Empty Crick Boat Show

I was looking forward to seeing assorted people at the Crick Boat Show on Saturday, but put it off until Monday because of other commitments.

I was dismayed to learn that it closed early on Monday morning, due to worries about the marquees being blown away in a gale.

I went anyway, and shouldn't have been upset.  The empty site perhaps more fascinating than if it had been fully populated.  I had the main marquee exhibition area to myself, and found it a bit eerie.  Even when shows are closed, you normally see many more administrative staff than were on the site at 3pm this Monday afternoon.  The exhibitors had stolen away, leaving it all abandoned like a tented Marie Celeste, or as if all the people had blown away to Oz.

The wind had subsided a bit by the time I arrived and the marquees were no longer in danger of not being in Crick any more. 

Yet it was still gusty, and the standards were still flapping wildly under lowering clouds that threatened rain (but luckily didn't deliver).  In fact, it was less muddy than in most previous years.

I didn't even have to pay to enter.  Life hands you lemons, don't make lemonade.  Suck 'em raw; it's quicker and cheaper. 

I also got to see Whitefield from the outside, at least.  This is the remarkable narrowboat that's designed to have the look and feel of a 'Mediterranean cruiser'.

The tick-list of Whitefield's features includes - well, see for yourself.  You'll be full of scorn or envy - there can surely be no halfway house.

Whitefield is just too, too outré and kitsch for me, summed up in its chrome-plated 'michelin man' dome at the front (can you see his astonished little face?).

Yet who knows what we'll come to expect from our canal boats in future years.  A modest 'floating cottage' like Granny Buttons must have seemed weird and outré to the canal boaters of old, and were I to spend a night aboard Whitefield, I fear I might be smitten.

I had a good chat with Stuart of Fernwood, the builders.  I mentioned I was a blogger and he suggested I might like to look at the blog of Whitefield. 

Er, that's not a blog, I said; it's a build diary.  And it seems to have stopped a year ago anyway.  Nothing radically wrong with the content, it's quite interesting.  It's just the way it's served up - all in one lump, like a full spittoon. Your next boat, I said, Derwent6, now that is a proper blog! 

With charm turned on like this, it's no surprise he didn't invite me to look aboard.   I never learned tact.

Whitefield certainly is an interesting exercise, with every conceivable labour-saving gadget.  It's a veritable reinvention of the narrowboat. 

I daresay one of the canal magazines has already reviewed it, but I haven't read the magazines recently.  They are all very good these days, with high production values and many good new columnists (including our own Bones, who writes for one of the three best).  But to paraphrase Noel Coward's comment on television, canal magazines are for appearing in, not for reading.  (Like I said, I never learned tact)

Later I went around to see Bruce and Sheila on Sanity for a chat.  It was a first meeting with another blogger, and what a blogger Bruce is, one of the most active and informative, and he is perhaps the most prominent of the continuous cruisers on the Save Our Waterways organisation. 

And that's the full story of my Crick Boat Show visit.

Bruce and Sheila are off to the Saul Canal Festival next week.  Would that I could follow them.

Comments

[Del & Al]

Thanks for the mention Andrew, that proper blog comes from learning so much from yours!!

[Kevin]

Amusing that for all that modernity it relies on a good old fashioned sisal front fender. I would have thought an auto-inflating airbag triggered by a proximity sensor...

[Mike]

I've taken a good hard look at all the pictures of Whitefield. I really tried to be fair and open minded but one phrase continually revolves through my mind - "the vulgar boatman". Not just an ugly design (those windows ugh!) but impractical too. Must be a nightmare to handle in the wind, locks and tunnels with delicate areas to get bumped and paint to be scratched. So mark me down for "scorn", I'm afraid. Sorry.

[Andrew Denny]

Bruce: Whitefield's cratch damaged? Good grief, so soon!

But isn't Crick a broad tunnel? And doesn't the boat have joystick steering allowing it to pirouette on the head of a pin?

I can see that such an adventurous cratch cover, with its retractable 'cabriolet-style' frame, must be a delicate hostage to fortune in any collision.

You can stand on many stout cratchboards, which are also triangular and thus less-obviously likely to be hit by tunnel sides. So, obviously Whitefield's cratch cover is a compromise. But then again, how many 'Mediterranean cruisers' expect to pass through tunnels?

I've heard that other boatbuilders turned down the opportunity to build Whitefield, so revolutionary was it. Bravo to Fernwood for being willing to realise such a radical dream.

[Bruce Napier]

Thank you kind sir; it was great to see you in the flesh at last.

Thanks for the link to Whitefield's site, too - I'd not found it. They had trouble getting it back through Crick Tunnel, sad to say, and the fancy cratch is rather damaged on top.

All the best

Bruce

[bones]

that metal bit on the front of the boat looks like a whistling face