RYA Suzuki Dinghy Show 20qy

Having an on the water element is a nice idea, but I think the logistics defeat it. When I've seen on the water trials of boats it seems that its often a struggle to get much more than 10 people per boat per day. For Laser or RS, OK, maybe bring 10 or 20 new boats, sold off as show specials at the end of the weekend, but for the average class association it probably means at least two extra show quality boats, plus enough extra volunteers to support the boats on land and waters edge, possibly crews too, in order to get maybe 20 trial sails. Then you've got to pay insurance, and somehow deal with the inevitable collisions.

Then you've got to figure in changing facilities for some hundreds of people, plus the clutter of those hundreds of people carrying sailing gear round the show all day. Then the classes will worry about weather. If its really light the performance boats will fear people will be put off, if its strong the owners will be panicking about breakages from the ham handed. If its chucking down with rain or freezing cold the class volunteers will freeze, not to mention reduced turnout...

Too many classes struggle with getting their act together for the show anyway, I fear that trying to introduce an on the water event would spectacularly increase the complexity of the event, beyond the capacity for many classes to manage.

Edited by JimC - 10 Mar 16 at 12:15pm

So the Dinghy Show attracted about 8000 visitors....about the same as for the past few years.

Coverage in the paper version has, for the past few years been equally lamentable.

strange i saw loads of coverage from various suppliers and class associations  on social media platforms, i thought how much better its gotten with the "live" feeds now.  conversely i don't subscribe to piston heads and didn't see any content from Geneva, they must be doing it wrong...

Originally posted by Oli strange i saw loads of coverage from various suppliers and class associations  on social media platforms, i thought how much better its gotten with the "live" feeds now.  conversely i don't subscribe to piston heads and didn't see any content from Geneva, they must be doing it wrong... If you look in the right places you'll find a rich vein of content, just because its online doesn't mean it falls into your lap.