Monday 27 June 2011

Selling shares at Braunston

We drove to Braunston in the rain on Friday evening, arriving at 2130 to a jacket spud welcome on Shadow from David. He had brought the boat over from Wigram's Turn in the afternoon.

We were there to try to sell the remaining shares in Shadow, our shared-ownership semi-trad. After the demise of OwnerShips we asked BCBM to manage the boat for us. They look after maintenance and the booking chart for owners' weeks on board. BCBM has an office at Braunston Marina, and so we were able to moor at a prime spot for visitors to the annual historic narrowboat rally, which happened to be a prime spot for seeing the boats as they paraded through the marina. This was the view from the bow as President, towing Kildare, came under the bridge.


I'll say more about how we got on with showing visitors round Shadow later, but first here are a couple of pics of what most people came to Braunston for.

One boat many bloggers look out for at events such as this is Chertsey. Here it is, centre left, tied up to Angel, preparing for the first parade of the day. This merged into the second parade after problems with various boats running aground or otherwise getting stuck. Chertsey with its multitude of human ballast took something like six hours to get down to the turn and back up through the marina to its starting point.


When I looked at the photo I was struck by the pose of the couple on Victory.

2 comments:

Vallypee said...

What a fun and colourful event. I'd love to go. Did you manage to sell your shares?

Halfie said...

Yes, it's considered by many to be the highlight of the boating year. I've been three or four times now, and it is just a great occasion. Things look good on the share front - more to come in a later post.