Sailing Chandlery at the 2018 RYA Dinghy Show

The dust has settled and we're sort of back to normal after the 2018 RYA Dinghy Show at Alexandra Palace.

It takes a lot of planning, effort and team power to pick up our whole business and move it to Alexandra Palace for the weekend - however, it's worth it every time.

Things looked a little shaky heading into this years show with the Beast from the East and the snow it brought along. We packed our vans in the snow all day Thursday and prepared for a snowy drive on Friday morning. The benefit of the bad weather was the lack of traffic on the road, a rush hour journey to London was completed in record time, even in a rather loaded box van.

When we arrived at Alexandra Palace the mood was interesting as the RYA were thinking about cancelling the show, our hearts were in our mouth if honest, not just because of the effort and financial burden but because we love the show and seeing our customers face to face. Luckily the RYA saw sense and the show went ahead. 10 hours after arriving we were all set up and ready to go for Saturday.

Saturday

Saturday was a great day for us, we soon got into the rhythm and were proud to be showing off the new products from Zhik.

Andrew popped over into the West Hall to present prizes for the GJW Sail Juice winter series and the Dinghy Rope (previous name before Sailing Chandlery) Top Class award and it was nice to see sponsored sailor George Coles on the podium.

After that the day disappeared, the next time we looked at our watches it was 4.30pm and we were all thinking about lunch!

Apologies to all those who popped by to see us, I was certainly running around like a looney trying to assist customers on the stand.

Sunday

In our experience Sunday is usually the quieter day, with the weather this year it felt like many people had changed their day from Saturday to Sunday. It was brilliant to still see people attending the show with travel challenges.

Although quieter we seemed to serve many more Laser sailors and have a bit of time to talk to customers making recommendations across all of our products.

Most Popular Products

Over the weekend our most popular products were:

• Ladies Superwarm V skiff suit
• Laser 4.7 Class Legal Sail
• 4mm 12 Strand Dyneema
• Rope Stopper Balls
• Laser Pico Main Sail
• Zhik Clearance Items
• Zhik 260 Boots
• Marine Tapes
• Mens Microfleece X Wetsuit (not yet available but lots of pre orders taken)
• Harken - too many items to list but have a look at all of the items available
• Zhik Grip Sailing Gloves

Thank you

If you came along to our stand to see us, thank you. It was great to see so many past customers as well as friends, sponsored sailors and also importantly new customers.