A brief overview - lots of METS bits will appear in later issues of BB - saw the 1,050 exhibitors visited by 16,382 visitors, an increase of 8% over 2004. And while UK companies didn't come up with the same level of DAME Award successes of previous years, in Clamcleats we had one joint category winner - with Harken - in the deck equipment, sails and rigging category.

With its innovative Keeper, which is designed to prevent lines being cleated accidentally, Clamcleats kept the UK up there. The Keeper also holds the line over the jaws, which allows the cleat to be mounted upside down. Simple and very effective: well done Clamcleats.

The overall DAME Award was won by a device we saw a couple of years ago at Europort for big ships. Scaled down a touch so it's now right for the superyacht market, the EPS Silent Thruster from Van der Velden Marine Systems is a very neat thruster that is, as the name suggests, silent in operation with no central hub and no blade tip cavitation.

The UK picked up several Special Mentions - the Octoplex submitted by Carling Technologies; the SA40 SART from Simrad and the composite disc joint and carbon shaft from Halyard (M&I) - details of all these in a future issue.

Before the show began we had the 7th International Sailing Summit on the Monday. This was perhaps the best ISS yet, with lots of people standing up and giving examples of programmes that are now underway to attract people into sailing around the world.

For the first time, a £5,000 prize was awarded to the most appealing project. While there were several very interesting projects - including BB's own Marine Industry Regatta - the prize went to Brazilian Axel Grael (brother of the Olympic medallists), who is introducing youngsters from the slums of Brazil to sailing. An uphill struggle, maybe, but he and his brothers are to be highly commended.

METS began with its usual Breakfast Briefing that saw Thom Dammrich, the John Clarke of the USA's National Marine Manufacturer's Association, outline the NMMA's remarkable Grow Boating campaign.

This is a heavy duty, top dollar marketing campaign that runs from top to bottom of the US industry. BB has briefed Jim Nolan to produce an article outlining the project: watch this space.

METS 2006 runs from November 14 to 16 in Amsterdam RAI.