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I know it’s heavy. My buddy uses a small trailer for his 22. UC (Ultra Compact) I couldn’t remember the name.

You wouldn’t happen to be in the Tampa area? The St Pete Astronomy Club is a GREAT group. They are having a Star party at Dade City in about 2 weeks. Not the darkest skies, but, it’s always fun!

One other thing. Look into the Astronomical Leagues Viewing Clubs. Specially the Urban Astronomy one. 100 items that you can see in light polluted skies. (If you can see the Milky Way in any form, it’s too dark). It has Messier objects (including galaxies), clusters, nebula, and multiple star systems. It will keep you busy as you can’t use goto or digital circles to find them to qualify.

I did this with my 10” Newt a few years ago in my back yard (when we had one). I had 2 lights overhanging my back yard. One I could block by using a tree, the other with a beach umbrella on a tall poll. It gave me about 20 sq feet of shadow.

As for the boat, any scope I get will have to fit in a water proof toolbox. We’ve lived aboard for 4 years now and know what and what not to leave out! :D Besides, I live in coastal Georgia, it’s salty everywhere. We use to go out on the pier at the beach and do “guerilla astronomy”, no problems with salt there either and we were over the waves.

Several years we did an Astronomy Day program out on the pier. We won the competition all of those years, going up against the Hayden Planetarium and the nations of Ireland and Iran. It can be done.

You sound like my friend in Land O Lakes, I'm in Palm Harbor. He has more scopes than I can imagine, a couple he has spent north of $40-$50K! He has two pier mounted in his back yard. His overhead viewing dome though is not very good especially considering the two expensive pier mounted scopes he has. If I had more than one scope I would get into analysis paralysis and not be able to decide which to take or use.

I've been hesitant to join clubs and since my wife has Alzheimer's late nights / over nights and travel to remote sites are out of the question. My friend in L-O-L also has the same scope I have, in fact his picture is on the Obsession site under customer comments, he got his almost the same time I got mine.

I have used binoculars often and still carry them with me when going out, I'm often amazed at what you can see with them and recommend them as a low cost way to enter the field.

I can't remember the name of the company that said not to use their scope anywhere near salt water because they said the coatings would corrode or something like that. I was thinking of buying one of their larger models - about 7.5 inch Mak when I saw the note.