Oh look, it's Braunston again

Braunston on a Friday reminds me a bit of Fradley on a Friday, though there's more waterspace, so less actual traffic jams, just more boats altogether. By dint of setting off at half seven, we made it to the Tunnel by half eight and were the first through.

I did it in just over twenty minutes, but we then hung about at the top of the flight waiting for a couple of boats to come up. This meant that Duende caught up with us, having come off the visitor moorings a bit further back. We had a very pleasant run down, with a steady stream of boats coming up. Some were well handled, others less so, but it all added to the gaiety of the situation.

We're now moored just through Butchers Bridge; Mikron are performing at the Nelson tonight, so we plan to go along. We'll leave the boat well secured, since they've had a bit of a run of break-ins here this year. Essentially, we'll just be more thorough about closing and locking her up, putting the shutters in the side hatch windows and the like.

Two things that I've held over:

The mooring arrangements on the bank at Crick were not anything like as good as previous years, as I commented in advance. Susan Mason called me to say that she'd spoken to Ian Sharpe, the organiser, and he had told her to tell me to ring him when we got there. This I did on the Wednesday morning, and he said that, although the moorings manager had not yet arrived, when he did, he would get in touch with me about arranging the Braidbar Boats.

I've not seen this gentleman yet, and I begin to doubt if in fact he ever existed. Other disgruntled moorers had been told he'd be around on the Friday, but if he was, he must have looked at the situation and run away. A lot of people had paid a lot of money for the privilege of having to sort out their own moorings. Our suspicion is that they thought they'd sold more slots than they possessed, especially the decent ones on the piling, rather than the rough stuff the other side of the marina entrance, so adopted a Ryanair approach of first come, first served.

The other spectacular own goal was the reserved moorings for the disabled. These consisted of around five boat lengths either side of the foot bridge. The thing is, there were only two disabled boats booked in, and the bridge was a scaffolding structure which was challenging enough to the able bodied, especially once it was wet.

On a much more cheerful note, and about something that lived up to its promises, we bought from a persuasive salesman a Washmatik system. This is nine foot of hose with a one-way valve at one end and a soft car wash type brush at the other. You put the valve end in a bucket of clean water, and after priming up the hose, moving the brush up and down on the side of the boat produces a flow of water through it.

Much better than a sponge, as the water in the bucket stays clean, and much less effort into the bargain. Definitely a good buy. We've cleaned both sides of the boat over the last couple of days, using about half a bucket of water each time.