Boatshow comments

Well, we went to the London Boatshow yesterday and were frankly quite disappointed with it. They have made big changes this year, not least the inclusion of an outdoor show for things like walking, cycling and climbing along with a huge indoor pool for events. Frankly, this all mitigated against it being useful for us. The number of small exhibitors with specialist equipment had reduced considerably and, in particular, the big chandlers all had much smaller stands or weren't there at all in the case of Force4.


One of the things that we liked about the old style show was that we could walk around and talk to the experts of some of the smaller equipment as well as finding the occasional useful little thing that you never realised you needed like a new form of self amalgamating tape.

We actually went all geared up to spend plenty of money this year but wound up not buying much in the end. The biggest single "purchase" was to rejoin the Cruising Association. Our impression was that the purely boating area had been shrunk more than the quarter that the outdoor show took up and I suspect that rates had been bumped up substantially to exclude the small companies. I think that the organisers have made a mistake here. Well, at one level I think that they have as the offerings for serious boaters looking for useful stuff for the upcoming season will, in future stay away. However, I am sure that the new format will be good for the gate which will make them profitable - for the organising company at least.

We did buy a couple of admiralty charts covering the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian peninsula. Now we have to find a source of detailed charts which at £21 a pop though Spanish charts are only €25. I will be keeping an eye on Ebay and other sources of second hand but if any of the millions of readers knows of a source contact me and I will be very interested - leave a comment!

I seriously doubt if we will be going next year though at the ROA AGM there was talk about having some representatives at the stand dedicated to Owners Associations and I quite like the idea of volunteering for that. Otherwise, we will probably stay away.

On other fronts, we have got hold of our liferaft off Ebay and have ordered a heavy duty one from the States over Ebay as well. That has been fun. We will also be selling our old rigid dinghy and a sailboard we aquired a few years ago.

Down to the boat next weekend so we want either nice late winter sailing conditions or a howling gale!