Vaughan

In which case, to get yourself "bedded in" to a new area for your operation, I suggest the Prince of Wales Rd in Norwich, in the early hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning, when the night clubs turn out. Nothing to do with the Broads of course but responsible for a very large part of your overall average drowning statistics. And if you want to distribute leaflets around there, wear plenty of PPE!

You forgot the stepladder and the wheelbarrow.

I would certainly take issue with you on that, but we will leave it as "old history"! I am wondering whether you would be adding anything to what the Norfolk Police (Broadsbeat) are already doing, both on and off the water, by making regular patrols and offering most helpful and friendly advice to holidaymakers. This also goes, of course, for the comprehensive team of Broads Authority Rangers' launches as well as the attendants at their public moorings. Have you been in contact with either the B.A. or Broadsbeat, about your proposals? Also to mention the many hundreds of Broads private craft whose owners are already members of the RNLI and as such, are constantly alert to the need to keep watch for the safety of others. I am afraid I still don't see what you are going to add to what is already in place, but it sounds from what you say, that you are going to do it anyway.

Like Marshman I suggest, Sir, that your good intentions should be directed elsewhere. As an ex merchant mariner myself, I cannot see quite what these private patrols that you suggest, have to do with the Merchant Navy. The Norfolk Broads has one of the finest reputations for safety on inland waterways that I have ever heard of and this has been earned by over 100 years of experience on the part of boatyard businesses, navigation authorities and the pleasure boating public themselves. I find it a bit sad, frankly, that you seem to think we have all been here waiting for yet another "water watch" to come along and tell us all what we ought to be doing. No matter what figures you may quote for the number of deaths due to "unintentionally entering the water" they are about as meaningless as the latest virus statistics until you look at them in detail. I suggest to you (without going into detail) that the vast majority of such deaths on the Broads have not been anything to do with boats and are mostly the result of people staggering out of a pub in the dark and falling in the river. What we are all trying to do at the moment is to get pleasure boating on the Broads going again through this crisis, and not bog it down with even more regulation. If you are suggesting a sort of "neighbourhood watch" of your members going around in their private boats (presumably flying a flag) and reporting what they regard as safety issues, I really do not think that would be appropriate.

I am not sure that the TOS of the forum would allow me to advise you on that.

If you look at the ones at the bottom called Delphia Horizon you can see what I meant in my earlier comment. The Haines 29 (called a Capri) looks a snip at that price. Very nice boats, but depends on condition. Perhaps worth a look. Most of the photos seem to be taken at their base in the basin at St Jean de Losne on the river Saone, so they are probably in the hands of the broker there. As far as I can see, none of the photos called Nautilia are of a Nautilia (unless they have re-named a few) and only one of a Crusader, is actually of a Crusader. The Classiques and Crusaders are extremely well built (if I may say so) and they are a very comfortable boat. They will almost certainly need new engines and the ones actually for sale may not be in the same condition as shown in these photos. They seem to be scaling down their fleet drastically if they are selling all these, both old and new, but I don't notice many Connoisseur boats. Maybe with a different broker. I also saw yesterday that they have closed down one of their bases on the Canal du Midi.

Designed by Andy Wolstenholme, built at Crown Cruisers and operated by Crown Blue Line. LeBoat are not responsible for designing anything that I personally, would call a boat.

Big ocean-going yachts will have their cabins entirely below deck level, with just a skylight on deck to provide light and air. To give more headroom on a smaller yacht, there will be a central structure with side windows, under a coach roof. So would this area be the coach house, of a cabin? And is this why, on motor cruisers, we always call them cabin sides? I had never really thought of it before. If a cabin is below deck, then the underside of the deck which forms its ceiling is always called the deckhead. These are the terms my father always used, so they are good enough for me!

I have just looked it up, for what it's worth. I had a feeling it had something to do with yachts. A coach roof is over a part of the cabin that is above deck level. A coach house roof is usually the structure over a companionway, which protects it from the weather.

Debatable point. A boat certainly can have a "coach roof", so presumably that is over the coach house?

That would probably be a lot safer for a hire boat than where you see it, in Venice, in the same channel, outside the Doge's Palace, that is used by all the "joyriding" cruise ships. For some strange reason hire boats are allowed to cruise there, even though Italian law restricts them to a 35HP engine! At least they are not allowed up the Grand Canal in the middle of Venice, in among all the gondolas and water taxis. There is no mooring for hire boats in Venice either. You have to pay in a marina on one of the outer islands and then catch a ferry.

Just to remind us nothing has changed much and perhaps also, that we haven't always been so complimentary about the NHS over the years, I will leave my comment to Rudyard Kipling, from a poem written as long ago as 1890: Yes, making' mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep, is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap. An' hustling' drunken soldiers when they're going' large a bit, is five times better business than parading in full kit. Then, it's Tommy this an' Tommy that an' "Tommy, how's your soul?" But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

Richardsons were in Blakes in those days.

"Risk averse"?

I am out of touch with my friends on the yards at the moment as I feel deeply for them and don't quite know what to say to them! Quite clearly this will not be a normal season and it is not at all unusual for hire fleets to mothball a lot of their boats during hard times. I would guess that the yards have a pretty good idea by now, from booking enquiries, what the latter half of the season is looking like for business and will make logistic decisions based on that! Not sure about the buddying of boats as I don't know how one could effect their "isolation" when not on hire. I am afraid what worries me, and what seems to be driving everything at the moment, is "social distancing" and how to actually achieve it. In most other countries in Europe including here, the distance is one metre, not two and it is very much less of a problem. All this queueing for hours in supermarket car parks has never happened, all through the lockdown.

No problem old chap, but thanks very much for saying so. I set myself up for whatever was coming, by joining that discussion in the first place! Still, it gave us all a chance to let off a bit of steam about such an astounding subject. When we used to live in Chateau-Thierry, in France, there was a village nearby called RUDENOISE.

Yes, I think it was! An LNER K3.

I don't think this is yesterday's news at all. The Prime Minister, of his own volition, has chosen to support Cummings' actions and this means his personal, and un-elected, political advisor is now inviolate. While the rest of us risk fines, arrest and public disgrace if we so much as sit for a moment on a park bench. I notice that Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons today (Wednesday) did not take place. This, in itself, is a breakdown of constitutional democracy.

When I was 21 years old I had a heavy goods vehicle licence, by what they called "grandfather's rights" and have driven HGV's ever since, including formal training with the Royal Corps of Transport. I am licensed to drive every vehicle on the road today, including motor cycles and mobile cranes, but not fare paying coaches as I do not have a PSV licence. As I am over 65 I have to pass regular medicals including eyesight tests. So if I want to check my eyesight I go to the doctor who will fill in a form having examined me. I have no need, or excuse whatever, during lockdown restrictions, to drive to Barnard Castle and peer out to sea to check whether I can see anything or not. This excuse alone, on the part of Cummings, is a disgraceful insult to anyone's intelligence. And the press didn't "make it up". He said it himself, on live TV.

I hesitate to enter this debate as I agree we don't "do" politics and we could say that this dispute doesn't concern the Broads but does it? As private boat owners we have been fastidious in sticking to the guidelines and keeping away during lockdown. So how would we feel if Cummings had driven 200 miles to celebrate his wife's birthday on Ranworth Staithe and "check his eyesight"?

Well I never! I have now wired up all 4 baseboards, so yesterday I bolted them together again and blow me down, it works! I chose a tender engine, which was the first white metal kit I ever made, with the thought that if that runs through the points, then everything else ought to as well. And it did, very smoothly. There is a bit of tweaking to do where one or two spots of solder are sticking out and I got the polarity of one of the point crossings wrong, but that seems to be all. Well worth several weeks of patience. I am sorry I can't show a video but I am not set up for that technology! This morning I take it all apart again as I want the garage to get Susie's car ready for the MOT and then I have some window frames to mend in the house, now the weather is better. Next job on the railway will be making the mechanism to work the level crossing gates. That should drive me cross eyed as well!

Thank you both for those explanations, which are most enlightening but I think my point, above, still holds true.

I may have missed the point of Monica's intention but I think this point is being missed as well. These webcams are only seen on social media for a particular technical reason. They are installed by businesses such as boatyards for security, so that their owners can view them when they are at home, or even from elsewhere, such as in a restaurant. In order to be able to do this, the image must be streamed online by internet. This means we, the public, also have access to them but I don't feel that we should start to expect them, as a "public service" nor should we start complaining if they don't work! I am personally uncomfortable about this and see it as the equivalent of sitting in a train reading someone else's newspaper over their shoulder. Or perhaps walking down a street deliberately peering in people's windows. I am not saying we should not watch them and I know a lot of people get pleasure from doing so but I think we should respect what they are actually there for and should certainly not try to judge, on a forum, anything we see on them that we don't happen to like the look of.

I have only recently finished this model, so it is freshly painted but will need a lot of weathering before it looks typical. This is modelled on a real engine which was based at March shed and later moved to Norwich, where the famous shed master, Bill Harvey, used to keep them in good condition, hence the polished steel straps on the smokebox door and around the cab windows. Some of them were picked out with red coupling rods. They were a lot dirtier than this though and this one will be as well, as soon as I can summon up the courage to attack my work with an airbrush! I think in a lot of ways, the 1950s were the heyday of steam railways but it was just after the War, all the rolling stock was tired and a railway was a filthy dirty place!

The other day we had an inquest as to why Herbert Woods had moved some of their day boats off a mooring, as though they were supposed to have asked us first and now we have this. I suggest in these very difficult times and to avoid confusion due to total lack of any evidence, that it would be a great deal better for all of us if we could avoid the voyeuristic temptations of "trial" by other people's webcams.