Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS)<\/a> spans seven locations around east Fort Lauderdale, including newly renovated Pier 66 and the newly built Broward County Convention Center.<\/p>\nPlenty of mega yachts are using the Las Olas Marina to anchor for the show. The marina, which used to be a city parking lot, was converted into floating concrete docks designed for the biggest yachts in the world, ranging in size from 78 to 315 feet long.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s estimated that the show generates more than $1.78 billion in annual economic impact in an industry that creates over 100,000 jobs in the region.<\/p>\n
Brian Chi, first mate aboard a yacht named Alexandra, showed NBC6 around the five-cabin vessel.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be a deckhand, learn on a boat and make $50,000\/year. When you live on the boat and travel on it, it\u2019s hard to spend that income when you\u2019re working on a boat,\u201d said Phil Purcell, CEO of Marine Industries Association of South Florida.<\/p>\n
Chi is a perfect example. He started working on boats straight out of high school in Miami, and he has a passion for being on the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do engine work, electrical work, anything that needs to be done. Maintenance, washing it down, and finding out what\u2019s not working and get it working again,\u201d Chi said.<\/p>\n
The event runs until Sunday, and there\u2019s so much to see that you\u2019ll need all that time to see everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even in the rain, the event was well-attended. If you plan to come to the show, expect traffic once you hit the beach. And some parking lots were charging $150-$200 to park your car for the day.<\/p>\n
The show runs through Sunday. Click here<\/a> to buy tickets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s largest in-water boat show is underway in Fort Lauderdale despite some rain on Wednesday. The Fort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-26162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}