teadaemon

As far as I'm aware, there are no byelaws relating to what sort of anchor you may or may not use on the Broads (and indeed no requirement to have one at all, if you feel like living dangerously). Mudweights are ubiquitous because that's what's always been used, and in most places on the Broads, they work well (providing they're large enough for the boat). I've got a 56lb sack weight in the garage, waiting for the day when I own a boat large enough to use it as a mudweight (probably a long time off, given my current plans are for a 13 foot cruising dinghy, which will only require a smallish mushroom anchor).

Without a doubt, the best hire boat I've ever sailed on is Luna from Hunter's Yard, though any of the four berths are good, and for the smaller party the Hustlers are very hard to beat. (Whilst the three berths are still very good boats, they suffer from a sub-optimal rig, not to mention the third berth sharing a cabin with the heads.) Aside from the Hunter's boats (given that there are many people who would balk at the lack of an engine - as I learned to sail without an engine it doesn't bother me), I've had good experiences with the Eastwood Whelpton fleet at Upton - I really couldn't choose between Windjammer or Bootlegger, both are very pleasant to sail and fairly comfortable (though the Hunter's boats do have the edge in comfort over anything else I've sailed - huge berths, loads of storage, and whilst the facilities are basic they work very well). The one other boat that deserves a mention, IMHO, is George Thetford, formerly from Camelot Craft at Wroxham, now available from Eastwood Whelpton. Whilst the accommodation isn't perfect, and I found her harder work to sail than many other boats, the electric inboard engine worked very, very well indeed (it was the main reason we hired her, having been impressed with the electric canal boats we'd seen a year earlier on the Monmouth & Brecon Canal). If I were ever rich enough to consider commissioning my own boat (or building her myself), I'd want to take the lines, layout, and rig off Lucent from Hunter's yard, modified to account for the mass of a large battery bank to power a reasonably beefy electric motor hanging off the bottom in a waterproof pod, attached to a three bladed, feathering prop (I'd also be making alterations to the keel and rudder, but the details of those should probably be saved for a different post, as they're a bit techie).

From the posts above, I think it's reasonably safe to say that the other instruments and display are working more or less as designed. Before getting into a long and potentially complicated series of diagnostics, is it possible to examine the inside of the radome with a Mk. 1 Eyeball? That would allow you to exclude one of the most common problems with marine radar (particularly if it's not been used) - corrosion of metal parts inside the radome, so that whilst the electronic components may still function, the mechanical components are locked solid.

Just a wild stab in the dark, but is the first one Middlesborough under rather a lot of low cloud?

I've now had a chance to experiment with printing photographs, and I have to say that the results with the test pack of Epson Premium Glossy paper (and the compatible inks in the CISS) are generally very satisfactory, and where they've not been perfect as far as I can tell it's been my inexperience that's to blame, rather than the technology.

Thanks to a very speedy dispatch and efficient courier (not often I get to write that), I now have something relevant to add to this thread. I finally bit the bullet and bought a printer that's primarily to help with my studies, but also for printing photographs. I had (if I'm honest) a non-existent budget, so printing costs were a big issue (all my other printers are old HP Laserjets and the toner cartridges last for years at the rate we print documents). In the end, eBay proved my saviour, as I managed to get a brand new Epson Stylus PHOTO R285 with a continuous ink supply system (pre-filled with 100ml of each of the 6 inks, or the equivalent of about 15 sets of cartridges) for £75.50 inclusive of P&P. It arrived this morning, about 24 hours since I placed the order, and so far the results are very promising (with only a few ink stains on my fingertips, too), although I've yet to try printing a photograph, text on to 80gsm copier paper is very acceptable. It might be worth pointing out that my last experience with inkjet printers was an HP Deskjet 340 (I think, it was certainly the bottom of their range at the time) about 10 or 11 years ago, so I'm not that hard to please. Of course, it was a little bit of a worry to take the printer out of it's box and invalidate the warranty before I'd even seen it print a single page (it didn't come with any cartridges, just the CISS, which requires a couple of bits to be removed in order for it to be fitted), but everything seems to be working fine so far. Now I just have to wait for the various different bundles of photo paper I ordered to arrive, as most of them are second class mail, this may take a while.

It's been released on DVD (with the title 'Swallows and Amazons Forever', despite neither Coot Club or The Big Six featuring either Swallows or Amazons) , I think I got our copy from play.com for about £6.

Having finally recovered from my bought of 'flu, I decided that it'd been far too long since I wandered around with a camera, and so yesterday lunchtime I went for a wander along the river. I took an hour to go half a mile or so (lots of stopping to take pictures, and messing around with slow shutter speeds and running water which didn't quite work out this time). Anyway, here are the results (some considerably larger than others, as I didn't read the instructions properly and some of the jpegs I prepared are a bit too big, so for the moment they've been replaced by the really small ones I made to go on Facebook): The more I look at this one the less happy I am with it. Rather than sticking with my camera's suggested settings, I should have switched to aperture priority and ensured that the depth of field was large enough to get all of my subject in sharp focus. Some more frosty plants, with part of Cringleford Bridge in the background. There was a bit of ice in the margins of the river, but not much. Not too sure about this one, I took quite a lot of various trees reflected in the river, and this is probably the one I'm least unhappy with. A spring, caused by the river trying (quite successfully it would seem) to break through the bank and flow into a drainage ditch. I originally took it with quite a slow shutter speed (around 1 second, IIRC), but then found myself using Photoshop CS3's Smart Sharpen filter to remove some of the motion blur, followed by quite a lot of experimentation with the BW conversion to bring out the detail under the water.

A great many excellent photos on here. I'm really gutted I couldn't make it, but when Paul called me the day before I was huddled under a blanket with the 'flu, and wasn't in any condition to be out and about (In fact, I didn't properly recover until New Year).

True, I don't envisage using them very often, but equally it's very nice to have the option if it's required, and at the price that some things are going for (£5-10 per lens) it's difficult to go too far wrong on a purchase.

I've got a Praktica too, albeit a more recent model, a BCA (aperture-priority automatic with bayonet lens mount, not quite the model I was after, but for £1.27 on eBay I wasn't complaining). I'm keeping my eye open for cheap second hand glass (and a body from the range that had manual controls, preferably a BMS) from the same source, so in a few months time I should hopefully have a decent set of prime lenses and a couple of zooms (I've got an M42 adapter as well, so most of the glass should be usable with a digital SLR+adapter in the future). I've also been looking at getting a Zenit (or Zenith, it's the same company, but rendered in either the Roman or Cyrillic alphabets) Photosniper FS-2, a lovely piece of kit consisting of a Zenit SLR and 300mm telephoto lens mounted on a rifle stock with pistol grip and trigger for the shutter release, and a large focus knob built into the stock near to the front. A mate of mine had one when I was at Uni (and wasn't particularly interested in photography, I'm afraid to say), and he got some great pictures with it, and claimed it was really easy to use - it's certainly intuitive for anyone that's ever used an air rifle, let alone anything more powerful.

Ok, so far my best effort is this: If anyone's wondering, the snake is the small blob with the ripples behind it. This was a mature specimen, a couple of feet long. We also had a bright green juvenile, about 6" long and as thick as a pencil, use our stern as a short cut, slithering off a reed whilst we were alongside the bank putting a reef in, and disappearing into the water and over to the other bank. Whilst I imagine grass snakes are common throughout the Broads, I've never seen as many in one place as on the upper Thurne, probably because it's quiet enough that they're happy to be out in the open, rather than hiding away in the reeds. Also, if by any chance I didn't see a single snake, there's still rather a lot of other wildlife around, so I'd manage to get a picture or two of something interesting. Whilst I'm a novice wildlife photographer, I was once a Biology student, so going and finding the wildlife isn't too big a problem for me - I know they're likely to be around, I just need to look in the right places for long enough. I thought of using a sailing dinghy as it's faster than rowing and doesn't scare the wildlife as much as an outboard would, plus when not sailing the sail can be used as an impromptu hide, draped over the occupant(s) to conceal their shape. Also, it means I'll be a foot or so from water level, and able to go pretty much anywhere I need to without fear of going aground or getting caught up in weed. Thanks for the advice Bruce - I'd thought a tripod might not be the right solution, but hadn't had any inspiration. If I could find an appropriate dinghy to attach it to, something like a Gorillapod with a decent head and a cable shutter release might be the best solution - as stable as the boat is (the best I can get on water), but right on the gunwale and quick and easy to follow the action (and it'd be pretty good for most photography from a boat, so probably worth the investment for me). The other thing I might well invest in is a waterproof, floating bag large enough for all my camera kit and other stuff (the kind of thing canoeists use), so that when I'm sailing if I do overcook things and end up in the water, I shouldn't lose it all.

This is a bit of long-term planning (i.e. it requires a warm, sunny summer's day), but on my last visit to the Broads (in 2004, as I've had a few other little matters to deal with since then, like getting married and becoming a dad) we were in a Y&B hired from Martham and happily messing about on Heigham Sound and then up to West Somerton, and I noticed the large number of grass snakes either slithering about in the reeds, or swimming in the broad/dyke. Sadly, I only had my first digital camera back then (a Fuji Finepix 1400 Zoom with a 1.3MP SuperCCD and a 3x optical zoom - by far the most expensive camera I've bought too, at £220 for the camera and about £30 for each 64MB Smartmedia card), and the results are so bad I won't post them - the best I got was a small blob with some ripples behind it, next to another half decker (which looks much more like it was meant to be the subject of the photograph). Now, I really fancy a day or two this summer hunting snakes, as they were truly beautiful, and a wildlife subject that's not often photographed on the Broads. In the absence of any better solution, I'm thinking that a sailing dinghy (preferably equipped with a couple of rhond anchors and one or two small mudweights) might well provide the best platform in which to get out and about on the upper Thurne and really get close in to the action (whilst they were swimming around in the dyke at West Somerton, there were far more heading towards Horsey, and I reckon Catfield Dyke and Waxham Cut might also be good places to go looking for them). I've now got a Fuji Finepix s9600, and I'm thinking that I'll need a circular polarising filter to deal with glare off the water, and a tripod with a ball head for swift composition. Any other thoughts on useful kit or techniques? Anyone fancy coming along?

Excellent, many thanks.

I'd really like to come along to this, if I may? The only problem I have is that even if I've passed my driving test by then (which is a distinct possibility), I won't have a car, and can't ride a pushbike (dodgy knees, plus I never learned as it's a rather hazardous pastime in the middle of Birmingham where I grew up). So, is anyone going to be going from the Norwich area, who might be able to give me a lift in return for petrol money/breakfast in Potter?

The wind was definitely a problem - if I were designing a pleasure yacht for the Caledonian Canal, I'd consider giving it a square sail, as there's no point in a more weatherly rig (in all probability it'd end up with a balanced lugsail, as I doubt that even I could be quite that antiquarian in my sensibilities). It'd also have an electric engine, to save bow-hauling it through the staircase locks (n.b. normal engines need to be switched off in the staircase locks to avoid giving everyone on the boats CO poisoning). I did enjoy the week in Scotland, and it has to be said that the Caledonian Canal is by far the nicest bit of BW-controlled water I've boated on (though the Monmouth & Brecon Canal is also very pleasant, at least when it's in water). Having toilet/shower/laundry blocks at most of the free moorings (with keys available for free to every licenced boat) was an unusual (and very pleasant) change to the Broads, and I thought that the floating pontoon moorings worked very well, and could find a use on certain parts of the Broads as an alternative to piled bankside moorings - I know I'd prefer to wake up to a view of a reed bed next to my cabin window rather than a grotty bit of steel piling.

It is indeed, we had a week on the Caledonian Canal for our honeymoon - it was very pleasant, but not somewhere I'd go back to again, as we didn't get very much sailing done (being in the bottom of a valley meant that the wind was always either dead astern or dead ahead, and in our case we had headwinds all week, so only got to sail when we made a special effort to go out on to one of the Lochs).

It's only in the last month that I've progressed beyond what could be considered a fairly standard (probably low-end these days, but a good deal when I bought it in 2005) digital compact, 8MP with a 7.5mm-22.5mm lens (an Acer CR-8530, to be specific). It was good enough to take this picture, which I have printed out at 12"x8"; ready and waiting to be mounted, framed, and put up on the wall of our new house: I've recently (within the last month) upgraded to a Fuji Finepix s9600 (second hand, but less than 1000 pictures taken, off eBay with a decent case for £160), as for quite a while I've felt that I've been limited in what I can do by the capabilities of my camera. Although it's by no means as capable as even an entry-level dSLR, it's got enough bells and whistles to keep me occupied for quite a while, and takes some very good pictures indeed. Heartily recommended for anyone who likes photography but doesn't want the expense or hassle of a dSLR outfit. (I will be getting a dSLR, but I can't afford one for a while, so this will have to do me in the meantime).