16th/21st Sept: Boat Show 2022

This year I was going to help staff the NCI stand at the Boat Show on Monday 19th September but that turned out to be the Queen’s funeral and the Boat Show was closed as a mark of respect. However I used “old aged inhabitant of Southampton” tickets to visit on the first day, Friday 16th, and also on the Wednesday.

This year, as last (?), the entrance to the Boat Show was right up beside the old town walls, near the Waterstones Bookshop. The result is a long walk through water sports and small boat areas before you get to the main Boat Show exhibit area. I imagine for many people it is simply annoying.

The main boats I saw on the Friday were from the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, a second World War motor patrol boat and the RAF High Speed Launch 102 which I have seen sometimes from Calshot Tower. On the Wednesday we had a meeting on the Furuno stand about a radar for NCI Stone Point. The one boat that caught my eye turned out to be the dinghy used as “Swallow” in the last version of the “Swallows and Amazons” film. The dinghy was nice but I remember not enjoying that version of the film!