JennyMorgan

The container filled with sawdust is a bit of a giveaway! Launching time, hard grease or tallow, along with sawdust, very handy for sealing seams in the boat's bottoms as they take up. Spring must be here, the annual ritual.

If it were me, if I were being asked to take Groover's new boat to Ramsgate, I would have the engines and fuel tanks checked. Problem with buying is that some boats have had little recent use, the owners perhaps realising that boats are not their thing and in some cases boats have sat at the broker's moorings for some quite considerable time before being sold, sometimes well over a year.. Ramsgate is doable in a day but I'd take an early departure thus a comfortable overnight stop at the RNSYC before my journey would be high on my list of priorities. .

Can we really and honestly take the risk, John? Let the CountryFile competition drop, by all means, but not our guards.

Maybe, maybe not, Bill. However, there are those that would have welcomed a win because it would have opened an ever popular door, in some quarters, in being able to criticise 'Aunty'. The editor of the magazine is clearly no fool. We can only guess. Opinions, each to their own.

Some old reprobate! Vaughan, Jamie wonders if the keel of your youth is the one that was pulled from the bank with the mislead good intention of preserving?

For Broads Commentator read Jamie Campbell.

The Authorities at Yarmouth can be less than helpful, witness the saga of Robin and Independence. Personally, as Groova is going South, I'd exit the Broads via Lowestoft. Less agro for one thing, less sea time for another. Lowestoft is geared up for leisure boating, Yarmouth is not. Spend the night at Lowestoft before an early start for Ramsgate, simple!

I understand your sadness, Loo, but I do wonder what the outcome might have been had the Broads won? The door would have been opened for well placed questions, not least in the media. Had the Broads been entered in a competition for 'members of the national park's family' then, whilst a few might have questioned it, there would really have been no sound reason for objection. Indeed the uniqueness of the Broads could have been emphasised and celebrated. It strikes me that Doctor John, for all the wrong reasons, misplayed his cards. On another tack, and perhaps playing devil's advocate, because of the valid complaints regarding the use of the faux national park title by Dr Packman, just perhaps it was thought better that the Broads should effectively come third? The result has certainly saved Countryfile Magazine from a raft of criticism. Just a few thoughts, perhaps paranoia is setting in!

A well know Broads commentator has suggested to me that the above is not a keel, rather that it is an early wherry. I have since looked at a model and also an engraving & note that the cabin of a keel was generally forward rather than aft. Oh well, a photo of a keel might still surface, just not today!

http://www.countryfile.com/article/bbc-countryfile-magazine-awards-2018-winners?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=Newsletter 15%2F03%2F18_73562_Countryfile_Newsletters

I have seen paintings and etchings of Norfolk Keels, the forerunner of the Norfolk & Suffolk wherry, but never a photograph. But just maybe this unrigged lighter is actually a Keel? The shape of the rudder, aft cabin and rounded bow suggest that it might be. This photo, taken in Lowestoft Harbour, from the mid to late 1800's just might be a Keel.

I'm not convinced that we have reached a consensus. However I am convinced that we have some sound advice from folk who are qualified by experience to comment. To suggest otherwise is unnecessary. I have a forty year old g.r.p. Drascombe, no sign of osmosis whatsoever. My daughter has a 110 year old sailing cruiser, no sign of osmosis either. I have a twenty five year old Shetland dory, loads of it. Conclusion, osmosis in older boats is not necessarily present so it won't therefor have been covered up!

I go with Janet Anne's comments on this one, especially those regarding galloping polyestermite infestation..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43398187 We have lost a great mind.

Is there nobody that's good on the fiddle then?

Lovely idea, but would it be practical? Bringing a diverse group to a common location and time will be no easy task but in that I wish you well.

My understanding is that rise and fall is not necessarily the deciding matter but 'diurnal flow' flow is.

Good quality towels that they leave on the river bank, just wish that they all matched!

Don't forget that what is upstream of the navigation area is relevant to the condition of what is downstream of it. The BA is is also the LPA (local planning authority) for the waterway from Geldeston to Bungay. Don't think that there is anything sinister in that.

You and me both! Bloke sat on a high rise scaffolding tower aboard his overloaded dinghy moored in Beccles Yacht Station, struck into a fish and tippled backwards A over T and into the drink, spectacular! Thankfully his boat didn't capsize otherwise half of Angling Direct would have drifted off on the tide!

Unless the useless erhem has just won the lottery he must surely be reasonably bright enough to have earned the dosh! I could mention a nouveau millionaire who lives besides Oulton Broad, bought himself a rather tasty sports cruiser, shot off his newly acquired mooring and smacked into the side of a boat moored to a buoy some hundred yards away. The next day he demanded that the harbour master move the mooring buoy!

Whilst I'm as anti formal boating qualification as the next man, and maybe woman, I do question the person who blows a quarter of a million on a plush bling-boat, a boat weighing many tons, capable of thirty five miles an hour over a foul tide, and who blasts off down the River Yare because that's what the salesman did. Anyone who regularly uses the Yare will at one time or another have suffered the wash from a passing t***t with no brains and a new boat, it does happen! It's times like that when I do question whether there shouldn't be some form of qualification before such idiots are let loose with their new toy! A few years ago a highly polished, very new looking three decker came through the Lock at Oulton Broad, despite the Broad being crowded, it being Oulton Regatta, the maniac opened up and shot off up the Broad, arghhhhh, total disregard for the rule of the road and the consequence of his wash!

Ideal for us anglers and kayakers! http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/broads-authority-grants-planning-permission-for-new-glamping-development-1-5429064

Steve, my wife has arthritis in her hands, many years a hairdresser, now she has had several finger joints replaced with grommets, zero pain, I can thoroughly recommend it.

I grew up without a winch onboard but when my father turned fifty or so he had a leccy one fitted, ooooh, wonderful! When I managed the yacht station at Burgh St Peter it used to be the morning's clarion call, I can't get my mudweight in. My chest would swell, time to impress the girlies! All it takes is a jerk to loosen a mudweight, simple enough when you know. Now, in my dotage, I have a Moyle winch on the foredeck, 'tis manual though.