Day 12: Craning day

Yesterday was craning day, when the show boats are lifted into the water, and in some cases out of it. Meanwhile, on the field, things got busier and busier. As a result, I've got lots of photos, out of the 171 Sheila and I took between us.

There was a fair amount of boat shuffling going on, and Bungle volunteered to move one of the workers' boats to its proper location. This involved a long reverse, and of course, since there was an audience, it didn't go all that well...

Big prop, shallow water, never a good combo

 Approaching boats had to be warned about the organised (?) chaos ahead:

After you

 which task was undertaken by those most useful of persons, the Americans:

Ready for action

The actual craning was from a corner of the car park next to the canal, and made for some interesting sights:

Up she comes

Round she goes

and down she goes

Mind the edge!

Touching the water

and afloat

After putting one in, one needed to come out, to form part of the land based boats:

Slinging

Positioning the slings is always trickier when the boat is floating:

Wrong!

If you don't get it right, the boat doesn't sit level and risks slipping out when in mid air. This is not a good idea.

Right

 After several trial lifts and some testy exchanges, they got it right at last, and away it went:

Swinging along.

Meanwhile, Bungle's reversing had gone much better once out of sight of the crowds, and he celebrated with an ice lolly:

Happy, happy Bungle

Just to finish with the craning, later in the day, one of the other exhibition boats was being moved under its own power, when the need to hold back led to a complete loss of drive. Investigation showed that all was well with the engine and drive train, but opening the weed hatch found the problem.

The prop had fallen off.

Not a good day for Aintree Boats, who seemingly don't know what a split pin is for.

Wrg came to the rescue, and Gary and Lucas turned out to do things the trad way:

What's Gary doing, children?

 (apart from scaring you senseless, that is)

He's towing a boat!

Though not all by himself:

On its way.

On the main field, matters carried on, with some selected traders arriving early, because their displays need tricky manoeuvring:

Multicell coming in

 In the Bar Tent, the team was setting up:

Assembling the bar

Ready for action.

Perhaps inspired by this, Site 2 was seen practising his imitation of the famous moment in Only Fools and Horses when Del Boy falls backwards through the bar:

David Jason he's not, but it's a good try.

and finally, I can't go without mentioning the car park:

All hands...

It looks like one of the piles will be cleared, but I have my doubts about the other one.

Today, we print the first issue of the newsletter, The Shobnall Shoveler.

Second Wednesday

The weather broke yesterday with a vengeance, with torrential rain at times, and just steady rain for the remainder. Vehicle movement on site was severely restricted; since the hope is that the forecast dry period will turn up tomorrow, if only the team can keep the surface from breaking up too much, it will dry out again to be comfortable for the Festival visitors over the weekend.

It didn’t matter too much to us in the morning, as we were tucked up on the boat putting the final touches to the Thursday edition of the Beale Park Bugle, and progressing Friday’s nicely, but in the afternoon, when the downpour was at its worst, I had to sort out the print run.

This entailed going over to Admin village with a memory stick, from which Kevin printed 950 copies of Thursday, and one of Friday for submission to our Director, Gillian. (I must record that as far as that goes, my fears have proved to be totally unfounded; she’s being very reasonable about leaving us to do what we do, with helpful suggestions and the odd comment.)

Once printed, the copies needed to be taken to the WRG compound, a walk of around five minutes, for folding and sorting into bundles. We have one of those heavy duty reusable Sainsbury’s shopping bags, which happily holds up to 1000 sheets of A3, so I used that, making two trips, partly to spare my back, and partly so that the folders had something to be getting on with.

They arrived almost intact, with just a bit of damp on the edges on a few, well within the deliberate overprint numbers.

Earlier in the day, Bungle had arranged for a folding machine to collected from the guy who looks after the post processing of the Navvies newsletter which is WRG’s main organ of communication. The hope was that it would arrive in time for yesterday’s folding, but it was not to be, so we hand folded the lot, with help from Roger and Margaret who are the signs finishing team and weren't busy. We finished just after half four, with almost all copies delivered to their distribution centres like the Waterspace and Campsite Offices by five.

We then retreated to the boat for a quiet hour’s collapse, before attending the Chinese meal which is the Blue Shirts traditional get together on the Wednesday before the Festival.

Wednesday is also the day when the exhibitor's boats are craned into position:

Trombo wagons waiting with their loads

The first one goes in

Others arrived under their own steam

The Historic Wharf is nearly finished

A team of Blue Shirt ladies make the lunchtime sandwiches

Despite the weather, the marquee guuys work steadily on, here erecting the Bandstand