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Poor Tony come for a relaxing cruise, were the ear plugs to make sure he couldn't hear you ask again . I think you did very well and I never thought that tides could rise so quickly. You got it as right as you could with the information you had certainly wouldn't like to have been in that situation myself. Well done to you and keeping in touch with The Rangers. It always reassures us when we see The Spirit of Breydon about. We are sure they do their best to keep an eye on all. Take care and stay safe. Kindest Regards Marge and Parge

I wouldn't say stupid at all - the question is if you had been on your own would you have made the same decision or would you not even have gone south anyway?

One thing I wondered was would the yacht station ranger have rung the Breydon ranger to say a boat was on its way across. The reason I ask us that as we got to the Yare/Waveney junction, the Spirit of Breydon was moored up and had his binoculars out on us. I was reassured he’d hopefully been keeping an eye on us. That ‘remote supervision’ I used to do with the kids on D of E expeditions. He might just have been having a tea break of course, and spotted a daft boat out on the water.

Thanks Vaughan. I prefer ‘miscalculated’, makes me feel more competent😄 A number of hire boats passed me going up the Bure, which greatly surprised me. Perhaps they’d been in touch with the yacht station earlier and they’d advised coming across early.

I wouldn't say that was stupid. You researched the tides and you kept very good contact with the rangers, who I am sure would have recommended not going across if they thought it was too rough. All the same, Breydon can be pretty "aggressive" at times! What bothers me a bit, is what effect this is going to have on hire boats, if the tides are so far out of time and much higher than usual.

So was I. In hindsight, perhaps he said ‘two hours ago’, which would have been about an hour early. The aweigh app graph certainly shows it rising again well before the published time. Good night apart from a creaking fender. Something I thought about while listening to that fender was my old fuel tank. When it was replaced, I was told it had about 40L of crud in the bottom, presumably accumulated in over 40 years of its life. That would have been given a good shake up. it’s no wonder boats break down with engine trouble on Breydon. The more I think about my decision yesterday, the more I’m deciding it was the wrong one. And that means the less the chance of me doing something stupid like that again!!!!!

Oh! Thank you! I just thought he was running a little late.

He moved to Australia 10 years ago 😂

Thanks for your quiz tonight Bern. You definitely had your hands full with so many players. 👍 And well done to Arthur.

There is a flood warning on the Yare for tonight and tomorrow.

Would you like to use the chap I use?

Advance warning COLTISHALL BRIDGE CLOSED - MAY 13th to MAY 17th https://www.northnorfolknews.co.uk/news/24259895.coltishall-bridge-will-close-roadworks-may

Thank you to all that took part in the quiz tonight. In joint third place with 9 point were SteveO and Wanderer, in joint second place with 12 points were NikO and TigerHawk, and the winner with 15 points was Arthur. Arthur will be question master next week.

Those rangers know their stuff, don't they? I guess they've seen Horizon 35s pass through on enough occasions to know very accurately what clearance was needed. I'm amazed the tide can turn 2 hours earlier than expected.

The guy we intend using approached Richardsons and showed them his insurance etc and was told it was not possible , I’ll try and contact Paul when next up and ask him in person . They are ok with Daniel working on boats there

The person who reported it is herself a well respected and highly responsible lady and not one to start or spread rumours. Fred

That’s me n Purdey onboard as of 2115. 3 x Hrs door to door which was a good run. Crack on with battery change in t morning Griff

Have you asked Paul? He might ok it Griff

Hope you have a more peaceful night and a lovely weekend on the southern side.

Gosh Kate. What an adventure! At least you got through safely. Hopefully it will be more calm and more reasonable river levels coming back. I was wondering if you planning to be up north at all next week? Don’t reply here… I’ll send a pm.

Goodness me, what a day! It started off very sedately as, knowing low tide slack was around 15.30, depending on which tables/ranger info were used, we had the morning to use at Acle. A quick check with the yacht station confirmed the windy day with gusts up to 40mph or so, just around low tide. An earlier passage would be less bumpy, but see me running against the tide across Breydon, so I plumped for my original plan of a ‘choppy sea’ but with the tide. After getting rained on in a sharp shower while walking to Acle to buy earplugs for Tony, we moved down to a sunny Stracey Arms for a lunch stop. We set off at 14.15 with an eta at Great Yarmouth of 15.45. I’m pleased to say I was totally spot on with that timing. I was looking forward to showing Tony just how narrow and shallow the channel gets as the tide goes out. By the time I got to Ashtree Farm I was puzzling as to why the water seemed high, I remember saying ‘it must be quite a high low tide’. The quay heading by Ashtree Farm windpump seemed barely visible and we mused whether it was an indication of the increased river levels this winter, as when the heading was built it would have been high enough for a high tide, but we were on low. Carrying on a bit puzzled, I checked Project Troll sometime before Marina Quays and I got the most unsettling shock. Vauxhall Bridge was showing ‘6’8”. What? It was meant to be not long after low tide!!!!! I very hastily rang the yacht station again to ask for advice re: mooring up and after asking where I was, he said I might just get through, though it’d be a tad choppy on Breydon. The instruction was to ring again as I turned the corner to the yacht station and he’d assess the room I’d have. I have no idea what speed I then did down to the yacht station but it was faster than I’ve ever been on Springer’s Retreat😂 The first gauge actually said 6’8” and the second just by the yacht station said a bit less. I’d just about go through Wroxham at what they both said, but that’s not on a fast river with a surface changing by a couple of inches every few seconds with the wind and with a very fast rising water level and me still a few minutes away! The ranger assured me I’d be ok, so we gave each other a thumbs up and I braved it. I opened the sunroof, although I can’t see my roof rails through it, and I must say I got to know the roof of the second bridge rather closely. He was right, just about!!! I rang to thank him once I was through. All that was left was to get across Breydon. The wind had certainly not dropped yet and we rolled our way across. Tony felt a bit sick at one point, the dogs took no notice and I just held onto the wheel, wondering whether I’d break any crockery. Not a trip I’ll repeat in a hurry. It was the getting under the bridges that fazed me more than the crossing, although I’m not really sure it was sensible to have been there. It’s easy to see how an ok decision can easily turn into a not ok decision The ranger told me that the tide had turned nearly two hours earlier than expected and I do think my original timings were fine if the tide had behaved as published. And according to the project troll graphs, low tide this afternoon was just about the same level as high water yesterday. Next time, I’ll keep a better eye on those graphs from Acle downwards. It was a real shock to realise the chance of getting through those bridges was rather small. I had resigned myself to mooring up at GY to be honest and perhaps I should have done. Lesson learned, but we’ve had a good adventure, even if my heart has had a bit of a workout! As soon as we passed Burgh Castle, you’d never have known just how rough it had been on Breydon. We motored on in calm conditions with the aweigh app speed saying 6mph but on only 1100 revs, what I usually use for 4mph on the Ant. The plan of an overnight mooring at Somerleyton changed as I approached St Olaves. Nothing to do with the bridge height this time, I had plenty of room, but it’s a mooring I’ve never stopped at before and I fancied a look round St Olaves priory. Well worth a visit. Follow the concrete path from the moorings to the main road by the bridge. Cross over to the Bell Inn as there’s no path on the side you need. Turn left and walk up as far as Priory Rd, and follow the footpath sign down between the hedge and the fenced field (had alpacas in it) to the site. About a 10 minute walk. It’s free entry by the way and you can take dogs on leads. We would have gone in the Bell on the way back, but stupidly had no money with us. Last job of the night after putting the dogs out was retying the ropes for a bit more leeway.

Thankyou for your replies. I didn't take as criticism, its good to hear people's feedback. I was aware there probably are some, hopefully minor UI bugs. Had quite a few late nights last month getting it so it could be put online. I was wondering about that. I make a few arbitrary decisions like that to get it put together, which probably needed some more knowledge of the 'flow dynamics' of the broads river system. Interesting to know this. Off the top of my head, it's just treating a period of around 15mins before to an hour after the high / low water time as a slack period. Again a decision I just made, as I figured without it, it would just cut straight from flow to ebb which isn't very accurate either. I'll improve this at some point by varying these time ranges. It's never going to be completely accurate as producing something like a river flow model for the broads in JavaScript is a bit beyond my scope at the moment. Yes I think I was relying on zooming in on the map and prioritising the aesthetics more while I was developing. Should be scope to actually have multiple colour schemes as its using a drawn vector graphic rather than any fixed generated images. If you click the place names in the table it pans the map to that location. Again think is a slight bug on narrow view points like, portrait phones when panning to far on points nearer the bottom of the map. These things will go on a changes and features list for the future. I plan to spend more time on the actual broads in the summer months. Do you know which phone and browser this happens on? Haven't seen that so far. Will have to figure out some floating column heads on the feature list. Possibly. Ended up concentrating on the animated map more which course won't come across on print. The 'backend' is kind of over engineered for what it is. The site processes everything in the browser once the page is loaded. So uses barely any data transfer to update as you interact with it. Should work on the slowest connections. I've used this as a project to learn about web software development.

Thanks for the good wishes. Last time out we had Skyway, who is a large lady! It's nice to get up high now and again, but we wanted a change and had booked Clearway for last year, before having to cancel. Thanks to HPC and Hoseasons, it wasn't too painful financially and we're delighted to be able to pick up where we left off. 7 weeks to go!

That's what I read and the presumed new owner commented to that effect on said post

I heard a week or so ago, if true then I'm sure it will be good news.