of the fun. There’s also the option of parking at one of several off-site locations several miles away and taking a free bus ride that drops you off right at the front gate, but to me that’s cheating yourself of part of the whole show experience.
It’s quite all make believe, and I mean that literally. As a resident living right off Las Olas, I had the opportunity to see the show come together, how a month prior to opening day tractor trailers started delivering load after load of floating dock sections that will actually start to cover the Intracoastal Waterway until a channel day marker ends up literally “beached” deep within the show. It’s the only place I know of where the U.S. Coast Guard allows such an encroachment on an aid to navigation. And then a week or so prior, Bahia Mar – the marina that is the heart of the whole affair – empties out until the docks are completely rid of the yachts that call it home. And then, with just a few days to go, a 24-hour waterborne choreography the likes of which you can’t imagine begins as every few minutes another yacht is maneuvered in by all the tug and tow boats, secured by dock crews and then sealed in by the next vessel. It’s quite an extraordinary spectacle to witness.
It’s very cool to stroll the docks in the shadows of mega yachts for over a quarter mile and be amongst the beautiful people, and you’ll hear many languages being spoken and there’s tons of free swag given out.
But it’s the horns I love the most. See, at precisely 1700hrs on the last day of the show as it closes, a cannon goes off and then every boat and yacht in the show starts blowing their horns… and some of those mega yachts have horns that rival those on a locomotive. It goes on for a few minutes, is heard a few miles away and sounds like nothing else in the world. It’s a celebration and salute to the thing we all love. Boating!
I’m telling you all this so you can begin to make your plans now. The best place to start: flibs.com. Think of it like it’s one of those cruises you book a year ahead. Hotels fill up quickly, in some cases people (especially those in the business) book their next years stay before leaving. But this also gives you time to start pestering the boat builders that most interest you. Just go to their websites, sign up for their daily/weekly/monthly email blasts. Interact with them, make the impression you’re an interested buyer and you’d be surprised how many of them will offer you tickets AND more importantly, put you on their guest list for an onboard tour. See, although many of the boats are open to the public for inspection, when you start getting into the bigger ones, the only way you’ll get aboard is to send them your financial records. They’re there to sell boats afterall, not give free peeks to the masses who’ll do nothing but dirty the boat up.
And at any local boat show you may attend the next few months, there’s bound to be some “factory people,” those in the marketing and sales department of the larger manufacturers who travel the country attending countless shows, large and small. Just ask them, “Hey, what’s FLIBS like?” You’ll see a sparkle in their eye as they tell you, ‘It’s something you gotta see!”
And a final tip. At FLIBS or any other boat show actually, if you want to make a real deal on anything from a boat to a belt and boat shoes, in the last few hours of the last day, the last thing the folks manning the booths wanna do is pack stuff up. Bring cash and make lowball offers. You’ll clean up.