Record numbers expected on ‘VIP Wednesday’ at London Boat Show
America’s Cup star and Olympic legend Sir Ben Ainslie, Olympic gold medallist Paul Goodison and a Royal visitor will attend will be taking centre stage at the London Boat Show 2014 tomorrow – Wednesday 8th January 2014. The quadruple Olympic gold medallist and silver medallist will be joined by Olympic gold medallist Laser sailor Paul Goodison.
Visitors are expected to flock to the J.P. Morgan BAR AC45 stand at 11.30am (stand number G28O) to quiz the sailing legend at a question and answer session.
The stand also displays Sir Ben’s extreme racing multihull, which competed in the 2012-2013 America’s Cup World Series.
Sir Ben and Paul Goodison are later expected to attend the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation stand at 4pm, to promote the work of the charity established in memory of their good friend Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson, who tragically died last year while training for the 34th America’s Cup.
A Royal VIP visitor is also expected to attend on what looks set to be the busiest day of the Diamond Jubliee anniversary show.
Moss the Springer Spaniel was among the sniffer dogs out in force today as security preparations stepped up a gear ahead of tomorrow’s big event.
Although attendance has been moderate so far, organisers are preparing for a record-breaking mid-week turnout, which they hope will bolster visitor numbers for the rest of the week.
A show spokesman said: ‘Advance ticket sales are up 4% on last year’s figures. At the moment Wednesday is the most popular day.’
The show so far
Waterside Properties director Nick Byrne said while today’s visitor numbers had been quieter than expected, they had enjoyed a positive start to the 2014 event.
He said: ‘We had the best opening day to a London Boat Show that Waterside Properties has experienced for four or five years, in terms of the number of people and most importantly the quality of the enquiries.
‘Sunday and Monday continued to be busy with quality enquiries, then today was much quieter.’
Staff at Ocean Safety Ltd also reported a successful show so far, with their liferaft demonstration in The Watersports Pool on the opening weekend attracting a couple of hundred spectators.
John Goode, of the Adventurous Cruising Zone, said the ‘Ask the experts’ free advice area was proving popular.
He said: ‘Because everything is so electronic these days we’ve had a number of people asking us about basic navigation stuff, there’s a lot of interest in being able to fall back on celestial navigation.’
The London Boat Show 2014, began on Saturday and is scheduled to run until Sunday 12 January.
Book tickets and find out more at www.londonboatshow.com
