grendel

you have to remember people have to learn boating somewhere, on the broads they learn something in their first week, a lot learn enough to want to try it again, next time they learn a bit more. i have been quite a few times now, and the minute i stop learning things will be the day i have stopped doing things.

whisktea, Brandtea, Rumtea Tumtea, Marteani, plus a few others i probably havent thought of yet

just remember the speed limits, you wont be rushing to a shout.

as long as they are not pointing upstream at great yarmouth catching people coming down on the ebb, this is the area that breaks all the rules for boaters, even those wanting to keep to speed restrictions, the one area where you can be sticking to the speed limit and creating a huge wash, or breaking the limit and creating no wash, where the tides dont follow the rules and can be an hour behind predicted times, meaning even the best planning can leave you arriving at the wrong time. its all fine to say you just time it for slack water, but you arrive at slack water to find the bure still an hour from low due to a high pressure in the north sea, or you have a boat that needs to go through at low water on the yare for clearance at the bridges. That aside elsewhere on the broads, even boats that are governed or have speed limiters fitted can be speeding in a 4mph or 3mph zone. proper attention to the topic at handover may be one answer, but there will still be those who dont listen. the way it is worked at the moment mostly works, when the rangers spot someone travellin a bit fast they wave their paddles, they follow up reports of speeding boats and target serial offenders. the rest is down to all of us to pay attention to our wash and behave ourselves.

true, it takes training to suppress that reflex, i learned to swim in a river fed open air pool, we used to attend when it opened in april every year through to october. you soon learned to suppress that initial gasp. The important thing to remember is that even non swimmers can use the broads, wear a lifejacket when on deck, and remember one hand for yourself and one for the ship, which basically means when you are on deck, hang on to the handrails and take care of loose ropes on the deck, so as not to trip. Do everything slowly and carefully, step off the boat, dont jump, if you land badly jumping you can slip and topple back between the boat and shore, so step down and make sure of your footing, if you have to make a second or even third go at mooring, do so until it can be done safely.

hunters sailing fleet would also rate as quite old. the Marthams boats are old, but have quite a modern standard of fitout in lovely golden mahogany, but dont expect a mains socket, they do have usb sockets to charge phones etc. and 12v car sockets. fridges, decent cookers, and are a great nostalgia trip.

i am a reasonably good swimmer, and when i submarined my dinghy the other year was wearing a life jacket, it is a manual inflate one and i didnt bother to inflate it as the water was warm and i was fine, i still struggled to get out, eventually having to swim to the slipway of an adjacent cottage, where with assistance (they grabbed the straps of the lifejacket) i manage to do a beached whale impersonation and get myself out. if i had felt it necessary i could have inflated the lifejacket and let the current take me down to the boatyard slipway 200m downstream. but without a slipway or ladder no way was i getting out on my own. So yes lifejackets. if i do go swimming i make sure i have a route out and a safety rope laid out before i go in. (and also that the water is warm enough.)

such a lovely seating area on the bow, lucky you.

here you show your true colours, this makes it seem that your comments are not aimed at hirers at all, when you talk of owners, its down to all people in charge of a boat to comply with the speed restrictions, upon looking i could only spot a single sad emoji, and this seemed to be a response to your assertation that all boats should be governed, and in that situation seemed an apt response from a private boat owner. Your relating the governing to an HGV fails when it comes to safety and tides, HGV's dont have to push against a tide that could leave them going backwards out of control, boats sometimes do. whether they should be doing this or not is down to a choice by the skipper at the time.

too much lip gloss i fear.

well the boot fair was still going this morning and right busy it was i couldnt say people were sticking to groups of 6 max, but then i couldnt say they werent either. as long as you were prepared to hang around for a few seconds you could approach the pitches in relative social distancing, i did bump into a friend there and we went round together, probably at 1m spacing minimum, most stall holders were wearing masks, few members of the public were, as it is a council run bootfair it must have been sanctioned as allowable (it is an outdoor venue).

the dots go away when the edit period of 10 minutes expires.

hook up, a 600W heater will be pulling 50Amps at 12v, thus will discharge a single 110Ah battery in 1 hour (you try not to take lead acid batteries below 50% capacity) plus you would need a 1000W inverter on board minimum to run it.

not really lithium cells do not like being over discharged, it can cause problems when you o to charge them again, these units were about £1.50 each and give an audible alarm when battery cell voltage drops below a certain value (3.3V) this gives you time to head back to shore. that and this size battery (10 Ah) is neither small nor cheap

I think the answer is not restrictions, rather training and teaching, rather than arguing amongst ourselves we should be giving out advice to all these new people (the ones that are willing to listen are halfway to being good boaters anyway) in a book i read by one Arthur Ransome it was mentioned that the broads were a good school to learn to sail, and that is as true today as it has ever been. if you see someone struggling, for goodness sake dont step back and watch and laugh, get in there and help them, and you may have an opportunity to pass on some of your wisdom. someone who becomes comfortable on the broads will come back for more, someone who strugles throuh their holiday with no help will find somewhere else to holiday next year.

there are so many different rules now that it is hardly surprising that nobody understands what is and isnt allowed any more

to be fair, it seems most of the people in the shops not wearing masks, that i have heard being asked why they were not wearing them have answered that it was because they had already had it.

no Gracie unless you live in one of the areas with tighter restrictions i believe that is currently allowed. i am currently sticking to working from home, while i would love to spend a day or two a week in the office, my concern is that i could possibly quite unwittingly transfer the bug from the area of the office in essex to my home town in kent, or vice versa, a transfer of possibly some 60 miles in one step, so the simple answer is not to go into the office.

after my trip to the staithe at geldeston, where half way along i encountered the canoe launch area of the campsite now opposite, at this point there were canoes, paddle boards swimmers, people paddling kids swimming, there must have been about 50 people in or on the water, all looking at me with expressions ranging from shock to anger that I had dared make them clear a path past them for a broads cruiser in that less than 30 foot river width to get to the staithe, that was an area less travelled so eminently suitable for those activities, but we all have to learn to get along with each other, some paddle boarders i have seen can barely steer their craft, but we all have to learn. my approach when approaching canoes, paddle boards or swimmers is to cut back the revs to the point i am just ghosting through the water, so as not to create a wash to upset them, and make sure they have seen me, and glide past, maybe exchange a wave or pleasantry, even ones that sit in front of bridges on their phones. its all about giving consideration to other river users.

yet as we have seen before going up against the ebb through Great Yarmouth you can be travelling at 1mph over land and doing 9 mph through the water, and still get a yell to slow down from the rangers due to your wash, and vice versa you could be doing 12 knots on tickover with barely any wash and no steerage way coming down with the ebb, how would your gps speed governer deal with that, shut the engine down, so you had no control?

well its impossible to love them cheaply

i knew Nigel was clever, but second and third?

I think you may have hit upon a topic there where the hire yards could improve their handovers, they quite often tell people to use the slack water to cross breydon, but they dont fully explain the dangers outside those times, The first time I hired I was asked if i would be crossing Breydon, I answered no, so no further mention was made, next time as i was an 'exerienced boater' they didnt even bother to mention it, yes its in the handbook, but how many boaters really read those cover to cover any more? What is needed nowadays is an interactive app, for each boat that people can skip to as and when to get accurate information for their boat.

as a moderator i have it on all posts all of the time, but yes it will show for the 10 minutes you have to modify your post.

you think thats bad, us techies had to re-find everything to be able to fix it.