Crick ? - No Thanks

We pondered whether it was worth us going to Crick yesterday.

Having experienced the bank holiday build-up traffic on Friday night, I was reluctant to venture out in the car again over the weekend. The queues and masses at the Crick Boat Show just didn't appeal somehow.

Crick is a fine show, if you want to look around with a view to buying a boat or hunt for a bargain.

However, we don't need anything. We are fully stocked with ropes, fenders, piling hooks and so on. We will just end up munching overpriced hog roasts and buying tat.

So, we took a mature and informed decision and decided to stay put.

Well, that's not quite true. We ventured out to the nearest retail park (and I mean nearest). The point of the exercise was to minmise car time, after all !!

If you know anything about me, you will know that I like gadgets. 

In saying that, I don't just buy any old gadget - it has to earn its keep and pull it's weight, in order to have it's own little corner of Willawaw.

Space is always at a premium on a narrowboat.

We have very few books on the boat (they are all at home - several thousand of them), all our manuals and photographs are stored electronically on a removable hard disc and backed up by several memory sticks and our music is stored digitally. We don't even possess a board game onboard.

Both myself and the first mate are committed iPod freaks and have quite a collection of iTunes music between us. We also tend to have an unlimited amount of brand loyalty to Mr.Sony.

Most of the entertainment equipment on board is Sony; laptop, PC, camera, TV, etc.

So instead of spending cash on Crick in the form of diesel, entrance tickets, food and tat from the stalls, we bought a Sony SRS-BT100 Bluetooth Speaker unit, which was probably a similar sum.

This enables us to play music from our Apple iPods and beam the music wirelessly by Bluetooth to the 30W stereo speakers in the BT100.  Either of our iPods can play music through it, by means of a Bluetooth dongle.

The basic speaker unit runs from 12VDC (even though we are using it off our inverter at 230VAC) and it also takes a wired input from the laptop as well. 

So, in true laziness, we can lay on the couch, lay in bed or sit at the dinette and control the sounds flowing through the boat, from the palm of our hand.

The unit only measures 400x160x175mm, so takes up a lot less space than a conventional hi-fi.