48 ° North Fisheries swap meet

Today was the annual boaters swap meet at Fisheries Supply on North Lake Union and Mandy and I drug ourselves out of bed early to go tromp around through the rain and see what deals there were to be had. Conventional wisdom is that all the good stuff is gone by six AM but there are deals to be had all day long if you don't mind doing a little digging and have fairly conventional requirements. We weren't looking for anything in particular--deals are where you find them--but I had an eye open for dinghies and there were a few there, including an intriguing all metal job that looked like it wanted to be an inflatable. Big crease on the port bow where it had run into something nearly as tough as itself; but metal doesn't fold up well nor is it likely to tow easily behind a sailboat under sail!

The others were all just okay, but not particularly good deals. I've seen better on Craigslist recently, although none in our size range. One of them there happened to be something I had seen on CL, but thought it was still overpriced in the current market. I told the guy if he didn't get rid of it today, I'd be looking for it on CL tomorrow, at a discount.

We ran across a few anchors that looked good as well, and I kicked myself for not having measured out some dimensions on our pulpit... our current ground tackle has served us pretty well, but I wouldn't mind going a size up on the Danforth. But those are usually in abundant supply at Second Wind so there was nothing urgent about it.

I was also on the lookout for cruising guides for the west coast but didn't see many, and no charts to speak of... odd, in that last year there were charts aplenty. Maybe its cyclical.

There seemed to me to be fewer people selling overall, although the dismal weather may have had something to do with it. Even Fisheries themselves had a lot less out than last year. We ended up picking up a dry box from them however, a bit cheaper than the cheapest deals I've found online.

Apart from that, all we got was a spare water pump (which, depending on whether or not our current water pump can be easily resurrected, may become our primary water pump). It's nice, frankly, to not need a lot of stuff... we're still pretty well fitted out from last year, and I didn't wander from vendor to vendor this time around wishing I had hit another cash machine on the way there to get over my withdrawal limit.

Edit: Inserted degree symbol appropriately