Monday 2 July 2018

Braunston Historic Boats 2018

(With both boats - posted by Alan)
(Retrospective Post for Saturday 23rd & Sunday 24th June)

We had a fantastic Braunston this year.

Photo: Kev Maslin
I'm not sure, but I think it is the first time we have got ourselves fully "installed" on the Thursday, rather than turning up on Friday.  This seemed to help immensely with actually having a day to sort ourselves out, do a bit of cleaning and polishing, and actually be more prepared for the weekend proper.  Anyway our guests were arriving on Friday, so we needed to be a bit smarter than sometimes.




Photo: Ian & Becky Mulford
The weather stayed hot and sunny for the whole weekend - possibly just a bit too hot and sunny!  Visitor numbers seemed to be slightly down, though nobody could make their minds up whether this was mostly due to the show promoter doubling the prices for parking, the fact the World Cup was on, or both, (or perhaps neither!).  Lower visitor numbers is, of course, not great for raising charitable funds, but it actually made moving around the site easier, (in particular getting across or under the narrow paths at bridges), and also gave more chance of getting a good vantage point to view the action.

Photo: John Harrison
Photo: John Harrison





Photo: John Harrison

Photo: Lisa Marie Trump
















Photo: Ian & Becky Mulford

Photo: Ian & Becky Mulford
The density of the moored up boats seemed to indicate a not particularly high attendance, but lists produced since seem to say it was a good turn out - possinly "eight plus", though as ever this depends on exactly what you count!









Photo: Ian & Becky Mulford
We decided one parade a day was enough, but as we wanted to take both boats around, we decided to parade "Sickle" on the Saturday, and "Flamingo" on the Sunday.  On Saturday our start position out beyond the A45 bridge allowed us to slip into the parade early on, and we got round really quite easily in well under 2 hours, with Cath steering the majority of it.  On Sunday, however, the same approach didn't work so well, and we got severely help up, taking far longer to complete the circuit.  Apparently a boat had decided to stop to fuel up at a point it caused a considerable blockage, and caused a big hold up, (no comment!).  Also one of the tugs managed to acquire a tyre over its propeller, and had to be towed back, (though I'm not convinced that added much to the slowness).  The final time went unrecorded - certainly not as slow as some yeras, but slow enough, and good to finally moor up, and get to the beer tent.

Photo: Ian & Becky Mulford
When one is in the parade, the one thing you don't really take pictures of is your own boat, so I have used some that have been taken by other people, and I am grateful for being able to show them here. (Please let me know if I have wrongly credited any of them).









On the other hand you do get to photograph other people's boats, so some of our own photographs are here.



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