There were lots of new boats, engines and accessories at the Miami International Boat Show, plus some great weather! As Todd Werner promised, Statement Marine introduced two new and different boats—the center-console-style 34 and 37 SUV. Werner said the new models would be priced competitively with offerings from other manufacturers. He added: “That means buyers of our new 34 or 37 SUV models would get the bonus of Statement’s unique air-cushion cockpit design for the same price as a similar boat.”

The photo (at right) shows the world’s largest outboard motor. Seven Marine simply calls it: “The most powerful outboard on the planet.” At 577 horsepower and 1,000 pounds, they certainly have the right to call it that! Why 577 hp and not 575 or 580 hp? Seven Marine wanted to make sure they had a seven in there of course. I’m sure they’ll be plenty more about this amazing machine soon in Powerboat.

Among the new accessories at the show, I had a demo of two boat alarms. POGO Alarm calls itself a true “plug-and-play” system designed to stop thieves before they steal your boat.

After watching the demo, I think a better description of this alarm would be an “unplug-and-play” system. The reason? POGO Alarms work on any vessel that uses shore power or a 110-volt A/C cord. Thieves have to unplug a boat before it can be towed or driven away. As soon as it’s unplugged, POGO’s 108-db siren is activated. That should be enough to alert you, the neighbors or the dock master, and hopefully scare the thieves away.

The alarm unit is designed to look like a battery charger, and in fact acts as a battery charger when properly installed. That means you won’t have to worry about a dead battery not being able to power the POGO Alarm. Set up is a breeze—just plug in the 12-volt and 110-volt power cords and switch the unit on. It’s fully portable so it can be moved from one vessel or vehicle to another, or permanently mounted in one location. There’s an introductory price of $549, which includes the POGO Alarm control box, siren horn, wiring, plus the AC and DC cords. More info and a video is at www.pogoalarms.com.

The other alarm demo was a bit more dramatic. A small group of writers were escorted from the Miami Convention Center to a small trailer in a parking lot about a block away. We were there for a demo of the Instant Protection GOST Cloak System. A spokesperson explained that most property loss occurs in the initial minutes of a break-in, before police or security teams respond.

The Cloak system is designed to provide almost instant protection in the critical time gap between the alarm’s activation and the response team’s arrival. And how does it work you ask? Once triggered by a break-in, the GOST Cloak fills the protected area with an impenetrable cloud of smoke almost instantly. That’s designed to prevent the loss of property because it confuses the thief, and forces the intruder out of the premises.

Before they closed the trailer door for our demo they asked if anyone was claustrophobic. I am, but I was too interested in seeing this gizmo in action to leave. The alarm was triggered and dense fog vapor created by a specially formulated glycol solution quickly blocked everything from view. We were reassured that glycol is classified as a foodstuff and not harmful. For a few seconds, I thought I was going to have trouble breathing, but I was fine.

The vapor really does make it impossible to see anything around you. Your hand has to be right in front of your face to see it. But at about $4,000, you need to have a lot of valuable stuff to protect. This alarm is really designed for big boats and yachts. Of course, it would also work well to protect workshops, offices, RVs and homes. You can see a demo at the company website www.gostglobal.com. I posted my video from inside the trailer on You Tube as well.

As I walked back to the Miami Convention Center, I had a thought. When I had a disco aboard my 50-foot houseboat years ago, I had two fog machines. Who knew I was 80 percent of the way to having the perfect alarm system!

Flying down to Orlando, Fla., in December for the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show seemed like a great way to escape the cold of New York City. It turned out that I escaped 20-degree New York weather for a slighter warmer, 40-degree freak cold spell in Orlando.

Still, the entire PRI show is indoors so cold wasn’t a problem. Because the Orange County Convention Center is so huge, it looked like the place was empty as I followed the signs to the PRI exhibit hall. But once inside the door, it was a different story.

The place was packed with some 1,000 companies and an estimated 3,000 booths! Now I know why it’s billed as the largest racing trade show in the world. I checked the attendance figures after the show ended, and it was a reported 39,000 people. For a show that’s not open to the public, that’s a pretty big number.

Although the show is monstrous, there are dozens of booths selling slight variations of the same product. If you’re into engine building, I bet you could start at the end of any row of exhibitors and find enough parts to build a complete high-performance engine by the time you reached the end of each long aisle. The place looks like a gigantic engine factory exploded and all the various high-performance parts landed in separate booths.

Taking up the entire back third of the convention center was the big stuff. Huge garage-coach trucks like the ones from ShowHauler that feature a place for your workshop and deluxe live-aboard accommodations. Maybe that should be “live-inside” accommodations since they’re not boats. A few of the rigs at the show were equipped with hydraulic elevators to handle two race cars or two small performance boats on different levels.

There were a couple of offshore boats at the show, too. I ran into Todd Werner from Statement Marine. He was showing off his company’s 42 Ultimate offshore V-bottom at the show. But that particular boat won’t be returning to the factory. It’s already on its way to a happy buyer in Dubai.

I asked Todd what we could expect to see from Statement Marine at the upcoming Miami Boat Show. He wouldn’t tell me exactly what Statement would be showing, but he gave me a few hints. It will be a new size, and a totally new kind of boat for Statement. And, of course, it will feature their “world’s only” air cushion cockpit.

Something I didn’t know was that many of the restored race cars on display at the show belonged to Todd. Race car driver Herb McCandless and his 1971 Demon were reunited when Todd located the car and brought it back to pristine condition. Both the car and driver appeared at the show.

Powerboat P1 used the show to unveil its new P1-28SS race boat. According to the folks at the show, the 28-foot (8.5-meter) long craft can hit speeds up to 75 mph with a single outboard. The kicker is that if you’re not sure if you’ll like the boat, or like racing the boat, you don’t have to buy one.

Powerboat P1 is offering something very unique—a season’s lease deal for about $28,000. This was the first time the P1-28SS was shown in the United States, and it won’t be available until May. (For more, check out the Powerboat story.) The innovative new powerboat reportedly will be rigged with BRP’s Evinrude 250 H.O. E-TEC engine.

Martin Sanborn, director of operations for Powerboat P1, said the boat is unique because you can race it on weekends and, with a few reconfigurations, make it into a pleasure boat on non-racing days. The racing version starts at about $89,000. Martin added that a customer who orders a non-racing 28SS could order it with any outboard they desire, all the way up to 350 hp! At the Miami International Boat Show, PowerboatP1 will have three or four boats on display, including one in the water for demos.

The New York Boat Show wrapped up a five-day run at Javits Convention Center. It seemed on the smaller size this year, especially when one thinks of the h-u-g-e Miami show that opens with Premier day on Thursday, Feb. 17 and runs through Monday, February 21. If you see me roaming the aisles, please say “Hi” or even “Ahoy, matey.”

Last month, I mentioned that my 10-year-old Mercury outboard was acting up after a trouble-free 10 years. After actually checking the serial number, I found my engine is a 1999 model. So it’s really 11 years old.

It’s a 300-hp Pro Max outboard with 211 hours on it. For the first time ever, I wish it was as simple as bad fuel or a clogged filter. It turns out my engine needs to go into intensive care. Actually, make that intensive repair!

The sad thing is, I still don’t know what caused the engine to suddenly slow down and stop on three different occasions. It would always start up again so I could idle back to the dock. However, I now know the results of those unexplained engine failures.

My friend Bob Kiloh was in New York for a week, just as it was time to bring my Pro-Line 241 in for winter storage. Although Bob’s not working as a full-time mechanic these days, he did graduate from the Mercury repair school in Florida where he lives. So he gave my engine a quick once over, followed by the good news/bad news report.

The bad news is that on cylinder five, there’s zero compression. The sort-of-good news is that the head is clean. Although the piston is burned and the cylinder wall has aluminum transfer, there seems to be no major signs of scoring or gouging/spurs, etc. Bob said after cleaning and honing, the cylinder should be acceptable without boring.

Of course, the real question remains unanswered. What caused the engine to run fine for about 10 minutes each time, and then just stop? There were no overheat, low oil, high temp lights or alarms. The oil reservoirs, both under the cowling and in the on-board tank, were full. So now it’s a big question mark as to how to proceed. I don’t want to get the engine fixed if the problem could reoccur.

I priced a rebuilt 300-hp power head and that was a tad more than $7,000. The 241 Pro-Line Walk Around Cabin is one of best-riding boats for its size I’ve ever been in, but it’s a 1998 model. It was originally powered by a Merc 250 and then repowered in 1999 with the 300-hp engine.

So my options are selling the boat “as is” at a DIY handyman’s price, repowering it with a new four-stroke outboard or having the engine rebuilt and every component checked out carefully. The Pro-Line is on land in Edgewater, N.J. Since I don’t own a car, I don’t own a trailer. Unfortunately, I don’t have the option of taking the winter to make up my mind. At the West 79th Street Boat Basin, boat owners must pay a $1,000 non-refundable deposit during the winter if they want to come back for the following season. If you do return for the summer season, the $1,000 is credited toward the dockage due. If you don’t return, the money is forfeited.

In my next blog I’ll tell you what it was like at my first Performance Racing Industry Trade Show (it took place in Orlando, Fla., Dec. 9 to 11). I saw their ad in, where else, Powerboat magazine, and decided to check it out. Meanwhile, if you have any thoughts about anything boat- and/or blog-wise, please pass them on – This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Thanks. And happy holidays!

When Jason Johnson, senior editor at Powerboat magazine, phoned and asked if I’d be interested in making my bi-monthly column into a monthly blog on the website, I said: “Sounds great!” I’ll still be doing Dick’s Picks in the magazine, but I really love electronic media.

Let’s start this first blog with a question. How long does it take to change the filter in a water separator? A. 10 minutes, B. 10 hours, or C. 10 days.

If you’re a real boater, you know there is no job on your boat that can be done in 10 minutes. It takes more than 10 minutes just to find the right tool. In my case, the correct answers are B and C. It took about 10 hours, but those 10 hours were spread out over 10 days. How can that be? I’ll explain.

First, the reason I had to change the filter is that my 10-year-old Mercury 300 outboard decided to start acting badly after running fine season after season, even with E-10 fuel. I attribute part of that luck to Monte’s Marina in Edgewater, New Jersey. They only sell ValvTech fuel, which is pretreated for E-10. That eliminates guessing which extra conditioners to use in the fuel and how much to put in.

My good luck ran out while cruising up the Hudson River recently. My Merc slowed down on its own and stalled. Luckily it started up again and let me idle back to my marina. Having had (and still having) big-time E-10 fuel problems with my workboat, my first thought was water or debris in the fuel filter. I’d just swap it out, piece of cake.

Not having a spare, I ordered a new one online. Three days later I had my new filter. Now a few turns of the filter wrench and the old filter would screw right off. I got out the handy dandy Baby Boa Wrench I discovered at the National Hardware show. It uses a flexible toughened polypropylene and strengthened rubber strap that opens at one end so it can easily slide into tight places.

Nah, the filter wouldn’t budge, so I got out the Large Boa Wrench. Giving it all my strength, the filter started to move. By now, two fellow boaters had come over to watch and one of them made a depressing observation. “You know that filter’s not moving, you’re pulling the entire bracket out of the bulkhead.” He was right. Time to stop with the strength, WD-40 it, and let it sit overnight.

The next day Captain Ed Bacon came by with an old rusted, metal filter wrench.

“Forget the modern tools, use this,” he said. “It’s old and cruddy, but it works great.” I used it and just as I could see the filter start to deform and crush, it started turning. Success! That was the good news. The bad news? For a filter that I hadn’t changed in an unknown number of years, it was in great shape. Just a drop of water at the very bottom, and no debris. So now I have a new filter and an engine that still doesn’t run right. When I find the real trouble I’ll let you know.

Not that you need it, but here’s a little more bad news. E-15 fuel has been approved for late-model cars. Marinas have been excluded, but be careful if you fuel your boat at a service station. When it gets into the marketplace, pumps with E-15 fuel are supposed to be clearly marked, but who knows if that will happen.