Vaughan

Well said Fred!

Oh, the Whitlingham gravel pits, you mean?

Just to add, Electrolux are now marketing a fully room-sealed gas fridge, and for the first time ever, they are actually announcing it as suitable for marine use. Up to now they have always denied this and said that their fridges are for caravans, but not boats. They are very expensive, though. In the case of MM's problem, a room sealed fridge would not have ignited the gas from a leak elsewhere in the boat.

I agree but would also ask - were you on board the boat and smelled a leak? If not, were the gas bottles turned off, when you were not aboard? And was the gas tap beside the cooker turned off when not in use? All these things are safety features with this sort of problem in mind. In fact, the vast proportion of gas leaks that I have cured, have been from the burner taps on cookers. You need a large amount of gas in a boat before it explodes and it has to be at exactly the right mixture with air - known as the explosive range, which is very small. Too little gas or too much, mixed with air and it will not burn. It is also a bizarre fact that people who are in a boat during a gas explosion are very often not injured. It doesn't do the boat a lot of good, though!

Excuse me for not reading this until this morning - I was a bit busy last night! Answer is yes, you are quite right and I have seen one or two systems like this on French canal hire boats - at the luxury end of the market! I have also run boats with a Peachment 2.5 KW hydraulic generator on 220V, to power three aircon units while cruising. When moored, you plug the aircon into the bank. They also had dual purpose electric/gas cooking hobs and a microwave, all run by the generator. These though, were Crown built boats I was running in the U.S. for Crown Blue Line, On the Erie Canal and in Florida. I still don't think it is suitable for Broads boats! Technically, all these things can be done and I have seen them done, but it comes at a price, and I don't think it is worth it, on a Broads hire boat. At the moment, I have no doubt that the only sensible way to cook on a boat is with gas. People seem to be worried about safety with gas but I am not! If the pipework and appliances are installed according to BSS the likelihood of a gas leak is negligible and you would very soon smell it. If the burner is burning with a blue flame, with no yellow in it, then it is NOT putting CO into the boat, no matter what some may fear. If the boat has proper fixed ventilation in living spaces (which every hire boat has, by law) then CO2 is not a problem either. Incidentally, gas fridges do not cause explosions. Not on their own. The naked flame of the pilot light, low down on the galley floor, may be the ignition source of an explosion caused by something else, usually petrol vapour, in the old days. I have been revising the BSS for private boats recently and it doesn't actually say you cannot have a gas fridge on your boat. It just says that it must be manufactured as a fully room-sealed unit, if your boat has a petrol engine.

Funny, I was looking for that photo, to post yesterday, and couldn't find it on my computer! The free mooring area is (was) on the shoreside of the basin in front of the shower block. The leccy points are on a pontoon on the other side. I imagine that if they are no longer letting hire boats next year, they will revert to paid overnight moorings for all comers.

You are right, and I know a big company in France who run a lot of their boats on 24 volts, but it doesn't work. The problem is this : If you wire two batteries in parallel, you double the amp/hours capacity. If you wire two batteries in series, you only double the voltage, but not the capacity. 24 volts is for when you want "cold cranking amps", to turn over a big 6 cylinder diesel in a truck.

This amounts to the old saying : Whatever you fit on a hire boat - it has to be HIRER PROOF!

In the photo we are discussing, the fast fuse is on the domestic feed from the charge splitter. So if that blew, the alternator would still be charging the starter battery. I wonder?

If your shower water is going in the bilge, you will very soon smell it! One of the most awful pongs you can get on a boat. It is a good idea to fit a shower water filter between the tray and the pump and take the cap off to clean it regularly. Hair is the worst thing for shower pumps. Other than that, the tray may have been removed because it was leaking?

Just a word on submersible bilge pumps. They do not physically pump water or lift it, in the way that the engine raw water pump does. They are centrifugal pumps, which stir up the water inside them and then throw it up a pipe by centrifugal force. This means they will not lift the water much more than a couple of feet. So if you think your pump is not very powerful, have a look at where the outlet pipe comes out of the hull. If it is too high up, bring it closer to the waterline of the boat.

Are you sure this is a bilge pump arrangement? A diaphragm pump is not normally used as a bilge pump, as the slightest bit of dirt in the valves will stop them working. The old rubber impeller pump would normally be used as a small fresh water pump or a shower tray pump. Both of them use too many amps to be useful as a bilge pump, without running down the starter battery. One of them only has one pipe connected (!) and neither of them seem to be wired up to a circuit. I think you will find that the diaphragm pump has a built in pressure switch, not suitable for a bilge pump. I would be inclined to chuck that lot out and go for a good old PAR submersible pump with a float switch, either built in or separate. Much cheaper than trying to replace either of those two!

Me too!

I think this is what I was trying to say myself. Broads hire boats normally do not have a fuse on the charging circuit, nor on the direct cable from the battery to the starter motor. So would a normal boatyard engineer have known that he might be looking for a blown fuse, if the batteries were discharged? The more complicated it gets, the more difficult it can be to diagnose, and mend.

Without annv or I going into any further detail, I think this shows how complicated things can get when hire boats get sophisticated. There is an old principle of physics : If you want energy, you have always got to pay for it. A 90 amp alternator takes just under 5 horsepower off an engine. So fitting 2 of them, to power all the domestics, takes 10 HP off what is only a 40 HP engine in the first place! So you fit a big turbo engine to still give you shaft horsepower and also feed the electric supply to the galley. And then think about the extra fuel consumption. And the list goes on. In my view, keep it simple and enjoy a basic, trouble free boating holiday!

So do you think this Waveney boat may have blown a fast fuse on the alternator charging circuit?

An interesting photo which I have been looking at for quite a few minutes! There is no doubt that the boat we are discussing would have to be fitted with a circuit similar to this and as far as I can see, this is simply part of the "domestic" battery circuit, with the charger/inverter on top and a very heavy duty charge splitter beneath it. I wondered where the 220volt circuit was but of course, that is hidden behind insulated conduits, as it should be (must be) in a boat. The domestic battery looks like something of around 220 amp/hours and may not be the only one! There will also be a starter battery, out of sight to the right of the photo. I also think there will be a lot of 220 volt kit off to the left of the photo! Not sure what the little red box is at the bottom, but I am sure it is doing something useful! I notice your use of fast fuses on the main domestic feed and (I think) the starter circuit. These are not normal on a conventional Broads circuit but are often fitted nowadays, with all the amperage involved. Could this have been the problem, on the boat we are talking about? When you start up an engine and ask the alternator to accept the load on a large bank of "flat" batteries, it might well blow a fuse! Or if no fuse fitted, it might well burn out.

Not on hire boats, I am sorry to say! When someone has dropped the knob off the Morse control down the toilet, there is not a lot left of the macerator afterwards. You may not believe me - but I have known it happen twice!

WRC already employs a big team, to maintain a large site and all the facilities, so I don't suppose turning round 4 or 5 hire boats on a Saturday would be too much of a problem of logistics. A boating holiday needs two things : a starting base, and a "destination". The destination is the area that you will cruise in and daily destinations are pubs or villages along the cruise. The base is a different matter. Just the place you start and finish from and where you leave your car. But it must also have other services nearby : a shop, a pub for lunch on arrival, a bank, a doctor's surgery, a post office, perhaps a launderette and maybe even a vet! You will never get all of these things in a perfect spot but the more available, the more convenient the base. Back in the 60s there was a canal company letting narrowboats out of the centre of Birmingham (maybe still are) and someone in Blakes said "who wants to go on holiday in Birmingham?" Answer, maybe no-one, but that's not the point! The holiday is spent cruising the lovely canal system in the Birmingham area but the start base is very convenient! Straight off the train onto the boat! Same applies to the Broads, in towns such as Brundall, Wroxham, Potter or Oulton Broad. They are the main boating centres because they had the best access, back in the 60s. Even Martham Boats is on that site because there was a railway station. So in the principle of the thing I see the WRC as more of a cruising destination than a convenient hire boat base. And I am looking forward to my next visit there, whenever that may be!

I think this also may be a wise guess. The activities on the site revolve largely around the pub and the other facilities that it offers. Pubs are not very easy things to run commercially, these days!

It's easy to indulge in speculation, and I see even Marshman is tempted, although he denies it, as usual! Knowing Len as I do, he will place his boats where they will be the more commercial. He has only hired them out of WRC for a couple of seasons, so maybe the trial was not a success? I have often said on here, that a hire yard must be in a good position for access, hence why almost all of them are beside old railway stations and are easily accessible by road. The WRC is not, but that may not affect their trade in lodges, camper vans, yurts and glamping, which all generate day boat hire but maybe not weekly cabin cruisers. We are all told that next year is going to be fabulous, as all the bookings are flooding in and you can't get a boat "for love nor money". That is until next June, when you find you have to cancel your booking, as you are not allowed to travel from your own home to Norfolk. Just as is happening right now, this October. We don't know what next year is going to be like yet.

I hope it had the sense to "keep its social distance"?

I am waiting to see the video of her retrieving her first pheasant!

But we now have something else to concern us! I see in the EDP that a Rufous Bush Chat has been sighted on the North Norfolk Coast. Quite what sort of expert was needed to actually notice one of these things, I can't think but apparently the last time one of them was seen on our shores it was pecking the foil off school milk bottles. So what must now be done to protect this visitor? Will we see Rufous Bush Chat bridges being built over the NDR, on its predicted migratory flight path? Or will vital road improvements to the Acle Straight be held up for another 4 years in case the little ***** wants to set up home with us on the Halvergate Marshes? Maybe it should be encouraged to come and live on Gt Hoveton, where Natural England are already in place to spend whatever public funds are necessary to "protect" it and Bewilderwood can sell "spot the Bush Chat" paddle board outings? As long as it doesn't start eating the fleas, which have got the next ten years to get on with eating the algae? Maybe soon, we can text £2 a month to RUFOUS and will send us a Christmas card?

Good for them. I hope their challenge succeeds. Challenges back in the 60s, to open HGB to navigation, did not succeed and it was a quango that blocked them. I can't remember what Natural England was called back then, but "a rose by any other name . . ". From what I have seen on the Broads, green algae is cured by improved water quality, not fleas. So if you want to keep HGB as a closed off stagnant pond, so be it. If they want to get the fish out of it, let the otters in it. Better still, keep all the otters in it and control them on the rest of the river system. That will give the fish stocks a much better chance! This may seem a frivolous remark but if you are going to mess about with the balance of Nature, where do you stop? A 100 million pound benefit to the Broads economy from angling? Really? Sounds as though they can afford the legal fees, then!