Another year, another show. Two days visiting stands and looking over boats to gain ideas and spend some money.
It’s a small world – We dropped into the first rope stall (Rotamarine) and asked about extra-long mooring ropes. After some discussion we were asked what boat they were for so we replied an Endurance 35 based in Rye. “I wanted to buy that boat about ten years ago”.
Then we dropped into the Wilks stall to discuss a new rubber rubbing strake. After describing what we were looking for we showed Jeff, one of the guys on the stand, a photo of Anne Marie. “Hang on” he said “I know this boat, it’s Anne Marie”. It seems that a customer in South Africa had referred them to this blog to explain what deck he wanted as Wilks (through MCP Marine) supplied the Dek-King for us last year.
This year we have bought:
A Raymarine Axiom7 chart plotter from Paul at PSI Marine with seatalk interface cable for linking to our rather ancient Raymarine 4000ST autopilot.
New bedding, wine and beer glasses (well acrylic glasses if there are such things) from Ship Shape World
Three extra fenders and a boat hook from Compass Marine (where we bought our other fenders last year.
Two lifejackets and a four-man life raft from Karl at Marine Super Store
Extra mooring rope and halyard from Tarik at Rotamarine – thank you Tarik and very sorry we bought Anne Marie instead of you!
A seat for the fore-cabin and some shackles from Marine Store
A very smart hand basin from Timeage
Four extremely smart Dorade Ventilators from Vetus
Expensive but very enjoyable. We even had a good night at the Mercure hotel where they kindly gave us some fudge as it is our wedding anniversary this month.
Saving Anne Marie 