Vaughan

Or put it down to a Parsons or TMP gearbox. I quite agree with you. So did I . Best we don't talk about that, of course . . . .

I thought you said that you had only been a member here since 2018? Sorry, silly question . . . All the same, this photo is a long way out of date, in terms of present day safety precautions, which, I think, was the object of this thread.

I have been looking again at this and there is something missing, isn't there? There are no channel marker posts and the casualty is on the inside of the bend, where the water is always more shallow, on an alluvial river. The bottom around there shelves very steeply in hard mud, so you only need to make a mistake of about 10 feet in your course, and you have had it! So the boat has grounded its keel on an angled bottom, which has allowed it to "fall over the edge" when the tide went down, until water came in through vents in the topsides (see Andy's post) and that was the end of it. If you were to take a photo of that same bend now, I think you would see a rather different vista, of danger warning markers all round the corner. Which indicates (I sincerely hope) that safety is continually reviewed on the Broads.

It is very confusing! I have spent many sleepless nights over it. The French have 4 categories of waterway, of which hire boats are only allowed on the 4th category. There is also a big difference between "homologation" which is type approval ; and "immatriculation" which is registration to navigate. So a boat may well be "homologué" but that does not mean it is "immatriculé"! This is also why you never see the Albion with more than 12 passengers. If not she would need handrails all round and life rafts all over the hatch covers. Perish the thought!

I can't remember either to be honest! Not without Googling it but they basically concern the wave height that a vessel can cope with, and the distance offshore that they are allowed "from shelter".

That may well be true but I was, of course, talking of boats built by a boatyard, for sale as either private or hire. It may be worth mentioning that there is no specific regulation for the building of inland waterways boats, as far as I know. The BSS is probably the closest that we come to it but even that is a safety standard rather than a building standard. In Europe on inland waterways, all boats have to be ERCD cat. D, which is the minimum offshore standard. Commercial boatyards will normally build boats to Cat.C as this lets them sell their designs as offshore as well as inland vessels. I sometimes use Ranworthbreeze as an example of this, as she was built by Birchwood to Cat. C, but is being used on the Broads in Cat. D conditions. The big Broom hire boats, which are the same design as the Crown Classique, are also built to Cat. C

And how many like that, have there been since? Compared to the hundreds of thousands, even millions, who have since cruised that waterway in peace and tranquility?

And what do you do, once they are moored there in Pye's Mill? Give them a parking ticket maybe.

This is the Geest Line's beautiful old ship "Geestbay", a refrigerated banana boat which traded in the British islands of the Caribbean. To get round the Board of Trade regulation, she only carried 12 paying passengers. As this accommodation had been designed for directors of the Geest Line, it was somewhat spacious and luxurious! She used to moor in the Pool of London, more or less where HMS Belfast now moors. So I have been under Tower Bridge, in her.

I must say that my time on British Gas platforms in the North Sea was the safest environment that I have ever worked in.

We're talking about why the limits are in place. You can't have hire boats that don't fit the system otherwise there'll be problems. I think Fred was replying to posts about training.

Any boat built after 1996, private or hire, must be built to ERCD and is certified for a number of persons. It must also have a plaque in the wheelhouse to show this. The limit of 12 (plus a skipper) comes from the Board of Trade regulation, where anything above that becomes a passenger ship, which requires all sorts of equipment such as life rafts or lifeboats; safety railings and must also carry a doctor on board.

Funny that the big Broom boats have a beam of 4.2. metres, but they don't seem to be able to go anywhere interesting on the tributaries of the Yare? Mind you they do, as I have often seen them . . . .

The length limit on hire boats in Europe is 15 metres - about 45ft. Beyond that, it becomes a hotel barge, which needs a different licence and a skipper.

When the reputation and professionalism of traditional Broads businesses is repeatedly impugned, on a Broads forum, then explanations must be given to refute the suggestions and allegations. Even if the person making them, doesn't seem to listen to the answers. You may call that going round in circles but it has come to feel like deliberate trolling.

St Luke 4 : 23. King James version.

I have taken a great deal of trouble, yet again, in answering your "genuine questions" without, I hope, getting too frustrated in the process. And yet I end up just getting lectured by you in this manner. Your remark about entertaining and interesting tales is an insult to those of us who take the trouble to share them, as well as an insult to the forum itself. Your comment that I have quoted is probably worth reporting but I don't wish to bother the moderators with it. My God, twenty-one pages later, you are never going to give up on this, are you?

I thought you said you didn't know about trains! I quite agree. I have never had a DCC layout but have seen them being operated and was not impressed. If you have DC, then you have to "set up the road" by switching the points correctly, before a train will run. With DCC you can start any engine, regardless of where it is or where it is going, and simply crash it into things! That is what I meant by running it more like a real railway. DC has to be wired up with a bit of thought, so that the current feed is always going towards a "facing" point but once you have done it, I think it its much the best way.

Thanks, I did realise that but I didn't want to make my post any longer than it already was! Do you mean that Gas Safe is a joke, or GORGI? I turned out to be the only CORGI gas fitter looking after more than 400 hire boats in France, as there is no equivalent qualification in French law. So I got my own documentation together (in two languages) and gave courses on the bases to the mechanics. Which of course, is against the rules of CORGI but it was a lot better than nothing. You have to do the best you can!

Yes they do. They sell brass tube or brass rod in various sizes. They are on the Plumstead Rd just across from the Heartsease Pub and they have their own parking down the side of the shop.

Talking of machinery, I am lucky enough to have come away with all 10 fingers after a career on boatbuilding yards. A lot of people haven't. I well remember Billy Grapes, who was foreman boatbuilder at Percivals, back in the 60s. He had been injured by a bandsaw when he was an apprentice and was always known as "Five Pints". This was because when he wanted to buy a round of drinks in the New Inn at Horning, he would come up to the bar, hold up the thumb and forefinger of his left hand (which was all he had left) and call "Five pints please, Gilly!"

Just to point out that the personal and public liability insurance involved in that would be totally prohibitive. It might also require a training licence from the local authority. After all, boatyards have licences.

Funnily enough I have been thinking about this overnight and I was going to talk a bit about trial runs this morning. I will start with two absolutely true statements : 1/. In 40 odd years I don't think I have ever given a run without forgetting to tell them something or another. And that's with or without a check tick list. More often than not, I forgot to tell them how to stop the engine! 2/. I am certain that I have never given the same trial run twice. All trial runs are different as all customers are different. It is a personal and hands-on interaction between the instructor and his clients. This is what a video or a manual can never make up for. And now as to staff training. I know some seem to imagine us as local yokels having a good time on the river making money out of innocent tourists but there are a lot of risks around a boatyard and yes, a lot of staff training is involved. Can you imagine the risks involved in hauling a 12 ton cruiser up a slipway into a shed, using a winch wire running through pulleys at different angles and strains? Or lifting one out of the water on webbing straps, under a crane and then positioning it on a trailer? Have you seen what happens when a boat falls off its chocks in a gale in winter? We know all these risks and we train our staff for them. Of course we do! Then there are all the factory regulations (it is a factory) for the woodworking machines, pillar drills, lathes and power tools. Anyone who touches gas is CORGI qualified. If you have a table saw or (worse) a planer in your garage, have you had formal professional training in its safe use? Our staff have. So training staff to do a trial run is equally important and yes, we do a lot of it actually. If you have invested over a quarter of a million Pounds in a new boat that you want to last for 20 years, you don't want to see it wrapped round a bridge pier in Reedham just because one of the lads didn't do the trial run properly. My job involved training staff on 15 different bases in France and I did it by getting all the mechanics on a boat and giving them a trial run, as though they were novice hirers. They could then ask questions, discuss and make suggestions, since every cruising area is different, so its trial run is also different. A run on the River Lot, or in Alsace, is a very different thing from the Canal du Midi, or the Charente. The instructor also needs to be able to tell his own story. He knows what he has to cover but he must develop his own personal "performance" with a few little jokes thrown in, to keep people's attention! Reading things off a risk assessment tick list is nowhere near good enough. During this training we established that a basic trial run to novices on a modern cruiser with all the electrics, takes 45 minutes minimum. If the hirer doesn't pick up the boat handling part first time, then it can easily take an hour and a half. So you have to have enough staff to get all the boats out on a busy turnaround day. My staff were always told that once you are giving a trial run, then it takes as long as it takes, until the customer is happy. No-one ever got criticised by me for taking too long over it! Finally on the matter of day boats. Just imagine if Broads Tours in Wroxham had to spend 40 minutes instructing each one of all those day boats that they let out on a Sunday morning in August. Some of them for only a couple of hours anyway. They wouldn't still be in business.

If you are making a railway for a boy it will need to be something with a lot of activity. Lots of points and sidings for plenty of interest, but it doesn't matter too much if it is not accurately prototypical, so long as it runs well. Peco make very good simple track work. It will also need to very robust, as young boys can be a bit rough on things. Hornby are famous for making trains that young children can throw at each other across a bedroom, but might still work afterwards! You will also need to decide from the start whether you want DCC control, or traditional DC analogue. I prefer DC as the points can insulate trains on the sidings and it tends to lend itself to the realistic running of a railway model. It would be far too late now, for me to put DCC chips in all my models. I have found also that all the "realistic" running that you get with DCC is not a lot of good if you don't have perfect current contact with the track. I find DC a lot more reliable. At my age, I get far more fun out of trying to make the layout look like a real railway and don't care much whether I actually run trains or not but I started with a layout that my father built me as a boy. On a boat! If you buy a locomotive for your son and the first thing he wants to do is pull it apart to see how it works and then put it back together again, you may have a young railway modeller on your hands! Have fun!

AND NEVER HAVE.