Oddfellow

You could put lagging around the seacocks to help prevent freezing. It certainly wouldn't be hard to do. We should all visit the dentist once a year (or more frequently), not speed on the roads (or rivers) and brush our teeth in the morning and before bed - we should all close seacocks when we leave our boats. But we don't and, sometimes, we come unstuck. The difference between what we should do and what actualy happens can be major and, if just one person learns from this owner's mistake, then I'll be happy. As Trigger once said "always look after ya Broom", Norman, Vanguard, Freeman, et al.

You've missed my point - many people don't turn them off once they've recommissioned the boat for the season (or even at the end of the season). A small leak in the raw water system can easily sink a boat. It's not just engine seacocks either; toilet flushes are arguably more at risk as you don't see them as often. Sure, if the seacocks are off, the likihood of sinking during winter is considerably reduced but I would argue that if that's what you consider "winterising" to entail, there's a good possibility that you could discover a hidden leak too late once you start using the boat again.

Of course it can sink. Many private boats sit on moorings for months unattended and a small puncture in a raw water pipe can be quite unnoticeable. This boat probably went down in 12 hours or so but what if it was a smaller leak that took 30+ days to pull the gunnels under? If the owner only visits every 40 days.... I think the point is this: closing seacocks is every bit part of winterising as it is good practice generally. Incidentally, I've seen seacocks damaged by ice too.

It's often a lot more than that. Certainly, turing the seacocks off will help prevent sinking of an unattended boat, but if you've not protected your engine from freezing, the hoses can rupture, the block can crack, the core plugs can blow out (some engines have coreplugs behind the flywheel). You're at risk of rupturing water pumps, drain pumps and so on as well as allowing moisture into the engine to create corrosion. There's so much more to proper winterising than just turning a sea-cock off; your boat dosen't have to sink in order to suffer considerable damage. The problem is that people seem to have become complacent about it - we've had years of mild winters and many people have probably got away with it - a good few more this year will be calling their insurance companies. But, even if you did just turn the sea-cock off and the freezing pipes further down the line fractured, turning it on again would cause the boat to take on water. Many of these factures may be quite small and you might not notice the leak whilst you're on-board, but over a couple of days unattended, you could easily lose the boat. It's not a case of scaring people, its a matter of stating facts and helping people to prevent damage. Many people will put tube heaters on boats to stop freezing but there's a massive reliance on the heater working and for what? A couple of hours of maintenance is all it needs. Like I say, I've learned of two boats in as many days that have sunk because people have ignored even the simplest of tasks.

There's been a spate of sinkings recently as the freezing conditions have given way to a rapid thaw. I know of two boats that have found their way to the bottom because they were not winterised - one we've raised and another owned by a friend (who should have known much better). Speaking with some other boat yards who have been around a bit longer than Freedom, there seems to have been a reduction over the years in the number of people comissioning yards to do their winter laying up. Whilst I can fully appreciate that money's getting tighter, ignoring the proper winterisation process on your boat is a major mistake and one that a number of insurance policies won't cover if the worst happens. If you haven't winterised your boat this winter, you need to visit the boat asap and make sure it's in good condition and not taking on water. If you're really lucky, you'll have gotten away with it - this time. Please, get it winterised if it hasn't been already else you may find that a few hours work or some money spent with a boat yard will spiral into thousands in salvage and recomissioning. Check out our Facebook page or visit for a video of the salvage.

Just a quick note to say we're offering 10% off Summer 2011 bookings at the moment. Full details here: http://www.freedomboatingholidays.com/n ... ercent.php

Winterisation needs to be done properly - every time. The one time you skimp may be the one time you replace your engine or have to rip your boat to bits to replace a ruptured tank that's locked between bulkheads.... Engines. Introduce antifreeze into the whole engine - you really need to ensure that it's up to temperature so that the thermostat is open. Some of our fleet boats get air into the calorifier circuits when you drain them down to get antifreeze in; ensure that you remove all this air when you top up as pockets will ensure that untreated water remains in loops which could cause problems. Also remember to put antifreeze into the exhaust circuit. Showers & sinks Many sinks have water traps or swan-necks in pipes. Pour antifreeze down drains to prevent freezing. Many showers have pumps. Pour antifreeze down drains to prevent pumps freezing. Toilets. Many flush with river water. Turn off sea cocks and introduce antifreeze into the flushing circuit until it appears at the toilet. Water tanks. Drain all tanks - leave taps open - disconnect pipes at the water pump and, ideally, at the exit from the tank also Remove soft furnishings and store in dry place ashore Disconnect gas bottles but do not allow regulators to sit in water. If the boat is left in the water, you'll need a good battery to ensure thet bilge pump remains operable. However, ideally, remove all other batteries and store ashore and charge them regularly else you may end up with £100+ bill for new ones in 2011. There's plenty more to do too and it all depends on your attitude to risk and space ashore for storage. If anyone needs help with winterising, Freedom offers a comprehensive service.

There are only a few yards that will hire in Winter. Freedom offers its boats throughout the year: details here: http://www.freedomboatingholidays.co.uk. As for heating: most hire boats will have removed their gas heaters now. These things can be very dangerous and are outlawed for new fittings. Existing fittings are OK and can be serviced, but not repalced. Under no circumstances would you be advised to run any heating overnight whilst you're asleep - especially not gas heaters as the chances of carbon monoxide poisoning are just too great. Also, all boats have vents to the outside and between cabins which people have a tendnancy to want to block up. These vents are there for a purpose and blocking them can be very dangerous. In truth, however much we might protest, a hire yard won't have any control over what you take on the boat in terms of heaters and such. No hire boat will power a 240v heater, but if you have a cable to connect to a shore mains post, then Freedom wouldn't have a problem with you taking an electric heater on-board. Flight of Freedom actually has a shore-power connection anyway. For Winter bookings, we supply additional blankets for all crew.

Hmm. Very reminiscent of Ferry Marina's designs. Maybe the same architect? It's interesting to see negative comments on new designs such as these. We see new shapes in the automotive world all the time which are commonly embraced and duplicated. In the cruiser world, it's more like Marmite. There have been curious designs in the past that never really got copied; Topcraft's boat caravan concept springs to mind along with some of the very boxy Powels offerings.

Thanks for the warning about the weed! We're putting out laminated notices along with our show-outs now (as suggested) headded "Watch the Weed!" Ta Andy

From our point of view, engineering call outs can spoil people's holidays and are a massive drain on resources. With that in mind, we do our best to ensure that our boats are well engineered before each hiring in the hope that we won't see the boat until it glides back into the yard at the end of a holiday. However, there are a lot of things to go wrong on a boat and we do sometimes miss things or have customers who just can't quite grasp things. To err is human, I am told. Sometimes we also get what we refer to as "finger trouble" where a customer creates or exacerbates a problem. One customer failed each morning to be able to start his engine, often completely flattening the battery because he'd failed to pre-heat the engine despite having been shown how to properly start it by each engineer. We were lucky they didn't burn the starter motor out. We've had a flurry of overheats recently too - Pure Freedom 2 a couple of weeks ago was heat-seized twice by a customer in quick succession which has killed the engine requiring the fitting of another and the total strip down and rebuild of the old one. Another boat has been giving us hot gyp and was a pain in the neck for the previous hirer having to refill the water regularly. We visited the boat on a couple of occasions, found and fixed tiny water leaks but still couldn't find the real cause. Yesterday, upon close and constant inspection back at the yard between hires, having completely repiped the engine, we discovered that the cyclinder head gasket had blown and this has now been replaced. A few weeks ago, one boat lost all steering and we feared a snapped steering cable but the actual helm unit casing where the cable clamps in had fractured. As a temporary repair, It was refitted, clamped tight and worked perfectly well again, but frearing another fault, we decided to replace the steering unit completely. The replacement, though looking identical, had a modified clamp arrangement which then took two additional visits to the boat to fix as we didn't have the tools with us to engineer the replacement unit. One of our biggest bugbears is customers not reporting problems soon enough. Often (and it's growing), people won't report minor issues and I can understand that they don't want the hassle during their holiday. The problem is that minor issues has a habit of becomming major issues which have a habit of taking a very long time to solve rather than a 30 minute delay to come a tighten something when it was a minor fault and make it go away. I don't want to encourage people to call for no reason, but if you suspect there may be an issue, a quick phone call to an engineer could set your mind at rest. Overall, it's been quite a strange year; last year, we had absolutely no significant engine faults (or any major other faults) but this year has been quite different and, at times, very challenging. Most customers aren't seen or heard from throughout their holiday until they return the boat and I'm sure this is the case with all operators, but our profound appologies go out to customers who've been delayed by a call out.

That's her.

Martin, Fair Freedom was a budget boat back in December and, still is; it's just a better budget boat - much better. With the improvements come some modest price increases, naturally. Even now, there are things that we wanted to do that we didn't get time for but hope to deal with a little later in the season and, additionally, over the winter. There are some new photos of the boat's internals sitting on my camera and these will be put on the web site soon. External shots will be captured later. She's out on hire now with a rabble of Water Rats on board and will be touring the northern rivers public houses over the next week playing two gigs a day! You can see the gig list on their web site: http://www.water-rats.co.uk/. I'll be at The Lion at Thurne on Monday to enjoy their music.

Yes and Yes. A quality inverter should have minimal drain if there's no load but, like leaving a TV on standby, it's something to be avoided. All hire boats (all boats for that matter) should have at least two battery banks (domestic power and engine starter) which are separated from one another so one does not drain into the other and flatten. There are various methods of doing this from battery selector switches to split charge diodes, relays and multiple alternators.

Inverters only working whilst the engine's on? Really? That's a new one to me. In most cases, our boats have a separate battery bank for the inverter. Flatten it and you'll be without 240v power only; you'll still have lights, pumps and other essential systems and, most importantly, be able to start the engine. The advise we give to customers is that the inverter will suck power even if you've not got a 240v appliance connected, so only turn it on when you want it and turn it off immediately after you've finished. Chargers can be a pain as it's the kind of thing you plug in and walk away from, forgetting it for some time. If you're going to do this, best advise is to only use chargers when the engine is running.

Martin, if you put a scratch on her, we'll 'ave you! Joking aside, Fair Freedom has been a pain in the backside this year. We bit off more than we could chew without realising it at the time. We knew the boat needed a good deal of work, but as we removed more and more panels to get at things, the sheer extent of the job became more apparent. We've not painted over any horrors - all horrors have been ripped out and repaired properly to ensure that the boat provides many more years of trouble-free service. Much of our time and money has gone in labour and "behind the panels" work which the hirer will not see, but you will see a nice new paint job (it took well over 2 weeks to paint her), a completely new one-peice rubbing strake protecting the deck and new fenders (when they arrive as they're being made for us). She's also got new, bespoke handrails including one across the back. There's a replacement engine too. A lot of time and money has also been spent on the interior including; New flooring throughout New curtains throughout New, bespoke helm unit with new instruments. New cabinetry in some compartments New full-size fridge 19inch Freeview LCD TV & DVD Radio / CD player with Ipod connection New Galley cabinet doors We also expect to fit an 1800 watt inverter and microwave. She was in a bad way, she's not now. She's still a budget boat, but a much improved boat than before and one that we're proud to have on the fleet.

James, Keep an eye on our blog http://freedomcruisers.blogspot.com. Progress is being posted on there once or twice a week. Many pics have been held back because, well, they're a bit dull and non-descript. I'll see what we have and maybe do something a bit in depth. Andy

There's some interesting posts on the problems with flanged edges on mouldings here and comments on delamination. Also, some comments on the black piping used for rubbing strake. The Bounty 44 we're working on right now is a good example of these issues. The flanging is a weak spot and damage to this is a cause of delamination. Consider the flange, it's a gutter on both the top and bottom of the join between the two halves. Damage to this means that any moisture laying there simply seaps into the GRP layup which, over time, causes delamination. The gutters are week spots and whole sections of these have been removed from our Bounty 44 in the past, being replaced with ali stripping that can support the black pipe rubbing strake. This is a much better solution, but not a whole lot easier to handle - the black pipe is usually just a heavy-duty electrical conduit which is remarkably stiff and difficult to work. It's certainly not "slipped over the flange" as kfurbank says (no offence). Ideally, it needs a special tool to get it on the flanges and plenty of heat - a steambox is handy or simply shove a steam pressure washer lance in one end, set it off and return an hour or so later when, God willing, the material may just be plyable. The bonding between the two havles needs to be watertight and solid - a couple of screws/rivets (or even a couple of thousand) aren't really suitable. Again, we're rebonding about 16 foot of the front end of our Bounty 44. Over the years, collision damage and delamination have literally separated large parts of the bonding and simply delaminated the bond. Preparation is tedious and hard work as we're working through small access panels in the front well and have created so much dust that it looks like it's been snowing in the shed. We've been at it a week so far and it's still not finished. Still, this is a 36 year old boat that's been on hire throughout its life; despite the obvious problems with design, it's done rather well. The "buscuit tin" method as described here is certainly a better idea if for no other reason that any moisture that enters the join first has to work it's way up before it can enter the GRP lamination. It also allows you to properly bond two surfaces; inside the join and outside it (on the inside of the hull, obviously). Whether the inner join is bonded or not, I'm not too sure; I guess it is rather difficult to get a bonding/sealing agent in if it's a tight fit. I know that the new Richardson''s boats are designed to provide a couple of decades worth of hire at the least and expect a superiour build quality. There's a lot of money lost on a hire fleet when things go wrong; engineers time wasted on breakdowns, boat builders time on repairs, unhappy customers not returning and so on. Getting it right first time is of paramount importance and with the heritage and experience that Ricos have behind them, these new vessels are set to be first class.

We saw this happening yesterday - most interesting to see the birth of the future of Broads boating. I like the large posters in the background of the shed remining everyone what they're working to build.

MIke, It's like the proverbial Pandora's box - the more I take out, the more work I uncover. It's booked for Easter, so we've got our work cut out. Rather than hijacking Clives thread (sorry, Clive) I'll post regular updates on our blog: http://freedomcruisers.blogspot.com/

The boat in question here isn't actually ours - thankfully. Mind you, we've got plenty of our own repairs to do, have you seen Fair Freedom in your shed

Hmm. I wish we had grp bearers in some of our boats. We had to rip the entire floor and bearers out of one in October because of rot. It was a STUPID design in the first place with the rear well drains draining internally onto a lump of concrete ballast which had a raised plywood dam at the end. Naturally, the concrete had silted up over the years creating a nice mud bath and rotting the ply dam. The damp conditions were just perfect for the growth of dry rot. All bearers out, supports out, floor out and renewed in the space of a few days. Sadly, there's more to do in neighbouring compartments too. Why the drains were never routed to skin fittings or (for the sake of 3 extra metres of pipe) straight into the keel where it would be pumped out, I'll never know. Anyone with a Aquafibre Pearl ought to take a look under the aft cabin floorboards, just in case our experience is typical of this general design. Back to the RC45, we were watching the guys last week trying to release the plug from the mould last week and witnessing the struggle, the creaking and the banging (we weren't quite close enough to hear the swearing). It wasn't until we spoke to one of them later that we realised that they'd been struggling with the damn thing all week. I beleive work on the superstructure has begun now.

The Diamonds are nice boats at either 35 or 43 ft. Both are popular cruisers but the 35 (Flight of Freedom) lets better than the 43 (True Freedom). This may simply be down to size, berthing and price, though. I guess that the fit outs are similar across each builder. Ours were built by different builders, Flight is a Moores boat and is beautifully fitted and True is a Brooms boat, that's well fitted but, perhaps not as nice as the Moores one. Both are very comfortable with plenty of space for all. True Freedom - 43ft Diamond - 6/7 berth Flight of Freedom - 35ft Diamond - 4/6 berth

My favourite design is the Pearl - it's a great looking cruiser, well propportioned and despite getting a bit old, still looks good - it's aged well and remains very popular in fleets. The Varilength? Well, can't help but agree with Clive? Where did the inspiration come from? Certainly they're very spacious inside. I watched with interest the refit of Adventuring Light that became the training room for Horning Sailing Club and it was the perfect choice for this, but it's harly the sleekest thing around. I've seen more appealing carboard packaging for scaffold tubes. However, I guess you can't argue with the buying public too much, these stub-nosed things were in Herbert Wood's hire fleet for years and years so they must have earned their keep.

Whilst we don't have any riverside cottages, we do have a number of properties dotted around Norfolk. The closest to the river is in Martham village. We're also investing in day boats and will also let our smaller cruisers out on day hire so can do some good pre-booked deals.