goodall_m1

Ah thats better. Prop thrust parallel, which means prop itself perpendicular (you missed the thrust out on the earlier post! A few more years of this and I might even understand motor boats. I've always wondered what a trim tab actually does... Martin

Parallel or perpendicular? Parallel pointing straight up or straight down wouldn't give a lot of forward motion would it. Martin

Clive, No updates on this thread since March, have you mothballed the project now that the punters are back on the river? Martin

Looking at the specification of Fair Commodore on the web-sites, she is obviously set up to use a lot of power, microwave oven, two tv's etc, etc, so getting close to the "power tower" may be important. Please remember though that (as far as I understand it) the broad moorings are not set up like marinas, its not one tower for each pair of mooring berths but usually one tower per location so it will be important to get a mooring close to the tower. I agree with you about possibly needing extra heat! Take a look at the "The New Year Freeze" threads in the Holiday Tales and shiver at the Ranworth ice breaker. Perhaps "Happy Jax II" could give you some hints, as they were obviously out over the last New Year and were making use of shore-power facilities... For a warm waters sailor like me, coming up in August is adventurous enough, but the rivers should be quieter in December. Martin

And Simon knew all about it and never let you into the secret! One thing that I did pick up from 7dayshop could be useful for anyone who needs to charge batteries on the move but doesn't have an inverter on their boat, or wants to charge up when out in the car for the day. They do a mini 75W 12--->240V inverter that will plug into a "cigarette lighter" socket, and let you run a mains charger for £15.49 inc postage. http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product ... s_id=99827 Martin (So now I can actually take my mains charger for the camcorder etc when I am expecting to be away from shorepower for some time. No more need to ask the pub or restaurant if they will plug my charger in, and no more waking up to the realisation that my charger is still in the restaurant because I forgot to ask for it back when I left...(and the restaurant in question was over a mile from the boat, I rushed back up there only to be told by the owner "Oh yes I found it this morning when I started cleaning and told my husband to take it down to the harbour for you!" )

Jill Did a little more research and I think that this one is what you are after (£4.99 inc postage or less if you buy more than 1) (they only mention the Canon EOS 450D but Amazon show the LP-E5 as the battery for the 1000d as well) http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product ... _id=104226 I did note in their reviews that it has a lower power rating than the "offical" Canon one... Two reviews: "It works perfectly as a backup to the original cannon battery and gives 75% of the power for 1/8th of the price of a canon made one. im going camping for a week and im going to stock up on these before i go. " "For £5+ this is excellent value. I have the Canon 450D and it works without any problem. There is a difference in the mAh though, this replacement is only rated at 800 mAh where the Canon battery supplied with the camera is 1030mAh. Other than that the batteries are identical."

Jill You may find www.7dayshop.com a good source for "generic" batteries (I havent checked for your particular battery) I have used them for most of my rechargables and chargers, and also for memory cards and readers. They ship from Jersey and hence no vat if price of a unit is < £18. If your order comes to > £18 they just split it into several packages. Martin

I got into taking wildlife pictures when I bought my SLR and wanted something to try it out on. At that time I was working out in Dubai and the local park was the largest patch of greenery for about 1000 miles. As such it used to get a lot of migrant birds moving from Europe to Africa or vice-versa. I got into the habit of prowling round the park with my camera set to 1/1000th and a big lens on it, together with a 2x converter. Got some good shots that way, came back to the UK and tried a similar technique over here only to get insufficent light warnings. Still trying to get to grips with digital, I find rembering the features that the camera can provide (continuous frames, auto-bracketing etc) and how to select them can be tricky (is it on menu page two or three?). Quite often it is a case of "If only I had left it set to..." as something goes past (and sometimes it is simply a case of "If only I had left it switched on!) Martin

That one of the problems I alsways seem to have with wildlife, is that when you see it you normally can't get the camera up and in action fast enough before it escapes, or if it isn't moving then you are (some people of course can apparently work out how to always get great pictures (like Paul) , (or does he only show us the ones that work?) Us poor mortals just have to be pleased with what we manage to get and sometimes it comes together and you say "what a shot!", normally followed later by "now exactly what did I do that time?" Not being a regular visitor to Broadland, I don't really have many decent shots taken up there and on the first of my two hire trips I was using a video camcorder (Fast frame speed, lousy number of pixels). I did manage to get some good video shots, like Mum's heron, but my two biggest memories of that trip photography wise were: 1) Managing to film water sliding off a duck's back (moored up at Berney Arms on a rough day ) 2) A comorant in the Beccles Yacht basin that caught a two foot eel and then allowed me to film him for about ten minutes whilst he tried to swallow it. (never did see if he managed it as he drifted out into the Waveney and then went out of sight) Unfortunately whilst good video shots trying to capture a semi-decent still of either of those shots seems to be very difficult. The second trip in August 2007 is best described as being a wash-out with almost continual rain interrupted occaisionally by glimpses of things when the camera wasn't ready or they were too far away. I will therefore digress and let you see what I think is one of my best bird shots (lifted from my webshots album by using a screen grabber as I can't find the original at the moment!): Like you I was shooting on P mode, which on my camera does let me set a few bits and pieces, and hoping that the auto focus would keep up with him. One thing that I don't like on most digital cameras that I have tried is the delay between pressing the button and the image being captured. It can be a real pain when the subject is moving (and what was a nice shot of a grebe turns into a diving beaver). Of course out in the Caribbean (where I caught the Pelican in Flight) , the light is usually great and the birds, like most of the other locals are so laid back that they take things really slow and easy. Martin

Simon, Some nice shots there. You obviously got the hang of holding the long lens steady. I like the heron speed trap, to me a little less zoom to get the whole sign in might have been a little bit better, but then you were on a "wildlife" trip, and probably "snap" shooting before it decided to move. Took my mother on the broads many years ago and I remember that she was admiring a heron statuette in someones garden at South Walsham when it went and blinked at her! You also obviously had fun with depth of field with the goose, target perfectly sharp, everything around it soft and fuzzy. I only wish I could work out how to fiddle with the settings on my camera to reproduce such effects. (Must read the forum photography guide again!) Whatever did we do before multi megapixel digital cameras, and cropping. Us "oldies" remember the days of 36 exposure 35mm film and "do I try this shot or not", and loading the film carefully to let us squeeze 38 shots onto a 36 roll... I've still got my old Canon A1 SLR somewhere, haven't used it for about 20 years though, so it would be seen as a museum piece now. Happy snapping Martin

Obviously a pretty windy day wasn't it! That is a skipper who knows to take in a reef before the boat is over on its beam ends (unlike many others!) Looks like two reefs in and still going well.

Mark, I had mine in a dive housing until I took it ashore to show the other members of the group what I had taken... Kerplosh and scrap another Z2 (my above water camera had actually also died a few days earlier, two Z2's killed on one trip to the Caribbean!)... Was the waterproof rucksack the one I saw in one of the photos? The one that didn't seem to be attached to the canoe, is it waterproof to 1 metre or 2? Dinghies, canoes etc are not camera friendly environments. Martin

Mark, Having once suffered the indignity of falling overboard from a dinghy whilst trying to get back aboard a yacht, and having my Minolta digital camera around my neck at the time... (No more photos from that trip, but the memory card survived so the existing ones were OK.) Do you protect your camera whilst indulging in potentially wet pursuits like canoeing? Martin

We were only passing through, which took us 2.5 days. I suppose there was a bit of a shortage of facilities along the way but we only had two nights on the canal and even in August there weren't many boats active. I know we managed to find a shower block twice on the way, and hence didn't have to do it onboard. I hadn't thought about the potential problems as to anchoring (you would need a really long line on a mud weight to drop it in Loch Ness) but there were pontoon moorings relatively frequently along the route, usually in conjunction with the swing bridges and locks. The guide pamphlet is available on-line at http://www.waterscape.com/media/documents/20714. I believe that the hire boats aren't allowed to go down the Neptunes Staircase at Banavie (a flight of eight locks) but several of them were mooring up at the top to see the fun. (It took us 4.5 hours from arriving at the top to getting out of the last lock, as they run a "one way" system and arrived just after they had started a "down" phase. The transit of the flight takes 1.5 hours once you manage to get into the first lock). There was certainly a lack of refreshment facilites (OK pubs) to pick from, (but we did find one each night) and not a lot of shopping oportunities either as there is only one real town (Fort Augustus) enroute. I must admit that having "done" the Caledonian and also sailed in parts of the West Coast I probably prefered the coast and islands, and there you do have to use the anchor! One trip that I keep looking at is the Classic Malts Cruise, two weeks hopping from distillary to distillary with calies thrown in. (Actually they only have arranged visits to three distillaries along the way but I can think of at least another three that you could call into without too much trouble) http://www.worldcruising.com/classicmaltscruise/ Martin

I must admit that I missread the title of this thread initially. I thought it was called Inland Boating with ALTITUDE... Anyone who wants a change from the flat lands of East Anglia might find the Caledonian Canal interesting. I came through it last year, from Inverness to Fort William, and all the locks are operated for you by the lock-keepers, and you even get a chance to look for Nessie as you have to go down the length of Loch Ness on the way, and it is the only time that I have ever taken a yacht up and down hills. Steve, Some stunning scenary on the Lot. Which part of France is it in?

Keep a good lookout at all times, and possibly keeping the speed and noise down a bit might help. I have had dolphins playing on the bow wave of my yacht three times, and on two of those occaisions we were under engine, so a bit of engine / prop noise didn't deter them. Unfortunately I don't sail on the East Coast a lot, my last encounter was with a pod of 20 striped dolphins in the Bristol Channel and the other two times I was out in Greece.) I saw a report the other day that the Gunfleet Sands windfarm is employing a local fisherman and his boat to use an acoustic scanner to detect the presence of Dolphins etc in the area and they then stop pile-driving until they are out of range, so either they get them there or somebody made it a condition on their planning consent. I hope you see some. Remember to keep your camera ready and snapping them isn't easy even when they are really close as they always seem to dive as I click the shutter. Here is an example of what you are looking for (taken off the bow in Greece): I don't worry about whether I see porpoises or dolphins either will do for me, especially when they come to play with the boat.

Clive, Remember to get the photo changed on your own web-site. "Totally refitted for 2009" and an old photo! (Perhaps you meant "Will be totally refitted for 2009" when your brochure went to print but web-sites can be amended "on the fly" She looks a lot more "modern" in her new livery! (And has a lot more rubbing strakes to keep her looking that way) Martin

I prefer a viewfinder as I can fiddle with the diopter setting and avoid having to put my reading glasses on. On my Minolta the viewfinder isn't direct. It is actually looking at the internal screen which is "flipped" when the viewfinder mode is enabled. If I try to use the screen alone I can't see it without glasses! The viewfinder is also useful in bright sunlight when the screen becomes even more diffcult to see. Martin

What is Liveview? Its not a term that I have ever come across.

Once you've exhausted your trial pack of glossy paper you might find www.7dayshop.com useful. They have always seemed good value for things like that, compared with picking it up on the High Street. I haven't got any paper from them for a while as I've rarely been printing anything lately, but I do use them for other bits and pieces quite often. They also carry both original and compatible cartridges etc so it may be worth your while comparing their prices with other suppliers. Prices they quote are (currently) inclusive of postage.

I'm on the water that week, but not on the Broads. Two weeks on a Rival 34 out of Preveza in western Greece. Hoping for sunny weather and a decent breeze. Hope you all have a good time as well. Martin

My favourite shot (and I still don't know how I did it!) Taken with the snapshot button on my Panasonic Camcorder with the macro function enabled and manual focus. Being a camcorder it had a very limited pixel quality. I have since found that I was taking more "snapshots" than video, and moved to a proper digital camera, but nothing too fancy. I am now using a Minolta Z5 (5MPixels, 12xOptical Zoom, Plenty of modes and a view finder that I can see without getting my reading glasses out). It also uses "get anywhere" AA batteries, which I can easily recharge from a 12v socket, important when cruising on a yacht for a couple of weeks. I do like using macro though, but it gets difficult if there is any breeze as the targets keep moving! While I remember: those of you with digital cameras might find the website http://www.7dayshop.com useful , they do some great deals on things like SD cards, batteries , 12v chargers etc with (currently) free delivery on everything.

Having done my first ever approach into the backwaters a few weeks ago I was a bit suprised that Mr Cunliffe didn't mention the depth constraints on the entrance channel, although he did do his approach at high water Charted at 0.8m above chart datum at the bar you can have only 1.2m at low water less any swell trough. Not a problem for most motor cruisers I presume but I was doing it in a yacht with a 2m draft. Wind over the ebb at the point and it was more like going into a washing machine at times. Depths in the "Twizzle" when coming off the creek pontoons at Titchmarsh Marina can also be fun, I had 0.2m under the keel when leaving the pontoon at some points, perhaps I should have waited a bit longer for the tide to come in a bit more. One other point I noticed was that "sailies" coming in on the ebb my need to note that getting parked on holding pontoon for the night can result in there not being enough water at low water springs. One yacht had about a 30 degree up angle whenI got up early the next morning to go up to the facilities. (it was the second one in, the outer boat looked ok) Me thinks that the idea of a holding pontoon is to tie up there whilst the tide rises. I can also see why bilge keels are so popular on the East coast! and not to park there ona falling tide.