It was held in the Royal Phuket Marina and it's officially called PIMEX, the Phuket International Boat Show. It was on for four days and I was there every day.
I like boats, pretty ladies and beverages. The boats are wonderful, the sort of thing you associate with James Bond movies, but I can't afford them.
The pretty ladies are also the sort of thing that you associate with James Bond movies, especially the old Cold War movies. Some of the pretty ladies at the boat show had the same accent as those pretty ladies in the James Bond Cold War movies. I also can't afford them.
The beverages I also can't really afford, however, that hasn't stopped me buying it for the last 40 years, so I can look at the boats, look at the pretty girls and buy the beverages.
That's fine, for me, that's what the Phuket boat show is all about.
I see a lot of my old friends at the boat show and it seems that many of them are connected with boats in some way, but all enjoy a beverage.
One of my friends, Andy Dowden runs the boat show. He started it ten years ago with a partner Grenville Fordham from publishers, Image Asia. They also started Phuket Race Week, a popular regatta held in July.
Andy is probably one of the best known of the boat people in Phuket, if not the best known. He turned up here about 29 years ago while sailing around the world in his boat named Buccabu, dropped anchor and set up shop.
His office was at Laem Phrao, and it was the only place on the island where you could board a boat from a floating pontoon instead of jumping over the side while trying not to swamp it.
It was sitting around at the boat show that made me think about those times.
Phuket also has the Kings' Cup Regatta, Asia's biggest and best known lifestyle regatta, which started about 1988. Andy was on the committee and eventually became President.
PIMEX has been established for a decade now, and like many events, goes through ups and downs, usually influenced by outside events.
A few hundred years ago it would have very difficult to have a boat show in Phuket, as according to Colin Mackay's excellent A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Region, cutthroat pirates and local politicians would have captured and plundered all the boats before they got to Phuket.
Local politicians were still trying to plunder the boat industry with a 200 per cent import tax up to a few years ago. Andy Dowden played a major role in the removal of that tax.
However, in the modern day it’s been more to do with economic times and political problems.
Phuket's boating industry has gradually been growing and the boat show along with it, but while it is the glamour destination of the future, it's still relatively early days, and to keep going and growing it relies very much on the support and co-operation of the local industry and community.
But dark tales of skullduggery are whispered in the corners of the seafaring hostelries and tables of knowledge.
There are rumours that there are those who may want to run the boat show to suit their own personal interests rather than the good of all and are planning to set up another show in another location.
I have nothing against competition in business or free enterprise, but in this case, attempts to dilute a small but growing event could very well set back the whole boating image of Phuket in the eyes of the international industry.
Working together to keep growing PIMEX and the Phuket industry will eventually pay off for all. Starting another show in another marina will not be helpful to anybody, not the marinas, the brokers, the visitors or the organisers.
There will be no winners, only a lot of facial egg for those who still have faces.