My time at OwnerShips 

Chapter 10

OwnerShips Show
About three quarters of the way through the winter maintenance came the Annual OwnerShips show, which was initially held at Blue Lias Marina but from my arrival was moved to Braunston. Allen organised this and again did a brilliant job doing it, my roll on the day was to "Manage The Show" while he and Phil Capp spoke to potential customers. 

Allen enlisted the help of loads of owners to "staff" the day, cherry picking the ones who he knew would be great, and they were. The nicest man in the world, Hamish Leys, would come down from Scotland early and get boats from Blue Lias Marina over to Brauston ahead of the weekend and Allen drew up a chart showing where each one had to go. Sometimes, once in position, he changed his mind and people played "Musical Boats". Sometimes it was fun but often those moving them were less than pleased! 



OwnerShips show marquee
The show was held in a large marquee which was hired in (pictured maybe in the background of the shot of the dry dock right) and we also hired in a bar and Bernie and a team did some catering. They were ALL brilliant. 

On the Saturday night all those that wanted to would go to the pub down the road where the volunteers were treated to a meal on OwnerShips. On the face of it an expensive treat costing several hundred pounds but you could not get staff for two days for anything like as little as that much, so it worked out.




Hamish Leys Narrow Boat


The shows were a great success and we sold lots of shares at them, 26 in one day as one show as I recall. Soon after I left OwnerShips I learned of the death of Hamish Leys mentioned above. I was deeply saddened I can tell you. A boat was named after him, well briefly, it actually was re-named and went in to shared ownership elsewhere as Forget-Me-Knot after OwnerShips went bust.


Next...A brief mention of Staffing issues

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