Trailboat and yacht maintenance sections
The Düsseldorf Boat Show has announced a new trailboat feature and a series of masterclasses on yacht maintenance.
The show, known as boot Düsseldorf, takes place from 18-26 January, a week after the London Boat Show closes.
Director of Boot, Goetz-Ulf Jungmichel, visited Yachting Monthly to outline what was new at the 2013 event, saying he was keen to attract a younger crowd to the show, what he called ‘the next generation of boat-owners’, without losing long-term visitors from the traditional sectors.
Hundreds of visitors from the UK take the trip to the Düsseldorf event each year, attracted in part by the city itself, just 10 minutes’ drive from the show.
Boot offers 213,000m2 of covered exhibition space in the 17 halls of the Messe complex on the Rhine, almost 2.5 times the size of ExCeL’s North and South halls combined.
Last year, despite snowfall, 226,000 visitors paid €16 to see 1,674 exhibitors from 63 countries, a growing number of which are from the UK.
The event aims to cover every aspect of watersports. Around a quarter of the exhibits are sailing yachts (there were 183 last year including seven making their world debuts) but there are also halls covering chandlery, motorboats, PWCs, kayaks, diving, windsurfing and fishing.
Other attractions include a Refit Show – a maintenance masterclass – a School pool where you can learn dinghy sailing, a 50x20m pool where you can try kitesurfing, wakeboarding and paddleboarding, a 3m-wide 90m long river for kayaking and two Try-A-Dive tanks.
There’s also a World of Pirates crèche for entertaining the younger members of the crew.
Travel packages are being discussed with UK operators but meanwhile the flight from London to Düsseldorf takes 1h 20m and costs £65 with a budget airline. Boot is 2km from the airport, a 5m bus or taxi ride away.