grendel

so she is on the water again and moving under her own power? (sorry cant get the webcam at work as it is classified as streaming media.

well I have done a search, and you were obviously sitting in your car in the car park, as the 4 sets of words are from 4 vertically adjacent 3m squares in the end bay of the car park This is probably down to the inaccuracies inherant in using a mobile for GPS coordinates (+- 9m accuracy) so each time the app is queried, it is falling into a different 3m square. this is still better than the original gps system initiated by the military, where there was a deliberate margin added to gps coordinates of anything up to +- 100m, (only overcome by a decoding pack in a military grade GPS). if you were in your house, you could easily be in any one of up to about 9 squares but how about if the dispatcher of the ambulance mishears the word, or just misses the s of the end, eg vivid faster belt comes up as pitcairn, pennsylvania. Another thing is that coordinates obtained from Google Earth pro, dont match the UK grid coordinate system, they are based upon the US grid coordinates, thus putting a grid location in London, somewhere in northern ireland. no system is foolproof.

it does strike me that the older generation moving to a small village with no local ameneties are setting themselves up for problems in old age, when for example they can no longer drive to the shops, and all of the small local stores have shut and busses only run once a day, I wonder if they will be able to cope, or will they then bemoan the loss of the village shop and bus services? in local villages we have already seen newcomers complaining about the smell from farm animals and the hayfever caused by the crops that had been traditionally grown at that location for generations, and woe betide that you hold them up by driving a tractor down the roads. Life in the countryside has always been a hard life with few amenities at your door, yet a lot of those moving in dont seem to understand the problems that come from living in a rural setting.

currently sitting in my office at work it is giving me an accuracy of +-21m, this could reduce with a better satellite fix as I currently only have 5 fixed, so outdoors I would expect a higher count, but in general 9m accuracy is about all you can expect from a phone.

As I work with maps day in day out I am happy that if i have my tablet, that I could find my location to about a 20m radius (as that is the general accuracy of most phone or tablet driven GPS systems), If I had in addition my Plug in GPS antenna, I could narrow that further to about 3m. this would of course be using eastings and northings. as with my tablet on the os map data I just have to press on the current location icon to display the coordinates to 1m accuracy

You also need a gps fix and phone signal to use it

considering they probably have more boats than all the other yards put together thats hardly a surprising statistic. particularly at Ludham bridge where the vast majority of their craft will have to pass.

on the contrary, the boats are always well presented and clean, we just pride ourselves on returning them with a few extra touches that benifit all, such as the LED bulbs, that reduce battery consumption.

I have also once had to wait an extra hour before taking charge of a boat from Marthams as they wanted to make sure the pet hairs and odours had been removed before they handed the boat over to me as the next hirer.

I can readily understand their position, on the lads week we had 3 dogs aboard, and on our boat we found golden retriever hair throughout, even in the areas the dogs had never been, we of course gave the carpets a good clean through and got as much as we could up with the dustpan and brush on board, but undoubtedly there was still some remaining that would have required a hoover to pick up.

we officially pick up the boats on the saturday, but as we are all coming from everywhere HW's are kind enough to let us board early on the friday evening, as some of the lads dont leave until after they have finished work on the friday, we have also over the years done little jobs such as converting the lighting to led bulbs, they generally get the boats returned in better condition than when we take them over.

the one we used on Royal tudor was just an L shaped pipe, stopped up at the short end, the other end angled upward and a propane torch heating a pool of water at the bend.

the one for my model boats is just a wallpaper steamer and a length of 1 1/2" drain pipe.

Saturday 19th just the short trip from Acle to Potter Heigham today, we headed upstream, arriving at the yard at 9 am, by 9.30 am we had unloaded and were getting into our cars to head for home, although the week had been fairly wet, it was enjoyed by all.

Friday 18th Our last full day, not too early a start, but we were headed just around the corner, to Womack Water, here we moored up and watered up, the water point at ludham had been out of order, and the hose here is very slow, it took 2 hours to water up all 4 boats. Some of the lads headed to the pub, and others decided to fish, we heard tell that there was good pike fishing here, which turned out to be the case, 2 lads took the dinghy and managed a total of 3 pike spinning, Charlie was fishing for perch with worm and float and managed to get himself a small jack pike. mid afternoon and it was time to head to acle bridge inn where we had booked a room for our themed meal out, this years theme was crusaders. while there we experienced a good rainbow, getting ready for returning the boats the next morning we moved the dinghy from Broad Ambition to one of the other boats, as they had an early start to return to Stalham next day.

Thursday 17th in the morning Broad Ambition took advantage of an early leaver to come round from the other section o staithe and water up, we had a 9am start, and headed up river to Wroxham, during the trip up we took an opportunity with all the experienced helms to do a close formation 3 abreast so that we could get some good pictures, this was the first day we managed to cruise with the canopy down, so we were making the best of it, Charlie had the tricky position in the centre and we made sure we left a good clearance for other river traffic coming the other way. When we arrived at Wroxham, Broad Ambition moored up outside the hotel, and we took the 3 jewels into Faircraft loiynes yard to moor up. Shopping was done and a quick visit was made to the kings arms for the obligatory couple of pints, 2 pm and it was time to head down river to ludham bridge, today was my day to cook, and my menu was fresh sausages from the butchers, accompanied by mash, followed by a nice rice pudding. After tea it was time to visit the dog inn, and consume some more beer.

Angles MM Angles.

Wednesday 16th it was another early start to take advantage of the flood up to the lion at thurne for a quick couple of pints, before moving on to Ranworth, here we had fun fitting 4 boats in, but as people left we slotted them in, just one boat complaining we had jumped the queue, but our last boat had been sitting at her mud weight waiting when she arrived, so we were there first. Dogs were allowed off the boats and it was a general melee of ball throwing, and later a trip to the maltsters, during the evening i took an opportunity to get some photos of the sky and stars

Tuesday 15th, Well 7.30 arrived, and with just a few minutes to spare the crew of Broad Ambition were finally roused, we had a fairly uneventful trip down to Reedham apart from one minor incident. It was spotted that our dinghy was shipping water through the centreboard case, as she was sitting in the prop wash, this was spotted when the rear thwart was under water, so we slowed down and Griff decided she wouldnt stay afloat if she wasnt bailed, the crew pulled the dinghy to the stern and Charlie transferred into it and started bailing her out, we had a moment of worry from the crew as Ranworth Breeze came past and we worried about the wash, but Charlie wasnt worried. After bailing out, we lengthened one leg of the yolk ropes and shortened the other so we were towing off centre with the dinghy out of the prop flume, and this sorted the problem as we didnt ship any more water for the rest of the holiday. Arriving at Reedham ferry we were the last to moor up, only to be informed by the crew of the chain ferry that the pub was shut and not opening that day, That being the case we cast off again and proceeded down to Reedham where we had a couple of pints in the Nelson. After a few hours it was time to Cross breydon, going down on the ebb to arrive at low tide, this would mean battling the ebb up the bure to the Yacht Station, but we had to arrive before sunset. It was during the crossing that Charlie - our skipper started Yawning, we persuaded him to take a nap and we would handle the crossing of breydon. with the ebb we managed to make 10.3 mph at one point, we were still nearly .6mph slower than the other boats, and round the yellow post it was a case of slowing down to allow all the boats in front to get moored up. I was on the helm this leg, as i was the next most experienced helm on board. we approached the mooring slowly at about 1200 rpm, and a speed over the ground of about 1mph, the crew all performed brilliantly and we came up to the yacht station, with just a slight bump (to wake the skipper up to see how well the crew managed without him). Tuesday evening and a few of us went into great yarmouth for a few beers and to sample the local night life.

Monday 14th, a l ate 11 am departure was planned, i have a feeling we left earlier than planned, destination for the day was Norwich, where we would be overnighting, during the afternoon we went about topping up the stores and relaxing in various ways. after tea we split up, some heading for a pub crawl around Norwich, others headed for the cinema, i was one of the latter, i went to watch Ad Astra, somehow though we pressed the right buttons, the machine gave us tickets for metallica, we soon realised the error and got seated in the correct screen before the picture started, so we saw all the adverts twice through, The lads who went for the pub crawl finally returned after 3am, rather silly of them as we had a 7.30 start next day

yes, no problems, though it may have been because the workmen were there because the sewers had overspilled and they were clearing up, several people turned up and left quite quickly, we got all 4 boats in at the side. our fishermen did catch a few fish, but not a huge amount.

sunday 13th Not too early a start today, 10 am, our first destination was Rockland Broad, timed to arrive about opening time, it was a dull grey sort of a morning, no canopy down today as showers were plentiful, tide flowing in strongly, even the ducks were producing bow waves big enough to give a ranger apoplexy. shoreside facilities were utilised extensively (we managed the whole week without a pumpout). there are deer in the fields opposite the moorings, but none close enough to photograph. en route to rockland we encountered a couple of yachts, but these were succesfully negotiated, though i am not too sure what the skipper thought as our perfect line ahead formation split into 2 halves with two boats hugging the right bank and two heading over to the left, this manouver leaving everyone perfectly placed to pass behind him as he tacked through. After a quick lunchtime pint (or two) at the new inn it was up river to surlingham ferry inn, here we managed to get our first glimpse of sunshine, though there were some spectacular cloud formations as the sun set. the low sunlight on the trees against the dark clouds made a spectacular sight. a few drinks in the pub and out to a clear sky, so some images of the moon were obtained.

Saturday 12th. With the tides not aat their most convenient the crossing of breydon was going to be tricky today, but first we had all those things neccesary to do for a voyage, stores and provisions, so the victuallers were sent off to tescos at Stalham, other pre bought stores were distributed between boats (Charlie brings down cake for each boat and another lad brings square sausage and black pudding for breakfasts. you will see the line of Jewels and BA here ready to set off. We managed to get everything together and departed for acle bridge inn about 11.00 where a quick pint was consumed, we needed to be off at 13.00 to arrive at reedham before dark. It was at acle we had our first dog overboard, as soon as we moored she ran the full length of the cabin and launched herself over the stern, unfortunately as we were now moored side on, someone had stolen the ground and replaced it with water, sploosh. at 13.00 we left for Breydon, the tide was with us so we struggled to keep the speed below 6mph at 1200 revs, the trip was uneventful and we had clearance at the Great Yarmouth bridges, but the speed situation was soon to change, up to full throttle as we rounded the yellow post, and we were now just achieving 3.4mph (we used a gps speed app split screen with os mapping on my tablet through the week to keep our speeds below the limits). ebb was slacking so by the time we had crossed Breydon we were up to 4.5mph. we continued our plod up to reedham, where there were just 3 spaces for 4 boats, no problem as we came alongside one of the other jewels and moored up 2 abreast. one of the jewels was only just on the end of the quay heading next to the slipway, and we were concerned about the gap at the stern, in case the dog on board (Barney) should slip while getting on and off, we decided we could pull the boat forward by about 3 foot to alleviate this, - plan of action in mind we were half way to the bow to tighten up the ropes when from the boat we heard scrabble scrabble sploosh, yes barney had done just what we had feared, all hands to Man overboard stations, and the oiled team set to work, the man onboard was just too late as the tide had already swept barney out of reach, ashore we rushed to the head of the slipway and were calling to Barney, fortunately he heard and headed for us and exited up the slipway, plan b would have been to use the dinghy on jewel 1 to chase and retrieve him. (it was upon reviewing this option we noticed that the sailing dinghy had no oars provided, and the rowing dinghy towed by BA was at the other end of reedham quay, we rectified this later and herbert woods brought us a set of oars out. After that it was time for tea, on our boat Charlie was chef of the day and had prepared a nice rabbit casserole, which was lovely, then it was off to the ship, where we played darts and listened to the singer. We had been warned that the quay heading might overtop at high tide by the ranger, but it was still just short when the lads returned from the pub, we did notice some overtopping at the upstream end the next day when we departed.

just a taster of things to come