Wow, what a party.

The 2010 edition of the Whitby-Brewer Rendezvous was an absolute delight. First, boaters are fun folks because of the shared interest we have. Second, boaters with your model boat are more fun because there's less to explain and more to learn.

Monday night we had a pot-luck dinner with a quick round of introductions. We met some folks, we talked boats. It was — as these things go — a delightful dinner. But we'd only just met that night; so it was cordial, but not warm.

Tuesday, we had a number of presentations.

• Bob Smith from American Diesel Corporation talked about engines. Most Whitby's — Red Ranger in particular — have Ford Lehman engines. ADC marinized the Lehman engines for use in the Whitby's (amongst other boats.) While the boating industry has moved away from the Ford Diesel engines, ADC remains in business providing service and support for all those marine diesel engines. We spent a lot of time talking about fuel and fuel filters. Important stuff because all of us had suffered engine failure from clogged filters. Our best laid plans had gang agley because of dirty fuel.

• George Dunigan from Interlux talked about paint. We have the Micron CSC product, which seems to work well.

• Terry talked about his windlass rebuild. Terry's boat is at our marina, Deltaville Boatyard. We'd met him briefly on D dock. Their boat, Island Time, is on the hard, so when we get back to Deltaville, we have to find him and say hello.

• Dr. Bob talked about medical matters. Trauma, injury, sea sickness, burns — the things you need to cope with when you're away from civilization.

The dinner Tuesday night was a bunch more fun, since we'd had a day to learn more about each other, and our various boats, and our interests and levels of experience.

Wednesday, we had even more presentations.

• Dave and Gretchen talked about taking a Whitby — a big damn boat — on the "Great Loop". Up the east coast of the US, up the Hudson river. Up through the canals to the Saint Lawrence, through the Great Lakes to Chicago, down the rivers to the Gulf of Mexico and around to their starting point in Florida. While power boats do this regularly, sailboats rarely attempt it. And sailboats as big as a Whitby almost never do it. It took them three years. They saw a lot of the US and Canada.

• Randy and Diane talked about their rework projects.

• Gerry talked about The Incredible Hull. This is a complete rebuild, from the hull up. A huge job.

• Deb talked about her sewing projects. And her choices in fabric, threads, and sewing machines. After making the mizzen stackpack and main stackpack, we were interested in the next things to make.

• Terry talked about water pump rebuilds. We had just rebuilt our water pump, so this was interesting.

• Doug Stephenson talked about the overall fleet of 350+ Whitby's and closely related boats (like the Brewer 12.8.)

The dinner Wednesday night involved plans to meet in the future.

After a perfectly rotten trip (see Gang Aft Agley) it was a great thing to hear of many boats with the same problem, boats with worse problems, and a long, long list of reasons why this is a perfectly fine boat. There's much to learn and many, many great miles in these Whitby 42's.