Cruising Costs for 2017.

2017 for Helen and I was dominated by the great honour of our city Kingston upon Hull being the UK City of Culture. Our cruising was designed to bring us up north to be closer to home so as to participate in the year as fully as we could. In the end we put in over 300 hours as volunteers for the City of Culture and as 'normal' citizens attended around 150 different, plays, concerts, shows, exhibitions etc, so in essence we were very busy!!

This blogs photos are just some of the things that went on in January 2017 in Hull.

There was a moth trail that displayed painted fibreglass moths around the city that had been painted by various items and then auctioned off at the end of it. The moth was chosen as Hull heroine Amy Johnson (the first female to fly solo to Australia) flew in a Gypsy Moth plane called 'Jason'. Our daughter Amy poses by her namesake.

The first big centre piece was a light and sound show around the Old Town of Hull when local buildings were illuminated and told the story of Hull. Here on Scale Lane a brick wall was utilised for a film about industrialisation and employment.

In Queen Victoria Square the City Hall, Maritime Museum and Ferens Art Gallery were used as screens for an extremely moving sequence that followed our history through WWII and beyond. The first day was busy, but by the end of the week you just could not move as word of mouth spread about how great it was. Above is Amy Johnson on the City Hall where she received the freedom of the City in the 1930's on the balcony seen.

The part where the Blitz on Hull, the greatest outside of London was extremely moving. The lights and smoke, combined with the music and sirens and bombs falling etc was almost like it was happening again as the sound was so loud, but very effective.

The show didn't just dwell in the past as the possibility of a bright future was held out to us all.

By the end of the show the cheering was fantastic and I went to see it three times, and each time I cried, it was that moving. It was a magnificent start to the year and the fact that people were saying that the simply had to go as they had heard how great it was meant that they were suddenly wholeheartedly on side for the coming year of Culture, and embrace it they did.

The Deep (the world's only Submarium!) was also used as a backdrop to another installation. Dead Bod had become a bit of a symbol for the people of Hull. It was in fact a bit of graffiti on a warehouse door that fronted on to the Humber estuary. It was to be demolished as the area was where the new Sieman's turbine blade factory was to be built. In the end it was preserved and can now be seen in the Humber Street gallery. Nobody was interested in the 1990's. 

The main piece on The Deep was about immigration into Hull through the years and the date to the left ticked down. Once again the sound was extremely important. At the end of the show a space shuttle was depicted symbolising blasting off into the future. The sound was so good that you shock in your boots. It was so emotional I cried again!!

Over the year we became quite blase about finding such things as naked people on a bench but at this stage it was quite a novelty!

This was probably my favourite thing of the year. Simply a wind turbine blade placed in Queen Victoria Square. It made me really think about culture in a different way, as it did many of those that came to see it. The idea of the artist Nayan Kulkarni was to place an 'everyday' object in a public space to disrupt flow and force people to interact with it. To add to the installation it appeared over night having had a real journey through the streets from the new factory where it was made, in Hull, by people from Hull. It is the largest single cast object in the world and is made of fibreglass, balsa wood and resin and and is one of the blades that adorn the wing turbines that are placed out at sea. It is 75m long and 3.5m diameter and weighs 25 tonnes. Helen and I loved volunteering here as people were openly discussing whether it was art or not, but couldn't fail to be impressed by it and just had to touch it. A discussion soon started about what to do with it too. At the other end it projected over the road and buses went underneath it. Fantastic. And all in January last year.

Having gratuitously got a City of Culture plug in I had better get on with our cruising costs for last year.

                            2017          2016        2015       2014

Fixed                 1328-17    1668-33   1504-09  1159-57 

Moorings           2148-82   1268-48    1524-55  1297-88

Fuel                     506-51     721-92      824-94   1156-66

Repairs              1698-50   1441-62      321-63   1558-64

Equipment          503-56      556-24     164-22     678-39

Consumables      517-80      342-24     454-58     255-22

TOTALS          6763-36   5999-34    4794-01   5336-56

That gives an average of the four years of £5723-93 per year. 

This years total includes everything except the repaint of the hull we had done to bring the paintwork up to spec. I wouldn't be able to compare like with like otherwise. The repaint cost £7850. I suppose that it could be argued that having the job done 'saved' us four/five months of mooring fees that brings the cost down a little.

I will break each group down further in future blogs in order to make a real comparison with previous years.