TheQ

Sadly with these roundabout markings, it's not one hundred percent certain which lane you should be in and with directions showing two lanes into one with only a car length to do it in it's just a recipe for disaster..

The Cremated Swan has even more plastic wrapping now. More importantly they've removed the traffic lights as of yesterday afternoon. My worry would be some Womble will clip the scaffolding, I know in the last ten years at least two have attempted to drive through the swan but been stopped by the BIG wooden fence posts..

Being a Elysian Centre cockpit, I have three Bilge areas.. The forward area, the bilge is also where the shower water goes, so it gets wet in use, and has a Bilge pump The engine Area used to get a small amount of water oil / when we had a BMC 1500, But a mop up every few months, took care of it.. now we are all electric not a drop, no pump. The aft area, has the stern gland in it, I Yet to see more than a drop out of that and only when I'm topping up the grease. , no pump. At the moment the bilge pump is run from1/4 of the drive batteries (Solar charged), if it needs more than that, then there must be a very big hole. Eventually for safeties sake, each compartment will get it's own pump.

Having driven a section..... Ok which PRATT designed the roundabouts?..... The roundabouts are 3 lanes, at the most any road coming into them has 2 lanes... When you come onto the roundabout there is no Flow, if you are turning left it is a HARD left turn to go onto the outer lane. When leaving the round about you have those who've done a hard left and those who are going to that exit from the other entrances in the middle lane. How long is the merge area for the two? about a car length. I predict a LOT of accidents...

A friend works for MOD procurement, they always have to put out for tender to get three competitive tenders... even if the product is only made by one company...

From a model railway forum.... Back of an envelope calculation on the leak: the aircraft carrier is 70,600 tonnes displacement according to wikipedia the leak is said to be 200 litres/hour of sea water according to the BBC 1 tonne is 1000 litres of water so the leak is 1 tonne every 5 hours which equates to the entire displacement of the vessel in 353000 hours = 14708 days = about 40 years for £1 you can buy a 10 litre bucket in Halfords (possibly mil-spec ones are more expensive) you'd need 20 buckets/hour, or one every 5 minutes, to empty the unwanted water the aircraft carrier has a crew of 679 I think they can survive for a little while longer, even if the officers don't get their feet wet.

or a Nimbus 2000

Oh good I'll give the Wroxham rd to Coltishall road section a try tomorrow morning, it should have been open 15 minutes by the time I get there. It will save a couple minutes every day to work and one less trip through Coltishall evey day.

The cremated Swan now has a roof on it, well about 10 foot above Chiminey height, the Cremated Swan is now enveloped by scaffolding, and that has a roof, I suspect that plastic will shortly cover the sides of the scaffolding As well. Strangely still no work starting on the adjoining properties, onw owuld have thought it all needs doing together.

Saturday, went to a pub with Broadland Model Railway Club, where the pub had problems the pubs central heating had flooded the place in the morning. Luckily the dinnning room had a log burner, and while we were there extra heaters were arriving. This dod not stop us having a very good meal, after which we went to SWMBO's weaving group, which convienently was just over the road. they were having a "make things for Christmas" day. I caused some excitement, as of course, I was wearing a kilt.... Sunday, being sailing day it was off down to the sailing club .. eventually, the landrover was in an ice cube, much chiselling and spraying of de-icer. Driving out of our gate and turned left. The landrover slid right... The roads for the next 5 miles were sheet ice, it had obviously rained after the roads surfaces had frozen. After that it was gritted roads till the sailing club. We got the rescue boats out as usual the one I was preparing went one cylinder for a while, till it warmed up. After loading with Buoys we did a circuit of the island, ice breaking. Once the buoys were out another circuit of the island breaking more ice. After bacon butties time for racing. Rigging the boats, was difficult, all the ropes were frozen stiff... Weather Westerly mostly but varying right round to south. Wind nothing to not a lot, dry, sunny to start, clouding rapidly. Bouys in their normal places, buoy 1, 200 yards down river from the club, buoy 2 outside the club, buoy 3 half a mile upriver at the bend, buoy 4 further on outside Black Horse broad. Race 1 course 3P, 1P, 2P. We started at the starboard end of the line, with two other boats. Three others started at the port end of the line. As it turned out once several tacks were had, we were 5th so it was the wrong choice, everything was moving quite slowly. Rounding buoy 3, spinnakers up and that went well. We chose the left hand bank against the tide, the others the right. Our choice was right, when we moved slowly across to the right hand bank for the right hand bend we dropped our spinnaker as did the others. On rounding the corner we were right behind the others, I had to swerve a bit to lose speed or we would have run into the back of them. As we slowly closed, a gap appeared and we slid close up on the bank. This meant when we cleared the bank of trees we got the wind first and pulled out into a clear second place. On rounding, buoy 1 we chased on after the lead boat. Those behind getting in a mess, all trying to go round the buoy at the same time. We then followed the lead boat all the way up to buoy 3, rounding that and again choosing the left hand bank. The lead boat the right, When we crossed the river the corner we were ahead. We rounded the corner and then buoy 3 in the lead. We chose the right hand side for more wind, the second place boat the middle. My choice was the wrong one, the tide had got stronger, and they over took us by tide power. That gave them the inside at buoy 2 and they beat us into second place by less than a boat length. After a partial defrost. Race 2, course 4P, 2P. We made another bad start, so bad we were last, tacking up to The bend we were at least close to the next boat, which we passed on the bend, On rounding the bend all boats were keeping to the right hand bank, but for the odd tree which forced us out. At one we tacked out and almost stopped, getting further behind. Just after rounding buoy 4 the boat we had passed, re-passed us and we followed it all the way down to buoy 2, but when it was time to drop the spinnakers, theirs jammed as they rounded the Buoy, so they stopped as the spinnaker wrapped round the mast, we slid past and got the bell finishing second to last. By this time it was raining, with the forecast for hours of rain, we all packed up, at least the ice melted...

There's not a street light within a mile of here, and the nearest pub is about two miles. I gave up staggering anywhere 40 years ago..

What's a street light? no such thing round here...(for much of Norfolk)

I've seen them laughing at work (the brain dead ones) when I put my full gear on to ride home on my Motorscooter in the summer. What they fail to appreciate is; A, the above posts. B, My L plated Motorscooter is a top of the range 125 (not a 50CC moped)and quite capable of doing 70mph, so even more reason to be fully kitted out... If you take take your CBT now, they actually advise against Steel toe caps, reckoning it will bend your toes back and break them... I ignore that, with steel toecaps you'll still have some toes to be repaired... I stopped wear shorts when I could, so that was... A, when I left primary school ( grey shorts were the uniform all year round) B, when I stopped having people shouting at me round a sports field / air field in the RAF. My legs can however be occationally seen. Next time on Saturday, when I wear one of my kilts to the Broadland Model Railway Club Christmas Dinner..

Norfolk 06:30 Monday... still raining.... 12 miles from this sign post, I got snowed in at RAF Locking for a week, in the late 1970s. 3 ft deep it was. Much more interesting I spent many hours sailing in ever decreasing circles on Cheddar revervoir..

No snow No high winds. What we've had is light winds, mostly drizzle, light rain, but it has been continuous, wet... So Sunday being sailing day, I was off down to the club. Weather as above, wind direction south Easterly, later Easterly, zero to maybe 15 mph. Due to the unusual wind direction, buoy 1 was placed well down river at the first bend down river from the club past the New Inn, we brought 2 half way back to the club outside the New Inn, buoy 3 outside the club and buoy 4 at the first corner up river from the club. The start line was heavily inclined so it was a long way from the inside of the bend on the far side of the river.. Race 1, 1P, 3P, 4P We decided to start at the club end of the line and reached there unchallenged. One boat was behind us, and one still in the dyke which, as we were going the opposite way to normal was behind the line. We started first, but the boat which was in the dyke was close behind and the third boat close behind them. The wind meant it as a long tack on port, short tack on starboard after a couple of tacks boat 2 got a lift and was able to sail along the bank for longer whereas we had tacked earlier. When we came back from the other bank they were on starboard so we had to give way. A couple of tacks later and they were clear ahead. We were down to second, we were about 60 ft behind when we rounded buoy 1. Up spinnakers, Genoa's in. The other boat wandered off course during this and nearly hit the bank. They chose to sail on the right to middle of the course, we chose the left as it had more wind and less of the outgoing tide. We quickly drew alongside and they moved across the river to cover us. We each took several turns to lead, but when we reached buoy 3, they were alongside, we had the inside rounding the buoy. We dropped our spinnaker and sailed on under Genoa, they tacked their spinnaker. We drew ahead but when the wind came right for them they caught us, just then the wind came more ahead they were forced to drop the spinnaker and while they were doing that we drew well ahead. For the rest of that lap we drew further ahead, and kept that for the rest of the race. Race 2 and 3 didn't happen for us, our competitors got too soggy and gave up. The dinghies did do one more race during which one dinghy hit a tree, broke it's mast and capsized. Our rescue boats raced off to fish him out of the river, but by the time they got there he was sitting on the upturned hull. Apologies to a motor boat called Dilligaf moored on Horning staithe, which the wash from the rescue boats caused to rock and roll. After putting the boats away, a cup of soup and cheese rolls it was time to paddle my way home. Several places on the way home had puddles right across the river.. Then it was time for ., A long hot bath....

We just got very wet from rainfall during racing in Horning.

My favourite is XCweather, it has the almost live reports from all the weather stations around the country (including weather buoys) and you can click on them for a forecast, or you can type in your post code and get a forecast from that. http://xcweather.co.uk/ Currently gusting 72 at Wick or 42 at Weybourne...

Sadly that means it still won't work as an Elysian has a V hull for the front half, and a flat -ish rear half with a beam coming out of the bottom of the V to the bottom of the steering Gear.

An Elysian 27, 8m length *2.8m width*0.6m draft*0.8 twenty percent off=10.7tons ish An Elysian 27 weighs 2.6 tons....

Generally NO, the water displaced by the mass / weight of your boat, is the same weight as your boat. However, there is a slight increase in front of your boat as you push the water forward, and a slight decrease behind your boat as you leave a hole in the water..

I don't know, I built a boat with out telling SWMBO.... Mind you I was 3000miles from home at the time..

or for more entertainment sail gently past moored hireboats during the night (during the 3 rivers race)

Many of these dogs are not trained to attack, they are often those trained for mine, UXB, hidden explosives detection..

Well, not really my day, But while surfing the net just now I have just found...