Recovering

We had a brilliant evening at The Moorings last night, though many of us felt the need to crawl off comparatively early to get some sleep. Today, we've been taking it easy, doing some food shopping in the morning and winding Sanity Again this afternoon so that we can make an early start tomorrow without waking folk up.

Here are some thoughts about this year's Crick, for what they are worth –

Positives:

• We made one definite sale, another very high probability sale and at least three strong possibles. If they all come through, that's nearly a year's worth of orders.
• The social side of the Braidbar Owners' Group was brilliant, better than ever, I reckon, and we'll do even better next time.
• Lots of potential customers said they planned to come to the Open Day on 8th September, so it looks like we'll have a great time there as well.
• We came second in the Favourite Boat in Show competition.
• The towpath moorings were well organised by Noel from Crick marina, who then broke his leg just before the start of the show. Get well soon, Noel!.
• It was great to meet several blog and book readers.

Less good:

• The weather on Sunday was atrocious, and not very pleasant at times on Monday and Tuesday
• The four day weekend was a waste of time from our point of view; I don't think that the total footfall was any more than we'd expect during a three day show, partly because people just spread out their visits, and partly because a combination of the lousy weather and alternative Diamond Jubilee related stuff kept them away.
• We came second in the Favourite Boat in Show competition.
• The competition was run by Waterways World, with RoyScotLarch, the sponsors, taking no interest in the process. Previously, RoyScotLarch have monitored the voting process quite carefully, but this time, although the ballot box was on their stand, they made no attempt to watch over it. In addition, the PA announcer kept telling people to get the voting slip from the exhibitors and put it in the box, whereas what should actually happen is that the exhibitor gives the visitor a white reminder slip and the voter fills in a new coloured slip at the ballot box. Apparently, there were a lot of spoiled votes in the form of the white slips put straight in the box.

Regular readers will remember that last year, WW decided they could do a better job of the towpath moorings than the previous system, and it was a complete pig's ear. This year, they seem to have done the same with the Favourite Boat competition with a similar result.

Now, I know that MGM Boats are a worthy winner, I've already congratulated the lucky owners of Snail's Pace, and this may seem a comparatively trivial matter. But winning this competition means a lot in terms of promoting the builder, and we should all have full confidence in the outcome. It's always been a bit of an oddity, in that it's a popular vote rather than a judged award like the IWA ones, and the voting system needs to be run in a way that's transparently fair and watertight.

As things are, it would be all too easy in future years for an unscrupulous builder to organise systematic ballot stuffing, and that would really spoil the whole atmosphere of the show.

So once again, I find myself saying "Get your act together, Waterways World!"

Tomorrow, an early start; we hope to make it to Braunston by the end of the day.