Murder on The River Queen

Posted by Peter on 29 November 2010 | 0 Comments

That’s right, we had a murder on board last weekend. The first murder party since we’ve owned the boat and the people loved it. Pretty much everyone in the party turned up in costume, to add to the atmosphere. And with a poker game going on upstairs, The River Queen took on the personality of an old Mississippi riverboat for the night. It’s given the crew and me a lot of ideas for other theme cruise and I’m pretty certain I can see a gambling cruise coming on...

The weekend also saw Chris and Brooke celebrate their engagement on board and the boat was decked out with helium balloons in the couple’s colours. (Took us ages to pop them all afterwards and to track down any errant balloons, to stop them heading out into the river.)

And to top that off we had a lovely lady of just 88 years join us for her birthday. I’m only sorry I can’t remember her name because we had a good chat – she has lived in Marlborough all this time but never cruised the river. Now she wants to come back in two years for her ninetieth celebrations!

Meanwhile our Christmas party bookings are filling up nicely. We tend to run these party cruises in the evenings, so we don’t interfere with our public cruise schedule. Usually people opt to head down river from around 7.00pm and we reserve the boat for their use up to midnight. As the weather hots up, people often ask to have a bash at the rope swings. This usually means one or more over-enthusiastic ones have an early bath but it all adds to the fun for those watching from the upper deck. I usually keep well clear myself, although those who fall in (jump in?), tend to crawl out wearing huge grin along with their sopping clothes, so perhaps I should give it a go.

We say goodbye this week to Richard, who has been a part-time skipper with us for a few years. It’s sad when people leave but also good to see them moving on with their lives. We wish you all the best Richard. This means that Dylan, our full-timer, may be doing a bit of overtime. When I mentioned this to Dylan, his first comment was “Can I go seven days a week?” Answer “No – but thanks for the enthusiasm”. In fact we’ll be looking for a new part-timer to help out, so if you think that could be you, please let me know.

All the best for now...