Our kids have at last reached the age where playing board games is at more fun than just hard work. Biggest hit at the moment is Cluedo (more on this soon) but Lucy half-remembered a board game from her childhood called "Don't Miss The Boat" which was a Morgan family favourite.
Each player has 8 men with the object of the game being to be the first to get 5 men into your own boat. It's a bit like checkers or draughts where men move a square or jump other men. This is all in order to reach the boat of the same colour which is waiting at one of the 4 docks. Each time a player gets a man into a boat, the outside of the board rotates moving each of the boats onto the next dock.
Sadly the game itself is out of print and only one has turned up on ebay in the past year, so you'll have to keep your ear to the ground if like me you want a copy. I guess it's fairly simple to make your own version, though the board is three dimensional - the men jump down into the boats. i did manage to find and fixup these images of this game from google's cache:
Hasbro who have an excellent site with instructions for this and hundreds of other games which they now own including Don't Miss The Boat which was originally marketed by Parker Brothers.
Update: I found a copy!