I recently had the opportunity to spend an evening at the Milwaukee Boat Show working in the Mercury booth. Mercury set up a booth at the show to display various OptiMax, Pro XS, Verado, and FourStroke engines, along with some MotorGuide trolling motors and Mercury props.

Unfortunately the day I chose to work the show was a day in which the State of Wisconsin was set to receive about 8 inches of snow, turning a normally one hour drive from headquarters to Milwaukee into a two and a half hour crawl! Once I arrived at the show I was amazed at the various displays of pricey yachts and sparkling new fishing boats set up around the expo center. Mercury doesn’t sell engines directly to the public so our booth was set up mainly to distribute information about our engines and answer any questions show-goers may have (those that braved the elements, at least).

One of the biggest curiosities was Mercury’s new Power Tiller. The Power Tiller is an accessory that will give boaters the option of adding a power steering tiller handle to large outboards. It uses the same pump as the Verado engines and has power trim on the tip of the tiller handle. At the show the Power Tiller was set up on a 150 hp Optimax engine and it drew a lot of gazes from passersby. We had a pump set up on it so people could give it a try and many were amazed at the ease in which the handle moved back and forth. Many people were amazed just seeing a tiller handle on such a large engine (including me). There has been demand for this item from fishermen and guides that don’t want to use up room in their boats with consoles. To be honest it’s still hard for me to picture, but to each his own!

Although I’ve been with Mercury for two years now this was my first boat show experience. The boats and engines were beautiful, the displays were put together very well, and the people that made it to the show in spite of the snow were enthusiastic. Unfortunately it seems the only engines we Wisconsinites will be firing up anytime soon will be snowblowers!