Boat Shows and grey London.
Every year two things happen in January - the last week sees us head to Austria for the annual ski trip and the last weekend before we set off sees us in London for the Boat Show at Excel. After my accident the skiing entry has been removed from the calendar but the Boat Show is still a feature.
I always go for the whole weekend and stay with my friend Rick. This year was no exception except unlike before Susan was with me the whole weekend and Rick, who had a wedding to go to, was not. A few days earlier we managed to get hold of friends Daniel & Jo from Kent who jumped on a train in Ashford and headed up to the capital to spend the day with us on the Saturday. We also managed to catch up with London based friend Gail and together the five of us spent most of the day hiding from the awful weather. Last year I had the day to myself and spent most of it doing photography (albeit only with my P&S) in glorious weather. Not so this year - instead the day was spent getting to know the insides of the various Costas and Starbucks around Charing Cross with a brief trip out to find a pizza place on the South Bank. Despite the weather and the lack of sightseeing it was a great day and it was so nice to see our friends.
Sunday, naturally, saw the weather improve dramatically as we were going to be holed in up inside the Excel Conference and Exhibition Centre in the Docklands all day. A decent start ensured we got to the show far earlier than in recent years but this year I was actually looking to get some deals and nav equipment and was more interested in trawling the isles of manufacturers, wholesalers and dealers than I was in the usual exercise of “tyre kicking”. Rick was with us, as he always is, but this year we managed to catch up with boating friends Steve & Barbara and their friends Greg & Mandy, who we know well. Consequently we got into the RYA enclosure and so avoided having to fight for tables in the various public eating areas.
Deals concluded, we managed to find a bit of time at the end to go and do some tyre kicking, avoiding the Sunseeker stand which is one of the few that loudly advertises that it will let any old Tom, Dick and Harry go climbing over its boats. Many of the exhibitors no longer let the general riff raff on board but Sunseeker still do and so they attract a lot of attention because of it. Fortunately, I know from the past that some of the others also do, they just don’t let be known so widely, so avoiding the massive queues at Sunseeker we had a quiet word with the reception at Fairline and next thing we up on a nice Fairline Phantom 48 before graduating onto a 64ft Fairline Squadron. Beautiful though they are, even if I did win the lottery, I’d never entertain the idea of owning something like this.