From show queens to superyachts: Seattle Boat Show turns 65
Feb 2 2012 in Boat Show 2012, Business of Boating, History by Deborah Bach
It started in 1947 as an idea by a group of marine businessmen looking for a way to promote boating and make a buck during the post-World War II economic slump.
In March that year, the first Seattle Boat Show was held under a tent across from Bryant’s Marina on Lake Union. Sixty-five years later, the show, which runs through this Sunday, Feb. 5, has become the largest boat show on the West Coast.
George Harris, president of the Northwest Marine Trade Association, said he thinks the event is successful largely because of its broad variety of exhibitors — all of them members of the NMTA, the country’s largest marine trade association.
“We’ve got everything from boatyards to marinas, dealers, manufacturers, electronics, retailers … everybody’s at the show,” he said. “We’ve been able to keep the entire industry united, whereas in other regions you end up getting a sailboat show and a fishing show and a brokerage show and it’s very fragmented.”
These foulies were state of the art in 1958.
The show has evolved considerably since those first days on Lake Union, as has the organization that started it. The NMTA was originally named the Pacific Northwest Marine Dealers Association, then Northwest Marine Industries, Inc., before changing to its current name in 1973 to better reflect the diversity of member businesses.
The show location has also shifted; it was held in the Armory building on South Lake Union for a few years before moving to the Seattle Center Coliseum, now KeyArena, in 1963. It moved to the Kingdome in 1977, when a record 119,000 people turned out for the nine-day show. After the Kingdome was demolished in 2000, the show settled into its current home at CenturyLink Field Event Center on the same site.
A look back at the Seattle Boat Show provides a fascinating glimpse on how boating — and broader society — has changed over the decades. The show grew as a new middle class with leisure time and spending power emerged after World War II. Yachting, previously enjoyed mostly by wealthy people, became an accessible and increasingly popular family activity.
For the first 10 years of the show, the NMTA paid a consultant $26,000 annually to organize the event. In 1958, the association decided its money would be better spent on an office and staff, and opened its first office in the Marina Mart Building on Lake Union.
The same year, the NMTA chose the first Boat Show Queen, who graced the show floor in a tiara, ball gown and long white gloves. A queen was chosen annually until the 1970s, when the practice gave way to the more political correct and inclusive Boating Family of the Year.
This Meydenbauer Yacht Club family was the show's Family of the Year.
The show has featured plenty of gimmicks and attractions over the years. The big draw in 1968 was the Batboat, specially designed for the Batman television series. In 1972, stuntman and high dive world record-holder Raul Garcia thrilled crowds by diving 100 feet from a platform in the Coliseum into a pool — until he hit the edge of the pool and injured himself, forcing him to sit out the rest of the show.
In 1981 the NMTA upped the ante, hiring stuntman “Captain A. Merica Jones” to dive 30 feet into a four-foot pool filled with piranhas. On the fourth night of the show, Jones hit his head on the side of the pool and the piranhas pounced, inflicting bites that required 50 stitches.
The show has also had its share of characters among exhibitors. Tom Taylor, a longtime NMTA member, recalls a “very colorful” one named Bill, who preferred to spend time in the exhibitor lounge instead of his booth. Boat show rules require exhibitor booths to be staffed at all times, and the NMTA soon noticed that Bill’s booth was empty for long stretches.
After being threatened with sanctions, Taylor said, Bill went to the now-defunct Frederick & Nelson department store and rented a male mannequin. Dressing him in natty boating gear, compete with cap and Topsiders, Bill installed the mannequin in his booth with a name tag reading “A Booth Mannor.”
‘A role model’
Boats were much smaller in the show’s early days, recalled Bill West, the NMTA’s executive director from 1972 to 1973. When he first got involved with the organization in the early ‘50s, West said, many boats at the show were in the 17- to 22-foot range. (By contrast, the biggest boat in this year’s show is 90 feet and priced at $3.95 million.)
“When you saw a boat that was in the mid-30s, that was really something,” said West.
Demand for boat show space used to be fierce, West said. During his time as executive director, West would get several calls weekly from lawyers representing NMTA members, threatening to sue the organization if their clients weren’t allocated enough space.
The 1984 show at the Kingdome.
“We had to be very, very careful on how we allocated space so we didn’t do it unfairly and end up with lawsuits,” he said.
As the size of boats increased over time, so did the NMTA’s scope. Former president Michael Campbell, who was at the helm from 1999 to 2009, is widely credited for some of those changes. Under his leadership, the association increased its focus on governmental affairs, assisting with the successful 1993 overturn of a federal luxury tax on boats and the passage of a mandatory boater education bill.
It also launched the Northwest Salmon Derby Series and the Grow Boating program, the latter intended to encourage boat owners to use their vessels and help keep the region’s marine industry going as the economy was tanking.
And perhaps most significantly, Campbell helped mend fences with rival organization the Northwest Yacht Brokers Association, which had for two decades run the Lake Union Boats Afloat show. In 2004, the organizations came together and began jointly marketing the Seattle Boat Show and selling one ticket for the show’s two locations, which has been the case ever since.
Harris said the success of the show and of the NMTA, which currently has about 700 members, is the result of decades of thoughtful growth.
“You have to give credit to the board and the association,” he said. “They’ve made a lot of good choices for 65 years.
“I think we’re a role model for the rest of the country.”
thom permenter said on February 2, 2012
One of the hard things about working in Arizona for the last couple years is not being able to attend the boat show. I went to my first one while I was a cubscout. I know because I have the picture of me in the hydro with Bill Muncey in my scrap book. Had to be between 1954 and 1958.
Ive been going every year since the early nineties, and I miss talking to the vendors that I know and meeting new ones.