grendel

i probably wont be able to attend as i will be on lads week

that would take over this thread and would be way off topic, its all in the terms and conditions anyway.

i certainly dont have shares, but i do believe in praising good service. and i like their boats.

Well it certainly seems that we have had different experiences from different yards, maybe because marthams are more old school they still do things the old way, their engines are certainly old enough to still need to be checked daily.

most boatyards worth their salt will actually ask if there were any problems, and have a space on the return paperwork. i agree most hirers wont know one end of an engine from the other, but if the engine is wet from oil then its obvious something is wrong, yes the yard should also check when the boat returns. replacing good batteries because they are a certain age is pointless, i guess you would expect to pay more to hire a boat if they kept changing things because they might fail next month - next year - never. so if hirers dont report things like lets say the shower pump doesnt work, but it does drain eventually, how does the yard know, do they have time to check every little thing. I hired a boat fresh in the water, there was nothing that stopped me enjoying my holiday, but maybe the little snags i reported had been missed in the two hours between getting the boat back into the water, cleaning it and handing it over, the engine had been test run, but a slight leak on the injector probably didnt become apparent until after a few hours cruising. the alternator nut may have been missed when they tightened it. i do know some yards advise no maintenance is needed on the engines, but marthams still advise checking the oil, water level and weed filter daily, and the water level was dropping on a flat out run across Breydon (it was fine the rest of the time). Sharing these little things has given me a closer relationship with the boatyard, and i think they trust me as a hirer more too, i do like the attention these small family yards give to their hirers.

I have to face facts, I need a boat that has more bouyancy, where the freeboard doesnt drop to an inch or so when I sit in it, perhaps I should go into training as a PH bridge pilot, Guaranteed to take boat under with an inch less clearance than all the rest due to the ballasting effect.

i'd still sink it.

exonerated - breaking it down into parts ex - used to be - has been one - singular rated- having a standard or value assigned so combining those - a singularly standardised has been

my only thought is that someone may have a badge that can be scanned at high resolution

I had wondered why certain members of the lads week (myself included) had been practicing falling into the water recently.(I thought I would get that one in before anyone else did).

Charlie, you would have to admit, that with the hours of sunrise and sunset and the tide times this year, that was probably the only sensible option other than punching the tides hard and just wasting fuel, as it is we will at least only be punching the tide up as far as the yacht station that day, then using the more favourable tides next day to get up north again. As far as the rest of the itinerary goes, I for one will be visiting locations I have never yet managed to visit so thats a plus for me too. I have been slowly getting everything ready, camera batteries are charging, the shove halfpenny board have been dug out and prepared, darts purchased, and all the other myriad of holiday preparations are taking place.

I will say again that the most important link in the maintenance chain is the previous customer reporting any issues, when i was the first hirer on Jayne 2 from marthams i left a snagging list as i handed back the paperwork at reception, they were all small things, the weed filter had stuck in place, and there was a fuel injector that always looked wet, plus the alternator bolt had dropped its nut into the engine oil tray (temporarily fixed by putting a cable tie on the thread to stop the bolt dropping out), bu the time i had walked from the office back to the boat to give it one last look they already had a team of people on board fixing the problems. if every hirer reported all the little niggles like this when they got back, the yards would know what to check / fix, changeover time is quite rushed for most yards so spotting a problem that hasnt been reported must be tricky.

most of them at some time or other from what i have seen.

does this infer that the flood alleviation works (that some will say have caused generally higher river levels) actually succeeded in alleviating some of this flooding? Though I understand that Royal Tudor is the salty side of the lock from Oulton Broad, which would indicate the tides are a bit high at the moment (maybe a result of the remnants of hurricane Lorenzo.)

I bet Jayne 2 would have gone through with just a few on board

Barton hire boat regatta?

is it not hire yacht races today somewhere, they may be aiming to tow them up through all the bridges ready.

busy getting on with their holiday i guess.

I think you would be better occupied looking after mrs Griff this evening, and you have posted your evidence before, but I am sure somewhere out there is the surveyed data for the depths, but the question is then can we find similar river depth data from the 1970's or 1980's that would help prove the case. empiratical data such as well they dredged all year round in the 1980's and they dont now, is fine and dandy, but actual hard numbers speak volumes more to prove the point, with numbers the actual volume of the flow could be calculated and the reduction in that flow could then be factored into the equation.

we must remember that the stones we see that have moved are only the facing stones on the outside of the bridge structure, the fact that they were able to realign them in the repairs shows that the underlying structure of the bridge had not altered, just on the visible face the missing stone allowed those surrounding it to also shift slightly.

I do however take exception to the elevation drawing in the report, as it fails to show the difference in height of the two side arches, this is an obvious feature as can be seen by the photographs, so to represent it on the survey drawing as the same height could well cause issues at a later time, as a draughtsman it offends my eye to see such a casual misrepresentation called an elevation drawing, it also leads me to wonder if they even measured the clearances on the side arches.(though I can appreciate with changing river levels taking a comparative level might be difficult as you would need to measure all 3 arches in a short span of time.

not to mention spotting anything fouled in the prop

While I probably agree with you Griff, we are trying to find hard data to prove the point, and we are eliminating sea level change (4" over the period we were looking at) and the bridge sinking from the causes, " something else" could well be the bure hump, but we need uncontrovertible data to prove that this is so.

surely something like that would have been reported in the survey, it was after all only someones opinion that they though it might have sunk on one side, it could of course easily been an optical illusion caused by the angle of viewpoint. It is very easy to just pick and choose the bits of a post that we would like to believe, but we have now seen the sea levels data and the bridge survey, so if the bridge isnt sinking, and the sea hasnt risen as much as the clearance has dropped, that just leaves "something else" as the cause, once the known causes have been deducted. as for one side sinking, the picture in the report does show one arch lower than the other, but then again so does this one from 1926, clearly the herbert woods side arch is lower than the other, and yes there does appear to be more clearance in 1926 than 2011, but then sea level in 1926 was some 75mm below average UK MSL whereas in 2011, it was 100mm above UK MSL, a difference 0f 175mm.

How about placing it on Hydraulic platforms, then the condition of the stonework can be more easily inspected ( as well as allowing a lift to get more boats through the bridge.)