The real preparations for the next season usually starts with a visit to the Helsinki Boat show in mid February. Fortunately for the wallet, this year we didn’t have any special investment plans, just some new life jackets. Last year we installed a radar and 4G WiFi antenna and it wasn’t cheap.

This year’s show was quite expected. There was only on sailboat on display, so we concentrated on checking out the gear and garments. We did pay a visit to the Hanse rep, and there is a new model being launched in the summer, and the world premiere will be at the Cannes Yachting Festival in September. They promised that our current boat could be sold very quickly and at a great price, and cordially invited us to come to Cannes to the premiere if we would order a new boat. Tempting offer, but we decided to give it a pass, for the time being anyway.

We had received som freebies after we bought our tickets, so we actually visited the show twice. We came out with moderate losses, under 1500€ in total. You can always dream about more, but you have to keep yourself in check.