Our weekend at the Classic Boat Show

Over the weekend 10th - 11th September, St Katharine Dock gave you the chance to climb on board over 40 vintage sailing and motor yachts not usually open to the public! This was the 8th annual Classic Boat Festival at the docks and you were able to get up and personal with Little Dunkirk Ships, the Massey Shaw, Portwey and Havengore, enjoy live music, family activities and plenty of scrummy street food! Never wanting to miss out on a party, we at Thames Rockets were ready and raring to meet anyone and everyone out to celebrate all things €˜boating'! Matty P, Stacey & €˜Greege' were all down at the docks manning our standing, meeting lots of lovely people, handing out goodies, answering your questions and playing with Lego! Here's what we got up to... Friday On a glorious sunny afternoon (on the day before the Boat Show) we had to get our all equipment, posters, leaflets and other gubbins over to St Kats. As you can see we had a fair bit... How would we go this? ZipVan, Addison Lee van? Uber??? In central London that could take an age to get there...Well luckily Thames Rockets have access to some pretty swish, zippy, bright red craft that never, ever get stuck in traffic. Off we went, looking forward to what was in store! Saturday It came as something of a surprise to 'Greege' that there is in fact a 6am on a Saturday! Luckily the lovely people at Pret were up even earlier! The guys were up bright and early to head over to the docks to get our stall all set up and ready for the first day. Here's Greege looking very pleased with himself (sheltering from the drizzle)... Being over at the docks also gave the guys a chance to check out 'Thames Drawing #2' by artist Ros Burgin. Ros has created a large-scale drawing mapping the Thames using names of boats that use the river. This original graphite drawing describes the 42-mile stretch known as the Tidal Thames flowing through Central London from Teddington Lock in the west to the Thames Barrier in the east. AND includes our boats, Rocket One, Captain Rocket, Rocket Junior and Red Rocket. It took the crew a little while to pick the girls out mind! We of course had to make sure the crew kept their energy levels up during the event. Luckily the World Food Market, a regular Saturday fixture at St Kats, was on hand to keep the team fed and watered. 'Greege' went for a rather tasty, and very filling, 'Crafty Pies' pie, 'posh' slaw and spuds. Returning to the Classic Boat Festival for the 3rd year in a row were the Barnett Hill Life Boat Crew who performed their collection of traditional sea shanties throughout the day, which certainly helped keep everyone's spirits up when their were a few showers in the afternoon. We had a couple of new neighbours for our two days at the show, one of which was an amazing flower headband crafts woman, who was producing and showing others how to fashion beautiful fresh flower headbands - all for just a £2 donation to the RNLI. Here's Stacey modelling her rather fantastic effort. And of course it wouldn't be a classic boat show with out some classic boats! These little beauties (below) are part of the surviving collection of 'Dunkirk Little Ships'. Sunday We arrived to a changed St Kats, no rain and glorious sunshine everywhere! It was sunnies and smiles today! 'Greege' was joined by Thames Rocket guide, and legend Big Matty P, who quickly turned his hand to Lego Speedboat building, see below. And just to prove he's an all rounder when it comes to arts and crafts he also fashioned this fetching fresh floor head dress.   Throughout Sunday everyone at the event was entertained, very thoroughly, by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, who were absolutely outstanding! ... and of course once again there was much fun to be had with our 'plastic brick toy' making competition And the odd classic boat! Thanks to all the team at St Katharine Docks for all their hard work putting together another outstanding event together this year, we'll see you all in 2017!