This year the Dinghy Cruising Association took a stand at Boats ‘99, the successor to the old Greenwich Wooden Boat Show. It has long been the policy of the DCA to exhibit at the RYA Crystal Palace Dinghy show in alternate years. We had often felt that the character of the Greenwich show would suit us better in many ways, but we decided against it because it was a little too specialist. Not all of us sail wooden boats, after all.

After the Maritime Museum said that it was not willing to host the boat show any more, various of the exhibitors — small boat builders and chandlers in the main — got together with the aim of saving the show and finding themselves somewhere to exhibit. They came up with Beale Park, an absolutely delectable location by the Thames, surrounding a small lake. Furthermore, they opened up the show to other materials as well as wood, so long as the potential exhibitor shared the ethos of small scale affordable boating. There would be no gin palaces at this boat show.

Unfortunately for us, the first of these new small boats shows has occurred in a year in which we were already committed to Crystal Palace, but the chance to be in at the start of this new venture seemed too good to miss, so we have ended up exhibiting twice in six months! At very short notice three DCA boats were organised to be on the stand, despite the fact that the show clashed with the Newton Creek rally. We had a lovely site near the entrance and three paces from the side of the lake, and all for just £140 for the four days, including insurance.

In order to ‘guard’ the boats, I slept aboard Baggywrinkle on the lake for the three nights of the show. During the day whole armies of DCA people turned up, again at very short notice, to man the stand. My great thanks to you all, particularly to the tug of war team who helped me raise my fouled anchor from the bottom of the lake, to the vast enjoyment of the spectators in the adjacent beer tent.

The whole thing was a delight — like a large DCA rally in fact — with little boats sailing around on the lake, convivial company and a splendid setting. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely.

As to whether our attendance will translate into many more members — it is hard to say. But even if it does not, I feel that the DCA should be at events like this. One of our aims is the promotion of cruising in small boats — and what better way of doing that, than attending at what is now undoubtedly the premiere small boat show in the country?

I treasure so many memories about the show — the way that the famous dinghy cruiser Margaret Dye would go round in the morning putting bouquets of wild flowers on the boats she particularly liked — “Every boat needs flowers to go to bed with,” she said. Or the time that our Josephine Perry tried to convince Frank Dye that he had been sailing the wrong boat all these years — he should have had a boat like the John Perry ‘special’, rather than one of those Wayfarers. And then there was the twelve foot long model battleship that sailed about the lake in amongst the skiffs and dinghies, firing its guns — not to mention those boozy, congenial evenings sitting on the grass outside the beer tent in the warm dusk with the other exhibitors, after the show had closed each evening.