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I had a different childhood to you JM,

I heard...  What is Brown and Smelly and steams out of cows...

But yours was not the first answer that I gave lol.... Well I had never heard of Cowes on the Isle of Wight lol...

I get the joke now...

lol

It's a very, very long time since Southern Region Railways ran the ferry, back then, even before my time, it was brown. 

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It's a very, very long time since Southern Region Railways ran the ferry, back then, even before my time, it was brown. 

Ooops... Must have been a very very old joke when I heard it then... lol

But we like those on this forum... if we have heard them before... we have a slight chance of understanding them, a second or fiftieth time around lol...

That's why I like watching the repeats of Dad's Army or Columbo... I can usually follow those stories, unlike Mid Sommer murders, I'd hate to live there. Jersey is another place of high crime, Bergerac is always on a case lol. 

Now, Norfolk is the place to live, a few boats get stuck in the mud, and the odd boat speeder...

 

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Back on topic.... I would imagine the hire fleet get enough use to keep the diesel throughput high enough to disperse most of the water build up, the dreaded diesel bug only grows at the diesel/water interface in the tank, it's the occaisional use private boat most likely to suffer the problem after a good shake up.

I got towed into kings lynn by the skegness lifeboat once with a fuel blockage, annoyingly I'd only just welded the tanks up and had it clean enough to hoover the insides with the same hoover that does the house and only filled up the once, but the marina we bought fuel from had changed hands and the tank was full of crud due to lack of maintenence for some time (gits!) so not always down to boat neglect.

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Back in 1970, when my wife to be and I went to see Jimi Hendrix at the IOW music festival, we certainly travelled from Portsmouth to Cowes and, on our return, the ferry steamed out of Cowes. Back then they were run by British Rail & were painted blue and white.

That sounds like the old MV Shanklin Sealink  JM.

cheersIain.

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I've been using the IOW ferries from the 1960's many times each year, and the Southampton to Cowes route has always been run by the private company Red Funnel, now renamed as Wightlink, using car ferries and passenger ferries, then hovercraft, then hydrofoils, and now high speed catamarans.

The other two main routes, Lymington to Yarmouth and Portsmouth to Fishbourne/Ryde, are the ones that were run initially by British Rail, and now by Sealink.

 

 

 

 

 

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oops....  my correction, I've just checked through my old IOW photos, and the Cowes route is still run by Red Funnel.

Wightlink is the latest name for the other two routes, that were previously Sealink, and then before that, British Rail.

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I like Reedham Ferry :Stinky

I do think however that for distance versus cost, it must be one of the most expensive ferry's in the world. It's late and I am too tired to do the maths, but say the river is 45yds across how much would the Reedham Ferry charge to do the Isle of Wight crossing............or the channel to Zeebrugge.

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I've been using the IOW ferries from the 1960's many times each year, and the Southampton to Cowes route has always been run by the private company Red Funnel, now renamed as Wightlink, using car ferries and passenger ferries, then hovercraft, then hydrofoils, and now high speed catamarans.

The other two main routes, Lymington to Yarmouth and Portsmouth to Fishbourne/Ryde, are the ones that were run initially by British Rail, and now by Sealink.

 

 

 

 

 

Sadly I can remember when portsmouth - ryde used paddle steamers in the 1950's was knee high to a grass hopper at the time mind .....

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These used to come steaming of Cowes as well, Red Funnel's hydrofoils, now replaced by the high speed cats.

I caught this one out of the water at Cowes one Winter. It's surprising how much depth of water the non-retractable foils needed.

 

Meanwhile the Cowes car and passenger ferries went from the little old Norris Castle types to the damn great Red Eagle types of today.

 

cowes hydrofoil1.jpg

cowes hydrofoil2.jpg

cowes ferries.jpg

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