More thoughts on the Boat Show

And so to the narrowboats.. I was only impressed with two of them, well to be fair, I only ‘walked through’ four of the eight or so there, leaving the hire and share boats to those looking for next years holidays.

I have just deleted most of what I wrote about the narrowboats.. I have decided not to criticise the interior layouts of the boats, but I will say that I was somewhat surprised at the seemingly unthoughtfulness of the designs

Best boat for me was the Liverpool Boat, closely followed by the New Boat Company.  Price wise as well Liverpool Boats came out on top in my view, a very good price for a very good boat.  Sea Otter’s aluminium narrowboat was on display, but with a price tag of £102,000 for 58ft would only capture a small market.  As well as that the interior was pretty basic.  I don’t know, but somehow I would have thought that aluminium and steel coming together in a bridge hole might just see a very expensive boat a bit bent!

Of course, NP is a Liverpool Boat, so I was delighted to be able to go and see their latest offering…. and what a surprise I had too.  Our design for the refit of our kitchen was exactly the same as the kitchen on their boat at the show, and I just had to take some photos to bring home to Vic to show him how our new kitchen would look!   I did tease him somewhat when I got back though, saying to him that I had seen the perfect kitchen and had photos for him to be able to build it… teehee!

Walking through the boats with no intention to buy is a bit like being a fraud, but there are always new ideas to be seen.  One new concept I saw was the round stainless steel kitchen sink.  No drainer, just another very shallow kitchen sink complete with plug for “washing lettuce” so the salesman told me (just about see this in the pic above).  What a waste of space that was, although one boat had a cut out piece that fitted over the sink when worktops were needed… I suppose that’s ok, but normally when working in the kitchen I would usually need the sink as well!

Top idea that I saw was on the New Boat Company boat, that old problem of the corner cupboard.  I really did like this, but on looking up the price at MFI it was well over £300.  Having said that, I would have thought it would include the cupboard as well as the baskets etc.  So NP won’t be having that new gadget, anyway I would miss diving head first into the corner reaching for the cheese grater which always seems to make its way there!

Lots of chandlery and clothing on show too, best of the chandlers by far was Mailspeed.  A huge free catalogue too with just about everything in it you would ever want.  Mail order, so there would be no problem ordering on the internet.  Mailspeed had two huge stands, I could have spent hours there browsing!

Had a walk through of a half million pound sailing yacht too…….. blimey standing on the top and looking up at the sail I nearly fell off, and felt for one moment that my hot dog lunch was about to leave my stomach……. how can one feel sea sick when there is no water to be seen!  . Dutch barge…… nope not my scene, but it was fitted for the european hire market to sleep 12.

A great day out, only spent 5 hours there, another two hours would have suited me.  I also came back very happy about my own home.  For sure I had not seen any boat there that I would have swapped for No Problem.