grendel

which will necessitate the resumption of the dredging that used to happen and has stopped under the current management. I would encourage anyone who does touch the bottom while midriver in this area to report it to the Broads authority to start generating a pattern that will be impossible to dismiss as a one off occurrence, and hopefully initiate some dredging action.

quite true.

all the more reason not to accept the anecdotal evidence in the face of the inconsistencies

The last time I was in a dinghy, the rudder fell off, the last time I was aboard a sailing yacht one of the pins for the boom dropped off and fell into the water- so I dont have a great record in sailing boats.

the only part I find strange is the use of metric depths everywhere until we get to herring bridge, then all of a sudden the depth is 20 feet was the sudden change in measurement system a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue or a genuine mistake. it just struck me as an incongruous way of presenting the data.

surely they will be around- as the price of diesel rises more people will be wanting to use the free wind, and as for only 2 places to use them, well you see them all over the broads, so no, plenty of places to use them.

how about niagra falls, thats got a fair downhill slope.

what a change in the weather, I woke up yesterday to 7 degrees and it got into double figures by the end of the day, and by the looks off it is still in double figures this morning.

there used to be a nice wild mooring just water rail sized on the chet, right on a wide bend, sadly it hasnt been kept clear, theres some nice quay heading at the entrance to rockland dyke (furthest from brundall), but it needs some of the vegetation clearing. I am sure there are more spots you could wild moor, but I have yet to try them. plenty of spots above beccles on the waveney, some dont really have good access to land.

yes

Ice in the bottle- has someone been watering it down?

my Electric bike I used to get there was the same, i hadnt charged it and had used it for a few short trips recently, but in the 8 mile round trip it dropped 2 bars, normally i dont see a drop of the top bar for over 20 miles and at most i was at 18 miles, where I could have expected to have seen a drop of 1 bar, but not 2, so the cold was definitely causing a loss of range. If other EV's are experiencing similar range drops in temperatures that could be considered normal winter temperatures, then i worry that they will never cope fully in this and colder countries.

we usually have some members attend the herstmonceux astronomy weekend every year, its a great place. now one fact you may not know but my ex's great great Uncle used to be a engineering technician at herstmonceux - maintaining the telescopes, there is still a room in the centre (not public access) that is called stans room, and the racks of spare parts for the domes are stored there to this day - all neatly labelled.

generally light pollution is greater nowadays which certainly doesnt help, we have a dark sky sight and its stunning from there (just 5 miles out of canterbury too) if you moor up at hardly cross that is somewhere I have had good views of the milky way, you really do have to try and get somewhere you cant see any other lights though.

I was tempted to use that spelling, but considered more might recognise the spelling I used

Tonight I was at one of the local colleges, they had organised an astronomy evening for local primary school kids and parents, so myself and a few others from my astronomy society went along to provide some telescopes that the youngsters could look through. After we had set up on their hockey pitch and they had extinguished the floodlights we had crowds of parents and kids come visit us for a look through the telescopeskids from about 4, up to some of the students at the school, and parents of the younger kids. This was the third event they had put on, due mainly to being 3x oversubscribed for places (though you had to book a place it was provided free). Luckily tonight was reasonably clear, so we showed people the moon, Jupiter and Saturn, the Pleiades and the orion nebula amongst others. I also took along my camera and big lens to get some shots of the moon, unfortunately it was so cold that my camera batteries all gave up the ghost so I only got a few pictures. also included a shot of jupiter, not the best but i was running a 1000mm lens at 1/800s on the moon.

Probably try and get king Canute to visit.

so? as long as I am warm, I dont care.

I am sorry to hear that Bern, Unfortunately I will be unable to attend tonight (unless I drop in late as I am doing an astronomy outreach at a local college this evening - this might even call for long trousers (and thermals)

its headed south into the path of the Titanic

I see we are having a go at the unlicensed and unregistered boat owners- do we have any proof that this boat is unregistered and untolled before we start jumping to conclusions, I dont see that stated anywhere in the news article, and barring some quick action on my part could easily have been me last year when I arrived at great yarmouth with a blocked bilge pump and 6" of water in the fore cabin, (not really thinking it advisable to stop halfway across breydon). luckily i managed to unblock the bilge pump and get it working after a fashion which eventually cleared the water out (the float switch had also jammed under a beam shelf rendering that inoperable too)- not a situation you want just a few hours after relaunching in a wooden boat.

an electric bike is good exercise, you have to pedal to make it go, but not so hard you get exhausted, and its easier going up hills on one

we bought a third hand miele washing machine it was the industrial model, (the instructions were there on how to fit the coin meter) we bought it from a person who had worked at a care home, she bought it from the care home where it had been used almost constantly for many years, we used it for about another 8 years until we were given a brand new machine from my ex's great uncles house. then we finally got rid of the miele, though by then it was in sore need of new bearings (i am sure that if I had replaced the bearings it would still be being used to date.)

we once bought a hotpoint washer dryer - this was when they first came out, we had all sorts of issues with it, because they had not engineered the circuit board correctly and the contacts kept corroding- we must have had about 4 replacement circuit boards- each was an upgrade from the last- eg one had gold plated contacts, eventually they raised the circuit board voltage to try and overcome the issue. never really did though.

nowadays its more unplanned incompetence