Vaughan

I particularly like your last paragraph Andy!

Without for a moment trying to pre-empt the findings of an enquiry, I must say I have always been rather anxious about the design of the back end of some new hire boats. The deck is right down at water level (which must only just conform with ERCD regs) and a short adult or child standing there may not be seen by the helmsman at either of the two helm positions, owing to the high seat backrests on the flybridge. You walk straight out of a full height back cabin door, onto a little aft deck about a foot and a half wide. Rather like walking out of the window of your beach hotel room onto the little balcony. But you would expect that balcony to have a rail around it. That said, I don't like "pushpit" rails on rivers or canals as they are an obstruction when mooring and rope handling. Even so, in some designs, maybe they are essential?

I'll drink to that! Oh, perhaps that's not the right expression to use . . .

And the same statistics can also prove two sides of an argument. There have been two prop related deaths this year. that is if the second one involved the prop which we don't know yet. When was the last one? There was a serious injury in Acle a couple of years ago but not fatal, I believe. When was the one before that? Can't remember. How many people (to the nearest hundred thousand) have enjoyed injury free Broads holidays in the last 3 years?

Thank you very much for that Peter. I have just had a read of that over my morning coffee and I highly recommend it to those concerned by this subject. It is objective, sensible and also well written. I will quote just this one of their final sentences : There can be no substitute for the safe operation of a power boat and if you do elect to fit a prop guard this should be seen as nothing more than a last resort. I would also add that rescue ribs have out board motors. So if the prop guard gets clogged you can clear it in seconds by cranking up the outboard, and without having to dive under the boat or perhaps even haul it out. They are also very easily damaged by grounding.

It has often been commented, that it never rains or blows a gale, in brochure photos!

So that's who you are! I knew I recognised your style from somewhere! HORACE BATCHELOR. Peddler of dreams of making money, that never came to anything, in reality. Thank Goodness, when lying under my boarding school bedcovers with a torch, listening to Luxembourg on my crystal set, I was too young to be taken in by all your "old squit"!

Are you quoting yourself for extra emphasis, Peter? Actually, I don't think those figures mean any more, as such, than the latest virus predictions. If the yards (or more likely the tourist press) are saying that first timers were 30% that infers that the regulars must be 60% which hasn't happened since the late 50s. You just can't tell how many are regulars as they change loyalty to boatyards as well as booking agents. Some just book on line. The only true way to tell is to ask customers to fill in a satisfaction form. That way you have their details on file. So I know for sure that Crown Blue Line had a figure of 35% regular customers during the 90s and "naughties". Not bad, for a company marketing all over the world! Things like lectures, classes and film shows have been tried many times with limited if any success. Personally I think the yards have a very solid system and tradition behind them and there is no need for extra measures. They know what they are doing and they will cope with this influx. What next year will bring, we can have no idea. Anyone who could predict the whims of the Great British Heaving Public would be a lot richer than any of us!

I remember the effect that a warship's air search radar could have on a stereo cassette player, if you were on another ship moored nearby. Also why the officer of the watch would have to have a board in his possession on the bridge, which physically switched the radar off, before anyone was allowed to climb the masts.

I don't know if it's true or not but I was once told by a friend at RAF Coltishall that if the Cold War had turned nasty and they ever had to put that radar at Neatishead on full power, it would have blown out the cathode ray tubes in every television in north Norfolk. Very glad to hear that the club is still functioning!

Hire boatyards don't like maggots. If a fisherman spills maggots in the aft well (sometimes they bring gallon tubs of them) they happily wriggle off into the warmth and dry of the bilge, where they then hatch out into bluebottles. Thousands of them. What's more, it doesn't happen to the hirers who dropped the maggots. They hatch about a week later, on next weeks hirers. Usually starting around 3 o'clock in the morning. there is absolutely nothing you can do except take the boat off hire and leave it with all the windows open, for about a week. Always leave your pot of maggots in the gas bottle locker, where they can't escape into the boat.

My grandmother owned an open air public swimming pool in Horley, Surrey and when the pool was closed, she used to dangle me over the edge in a roller towel and walk along the side while I did the breast-stroke swimming motions. She gradually took less and less weight on the towel until I was swimming on my own. Living on a boat meant having to wear a horrible old cork and canvas lifejacket, and my mother told me that as soon as I could swim two lengths of Lakenham swimming baths, in Norwich, I could leave off the lifejacket. I managed that just after my 4th birthday. I agree with Tim, you get to a point where you are just as comfortable in the water as out of it. But that shouldn't make us complacent, of course.

One thing I did notice, was how a hire cruiser had to go over to the far left side of the river, going under Foundry Bridge, to get out of the way of a couple of paddle boarders, who obviously didn't have a care in the World. That is certainly unsafe. And what about the canoe, marked "pub and paddle"? How do you separate the drinking out of that one?

That had occurred to me! This is one pub that will stay open regardless of hours, or any other pettifogging regulations. Just as the real thing no doubt did, in the 1950s!

You and me both!

Funny that. I was about to say the same thing about you. In which case, you haven't listened to a word I have written in answer to your questions. And yet you accuse others of having incontravertible opinions?

Actually, I already have a model of my father's old Standard Vanguard, and that is exactly where it will be parked!

It's been a while since I posted an update, as I have been busy on some fine detail! The mock up of the pub has now become the actual model : The shell of the building is thick card, used for mounting picture frames. The flint paper and brick paper is from a company called Scale Model Scenery and the pantiles are from Wills and Slaters plastic sheets. All the rest is hand made including the window frames. The centre window is modelled as a genuine sash window in two separate layers but it took so long to make it that I didn't really think it was worth it, in such a small scale! There is a long way to go yet! Now that it is seated into the baseboard, it needs gutters and downpipes. Also concrete steps to the front doors. Then a lot of weathering, to make it look very old, instead of brand new. There will be an extension at the back for the new ladies and gents' toilets. Quite a luxury, for a country pub of the 1950s! There will be a back yard with flint walled outbuildings, a car park and a garden. At the front, the main road going by, with perhaps some garden seats, a telephone box, and a bus stop. Susie is also insisting on climbing roses, a bit of wisteria and some hanging baskets. So some way to go yet! Materials have probably cost around £20 as I had a lot of stuff already in stock. Labour hours? No idea, but perhaps around 180, plus all the googling and researching old books.

Well well! I sank a few pints in there, in my youth!

You didn't like "fatuous" so let's try spurious allegation. Are you suggesting that modern boats on the Broads have not been built to E.R.C.D. category D, or do not have a BSS certificate? What are you now saying that "the BA want to clamp down on"? I know a lot of boat building yards on the Broads who would strongly resent a remark like that.

I suppose one could take this sort of argument forward, to the thought that I don't need to wear a lifejacket as I am an expert who works the tides. I am therefore always in still water and can simply swim to the bank, where all the rescue services will be waiting to give of their voluntary time to care for me?

I would add that HGVs are limited by road speed, according to the tachograph. They are not limited by engine revs, when going through as many as 16 forward gears.

I used the word fatuous, in its meaning of silly, as I couldn't imagine you were serious, so I gave an equally silly reply. Perhaps it is the way you post sometimes, which could seem as though you are trying a bit of a wind-up? Anyway, if you are serious about limiting all motor boats on the Broads, then I think you are wrong. Not in my experience, having grown up with the tides on the Yare. That suggests a Devil-may-care attitude and again, I hope you are not serious?

Reading back on this, I have just remembered another very important matter, when cutting down boat speed by limiting the revs of the engine. Hydraulic drive, or a PRM "twin disc" gearbox will give the same shaft revolutions in astern, as in ahead. The TMP, or especially the Borg Warner, also the old Parsons, do not. These boxes need high revs on the engine to have effective stern power, so if you cut the engine revs to say 1800, you will end up with your boats hitting the quay when mooring, as they can't go astern properly. There is also the fact that a fine pitch propeller needs high revs to give effective power in astern. Another reason why the limiting of revs on hire boats is a "hands on" skill. A delicate balance between cutting speed, or cutting safety in boat handling.

Such a fatuous remark deserves a response in kind. So let's have a minimum speed limit for kayaks and paddleboards in a main river navigation, like they have on Belgian motorways. I suggest 3 MPH. Let's let the buggers paddle for it!!