Odds & Ends You Might Appreciate…

Four 2025 Small-Boat Items We’d Like to Share

1. First, Roger Barnes…

Readers of this column were recently asked to help bring Roger Barnes to North America by contributing to a GoFundMe campaign organized by North American chapters of the Dinghy Cruising Association…and I’m here to proudly tell you that SCA readers literally made Roger’s trip happen by raising the lion’s share of $5,000 needed for his U.S. tour this summer.

Roger, of course, is president of the Dinghy Cruising Association in the UK (https://www.dinghycruising.life) and producer of more than 80 YouTube videos on small-boat cruising in Britain and along the coast of France, where he now lives.

As you may know, the Dinghy Cruising Association is one of the largest small-boat organizations in the world and certainly the fastest-growing. In recent years, DCA’s presence in North America has boomed, too, with chapters across the country and more being formed almost monthly. (We’re happy to be involved in the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Dinghy Cruising Association…and we’re just now starting a campaign to attract new members in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska.)

Thanks to Small Craft Advisor readers and other small-boat enthusiasts, Roger will arrive in the U.S. June 18 and leave a month later on July 18, sailing with new DCA friends on the Chesapeake, attending the June 27-29 Wooden Boat Show at Mystic Seaport (where he’ll make a presentation), and also sailing with others before and after the WBS. (We’ll provide more details as they become available.)

Finally, and again largely due to generosity of our readers, Roger will once again come to North America in 2026—this time to join Pacific Northwest DCA members on some exciting small-boat cruises in western Washington and adjoining waters of British Columbia. (We’ll can’t wait to share our cruising waters with Roger…so stay tuned for details that’ll begin to come together this Fall, and get ready for feature stories by Roger on his North American adventures, right here in Small Craft Advisor.)

2. Still Time to Register for the Small Boat Festival

As we end the month of February, we can report that registration for the second annual Small Boat Festival, taking place May 30-31 at Port Ludlow Marina (near Port Townsend) is clicking right along…but there’s still time to bring your boat to what’s becoming the largest show in North American dedicated expressly to small watercraft.

It might be worth reminding readers that the SBF is NOT a wooden-boat festival—it’s a celebration of small-boat design and purely functional smaller watercraft, including a lot of older fiberglass production boats, home-built wooden boats of all sorts, and certainly all forms of propulsion: Sail, oar, paddle, outboard, inboard, electric (more and more), and also pedal-powered craft. The mix is amazing, and so far it looks like we’ll see a lot of new, never-before-shown boats…so if you want to bring your small boat you can register via the Pacific Northwest Pocket Yachters website, here: