Oddfellow

You have no need to take this to an extreme, but when we're talking about ignoring laws, there's no finer exponent of this than those that have set them. We are talking about a few people making a point. We we so angry about the Fuel protests of the early 2000 when the problem was the price of fuel and not how the burning of it was damaging the climate? Perspective. The bigger picture. These two things are often overlooked when we are personally impacted by a minor irritation.

Listen to yourselves getting angry at a few people making a point and a bloody fair one at that. Yes, we know it's disruptive. That's the point of the protest. We know something needs to be done for a sustainable solution and we have known for years. Problem is that for years, virtually nothing has been done and now it's all getting a bit 11th hour and we're moaning about a bit of inconvenience. Let me assure you that this is nothing to the inconvenience of being flooded out.... Yes, it's a ball ache, but get behind this before the only thing behind you is a tsunami. If only more of us has the balls to do things like this, we might have been able to affect change years ago when it wasn't so urgent.

Well, until you have run a business in this sector, Fred, I am afraid that all you know is assimilated from being an outsider. You are just someone looking in with whatever coloured spectacles you fancy wearing at the time, casting assumptions. It's only Vaughan and I that have first-hand experience of this business. Read what AndyG said about fuel if you still think I am talking out of the top of my head. If you don't want to have a real insight, I will be pleased not to have my hackles raised by people who think they "know" what they are doing and walk away just as others have. It bothers me nowt either way as I have so little exposure to the rivers now that I really don't care much.

Well, you clearly don't understand, Fred. You don't get cheaper fuel the more you buy because there are break points on taxes in the supply chain. If we bought more than X thousand litres of the stuff, it became MORE expensive. We has to have multiple deliveries to full our tanks at the right price. Not everything is as you believe it to be. You also need to consider the costs of equipment. A new weights and measures pump can cost many thousands of pounds. A 2000l tank will cost a couple of grand too. Everything is way over-simplified in the minds of people who only see the smallest aspect of a business.

I considered it the most important. I put a lot of work into the skippers handbooks and our trial runs were probably the most comprehensive of any yard at the time. I also got a lot of positive comments on my video handovers which are still available on YouTube today. Finger trouble exists in all of us. I am an accomplished photographer, but I make simple, stupid mistakes most days. Mistakes that I know not to make, until I make them. You can train a great deal into someone, but you cannot impart a career's worth of boat handling or operating skills into a handover.

Ah, the dreaded "finger trouble" Just look at the high number of customers not doing what they should. I will guarantee this number remains high throughout fleets today. It's worth remembering this when people try to count the "breakdowns" of any given yard by the frequency of seeing their vans at moorings. I guarantee that the bigger the fleet, the greater the percentage of "finger trouble" call outs and for many reasons, not just the sheer number of boats, but the number of customers, the reduced amount of time possible on a hand over and so much more.

I am surprised that the fuel deposits haven't increased yet. The cost of fuel has rocketed in recent weeks and although it may have settled, it has done so at an exorbitant rate that may be unsustainable for all-inclusive operators and is likely to give returning holidaymakers a nasty shock when asked for more money to cover their usage. This year, we may think the pandemic is behind us and act like we used to, but many of us will soon be priced out of things like Sunday Drives, pub trips and even fish and chips as the cost of cooking oils has rocketed too. I read a headline that fish and chip shops are very worried as this is the perfect storm for them - Gas & Electric up hugely and now the oils they use for frying and, obviously the wholesale cost of fish too as you don't catch Cod without Diesel. Strap in folks. It's going to be a long and bumpy ride.

Because, Fred, Boulters use low fuel prices as a LOSS LEADER to get other work. Boulters is a WORKING yard and chatting to customers when filling up is part of its sales process. Also, when a yard has 100 - 250 boats, it stands to reason you will see more of their engineers on the banks. Some yards don't have liveried vans either.....

It was not and NBD Boat.

Hire boat batteries take a beating every night. Engines and Alternators can do 20+ hours running a week and if something in that power circuit goes faulty in all that work, all that vibration, things can happen. It's very different from a private boat that might get only 60 hours running a year by someone who's gotta cough up if something goes wrong. Monitoring the electrolyte levels in batteries is a good weekly indicator of how the system is performing and can give you an early-warning of a failure in the battery or, indeed, the charging system. Running a boat is very different from running a hire fleet. VERY different.

Very cynical, Fred. Let me assure you that there's bugger-all profit to be had from fuel sales. And in no way was my explanation some kind of justification for doing a bad job. BUT, it is a likely reason that a bad job can be achieved because the pressures to work to a very tight schedule are very real and let me assure you that a customer mouthing off in reception with a queue behind them because their boat might be 15 minutes beyond the time they think it should be ready impacts upon all the staff and other holidaymakers that witness it. The point is that things happen. Sometimes things aren't always checked as fully as we might like, sometimes not at all. To err is human. I really don't think most of you get the pressures of working in or running a hire fleet. Comments like this cement this. In an ideal world, nothing would go wrong. But this isn't an ideal world no matter how much we might demand it to be. Many change over days are a matter of fire-fighting problems. LOADS of customers come back and report problems that have existed since the morning after they took the boat but never reported them. These need investigating and repairing and all this stuff takes time and time is the one thing you can only get more of by paying more staff and that is an immediate impact on the financial position of the company, more so now that NI has gone up. It all sounds so simple from the comfort of an armchair.

You make it all sound so simple. 15 minutes doing this work is 15 minutes. When an engineer has another 20 boats to do, what's 15minutes x 20? 5 Hours in old money. How viable does that sound now? Not convinced? The boat is vacated by 10am and needs to be engineered, repaired and cleaned by 2pm. That's a 4 hour window. Perhaps you are now beginning to understand the problem. Let me compound the problem for you. Every time you loosen the nut on the battery terminal and remove from the post to do a test, you are weakening the post and the terminal. You may easily damage the post and terminal too meaning that you can't get a good electrical connection when you next reconnect it. This leads to a failure point. Maybe the engineer notices its not nipping up properly and tightens further, bending the clamp bolt in the process and further damaging the post and connection. Maybe the terminal snaps and he has to fetch another from stores that's a 5 minute walk away. All these things are not only possible but highly likely. It's not as simple as you think. Nowhere near,

I think you're over simplifying this. Replacing all the batteries on a boat with AGM variants and upgrading the charging system with decent regulators that will last a long time is not a low-cost option. Anything but. You could be looking at £1500 per vessel and whilst there are obvious advantages, it's an expensive solution to a problem that would barely exist if the batteries were properly treated and monitored.

Absorbent Glass Matt - a sealed lead acid tech that is a significant improvement on standard plate cells. More expensive and requires a controlled charging sequence but with better output potential. Naturally, at least 1/2 as expensive again as a SLA.

You would be surprised. We had very few power issues at Freedom once we had properly educated the customer base on what to expect. Most people care that they have an uninterrupted holiday more than watching TV 24/7, they really do.