Day 4 Boat shuffle

Lots of pictures today, as yesterday's main activity was moving all the workers' boats onto the moorings prepared for them by the Waterspace team. First though, my thanks to Andrew Denny at Waterways World for his great news item about the Festival. Not only does he take much better pictures than I do, he even gives a plug and a link to this blog.

It's nearly enough for me to forgive WW for the mess they made of the moorings at Crick ;).

It's quite an operation, shifting over 40 boats in a pretty narrow channel – I'll let the pictures do the talking:

The first few boats in position

 On a dull, damp morning, operations began just after half seven, with the first boats to be moored on the inside moving up to just by the footbridge.

How the expert does it...

This is Terry Robertson of TR Boat Handling slotting his own boat, Shropshire Lass, into her space. We'd left him just enough room and he didn't touch another boat as he did so. What you'd expect from one of the best boat handling teachers in the business, of course :).

Master class in reversing

This is Pat Campbell reversing Fair Fa' from the parkside moorings to their slot on the workers' moorings. Mind you, it's easier if you have a bow thruster.

Tricky

But by the same token, there's no excuse if you do get stuck! Not that Pat really was here, but I reckon he was sweating a bit.

Sheila Campbell celebrating their safe arrival.

Mind you, if Fair Fa' hits an iceberg this winter, we'll know who to blame.

Ooops

 The "ordinary traffic of the district" (as all those old signs say) continued whilst this was going on, of course. Dave Jones was just starting out with Jacaranda when a Canaltime boat appeared coming in the other direction.

Skilfull hirer

This is another Canaltime; the steerer looked pretty anxious, but was pleased by his round of applause as he emerged from the pack without touching  anyone.

Meantime, work did continue on site, though interrupted by folk being called away to move their boat.

Big gennies

 I said the big gennies would be coming soon, and these are two of them, together with an auxiliary fuel tank. Hopefully, one of these will be positioned in its proper place today, and we shall have a shore power supply to the workers' boats by tonight. We'll be glad of it; the boat behind us has a propane powered Honda genny on his back deck, and it sounds even worse than the petrol ones :(.

Mole plough

 This is the mole plough attachment on one of the mini tractors. It's used to bury water and power cables around the site

Ready for occupation

And finally, a shot of the show field, all marked out and ready for the marquee contractors to arrive.