World Gig Championships this weekend

The Isles of Scilly will be bustling with gigs rowers this bank holiday weekend. Around three thousand of them are on the islands for the World Pilot Gig Championships. They easily outnumber the islanders - Scillies resident population is around 2000.

They cram into every available holiday let and camp site on the islands.In fact there's so many on the main island of St.Mary's, a number have to stay on the smaller off islands.

It'll also be crowded on the water. This year the event marks it's twenty fifth anniversary. When it started there were just 19 gigs,now there are 147.The gigs are transported from the mainland by the Scillonian sea ferry from Penzance. It takes nearly two months to get all the gigs across,as the ferry can only take a few on each sailing.

The championships also provide a welcome boost for the islands at a time when tourism levels are dropping. It's estimated this weekend will pump one and a half million pounds into the economy. It'll also be busy in the island's three pubs-one pub alone expects to serve 15,000 pints.

One thing gigs rowers like more than rowing is beer!

They show the 19 gigs which took part in the first event in 1990 and the number of rowers who took part-around about 100.

To give you a flavour of what the World Championships are really like, here is my report from 2009