Vaughan

Giving yourself plenty of social distance, again!

Cheesing down is OK if it is coiled down "with the lay" of the rope and then it won't kink. I agree that this is only done on ropes which you are not going to use very often, such as the forestay tackle, and it prevents a tripping hazard on the deck. Halyards, sheets and mooring warps would be "flaked down" in a form of elongated overlapping coil, which lays on deck looking a bit like a flat spring. Again, you must always flake down with the lay of the rope.

Many thanks for that Griff, and all sound sense. I recognise that as Navy training, that we were all taught when doing small boat handling. I would just add one thing, where the Broads are concerned, especially for the helmsman : Always approach a swimmer in the water bows on, to keep them well clear of the prop. Once you have got hold of them with a rope or boathook, turn the engine off and you can then pull them towards the stern where you can get them out more easily. For someone in the water, I always recommend swimming to the bank. In most places on the Broads, once you have got to the side, you will be standing on the bottom anyway!

Your boat is not a hire boat and was built before the EC regulations were in force, so I guess it is up to the BSS and your insurance company. It would be well worth having a good read of what your policy says.

It sounds as though that particular Volvo is a Perkins MC42 anyway. A large number of Volvo engines are actually Perkins.

You are obviously indispensable Tom! And it is excellent to have such a good link with you on this forum.

It was to the second but it could indeed have been the first!

Susie and I have been talking about this and we reckon we should still be able to get into a dinghy and row it. Trouble is, we don't think we would be able to get out of it again!

You don't know how right you are with that statement. Or maybe you do! Both Blakes and Hoseasons were marketing on behalf of member boatyards, so each one wanted his own space with his own photo and his own description, even though most of them were now coming out of the same Fibreglass moulds, and it would have been so much better to group them in classes, with a choice of different places to start from. So the whole thing ended up looking more like an estate agent's window than a holiday marketing brochure. Jimmy Hoseason and Jim Brooker, at Blakes, used to tear their hair out over this, but they couldn't persuade the owners! And then in the late 60s we got the "symbols"! Each boat description had a symbol on it for things such as fridge, heating, hot water, shower and razor point, so an awful lot of money had to be spent by small yards to "keep up with the Jones's" and have all the symbols! It takes a lot of time and money to fit a shower compartment into an old boat which was never designed to have one. And then some yards started insisting on a larger space if they had several boats of the same class (started by Martin Broom with the Admirals) which is how the Wilds Caribbean ended up with a full page all of its own! In Crown Blue Line, our brochure became famous among the travel agents as we only had 10 classes of boats in it, but exactly the same boats, to the same standards, could be hired in 18 different places in France and Europe. So regular customers could come with us on the same boat for 18 years, in a different cruising area each time. A very much better way of marketing a boating holiday!

It will probably have wrecked his nice new countersink as well, so he will need another new one!

My father was one of those consultees and he used to say the same thing.

Thanks very much for your trouble in researching that. It just shows that yards had all sorts of ideas in those days, to try and produce something "better" than the others. This may explain a lot of other engines as they were often the same basic engine, but marinised for marine use by different companies. I do of course, stand to be corrected on this as I am only talking from memory, but I seem to remember the Ford Watermota and Fisherboy were the same engine with a different gearbox. Similarly, I think the Meadows Kittiwake may have been a version of the Morris Navigator.

In my heart of hearts, I think you may have to wait rather a long time for that since I fear that pub culture - and pubs themselves - are likely to be eliminated after this is over. Let us hope that will not be as the result of official (and public) over-reaction.

Probably Ranworth, moored boats will probably have folks on-board, boats in marina, maybe not so likely. I must say I tend to agree with Marshman on this one. I moor stern on in a boatyard basin among around 15 other boats, all of whose owners seem to be friends and although they are usually seen there at weekends they often don't leave the mooring at all - just socialise with each other in garden chairs on the lawn. And yet if I leave the mooring to have lunch at Ranworth I have to moor alongside in case I get too close to someone? I can understand that the BA are keen to be seen to tick all the appropriate boxes but there is still the danger of thinking up rules in the process of over-reaction. After all, they are not the police. What was that phrase that we so often used to use about official bodies, before the virus arrived? Oh yes, that was it - "risk averse"!

I have had an e-mail letter today from Simpsons Boatyard in Stalham to say that they are offering all their usual services including pump-outs and diesel. I believe their repair and maintenance sheds have remained open throughout. Presumably one can now also moor on the recently re-built Stalham staithe?

A poignant comment about human interaction, and why we enjoy boating on the Broads and meeting people, either on public moorings or, even better, in pubs. But how are we now to do this when those we confront are hiding behind masks, hoods and gloves, so all we can see is a pair of terrified eyes, looking at us as though we are about to pull a gun on them? Excuse me. Perhaps I should have said this on a different thread.

I guess local chandlers had better stock up on mud weight winches! I can recommend the Vetus hand cranked version. Easy to operate and doesn't need batteries or hydraulics. Perhaps towed dinghies will also come back into fashion, so we can get ashore from our anchored boat.

I suppose we are going to have to put up with all sorts of new rules being made up on the hoof for the rest of this season at least. All very well at the moment but if they ever start hiring cruisers again this summer it won't be so easy! Still, it's the BA's mooring - I guess they can do what they like with it.

Hinges like that are usually fitted with the whole thing flush with the edge, so you don't get that gap showing when the lid is open. You look as though the wood is thick enough to do this, but the problem will then be the screw holes. If it were me I would fill in the hinge rebates with a sliver of the same wood glued in, and then do the whole job with a length of piano hinge.

"Compo" rations! And hexamine tablets in a little burner. Menu "B" was always preferred!

I suppose if I had any sense I should keep my head down and not have the temerity to offer my own opinion (on a discussion forum) if it does not conform to the obvious "party line" of stay at home and save lives. Of course I am worried about lives being lost in this crisis but I am also very worried about human life as we know it. When this is over and we all climb back out of our fallout shelters we are going to find a different world out there. Thousands will be out of work, businesses will no longer be in business and social life and communication will not be the same for many months to come, if ever. I imagine a lot of people are already going "stir crazy" at home and the effect on mental health and well-being is going be enormous. So we need the relaxation and distraction of a leisure activity even more than usual. Boating on the Broads would seem to me one of least risky ways of doing this whilst sticking to all the rules and guidances that we all know about by now. I am lucky in that my main leisure activity at the moment is railway modelling and I do that at home! By the way, it is no use preaching to me about staying at home because I am at home and have been here ever since this started on 12th March. I go out to the supermarket every 10 days and that is it. We are no longer in lockdown here but there are still many restrictions. I am not to travel more than 100km from home except for a handful of specific reasons, and I don't qualify for any of those. In all practicality I can't see us being able to cross the Channel to visit our families for another 6 months or more. So there is no question of us taking a "furtive" little visit to the boat that we only bought at this time last year and have only holidayed on once! She sits there though, on her paid up mooring with current river toll and insurance and my daughter is looking forward to taking her husband and young family out for days on the Broads as soon as possible. She, of course, doesn't "stay at home and save lives". She goes to work to save lives in an A&E hospital, so she knows exactly what this virus is about. She is also the only one of the team she works with who has so far not caught it, recovered normally and returned to work. So if she thinks there is no added risk to her and her family (or the general public) in taking a day out on the river, I am well prepared to believe her!

You don't suppose. But they certainly have not been quoted as a separate figure, when so far they have averaged 17,000 every winter?

My mother died, in a care home, in January 2001, because she caught the normal winter "flu bug" that was going around and her constitution was not strong enough to recover from it. She was already 88 years old and had been suffering from a heart circulation condition for many years. So she died from a "flu related" condition but she would not have lasted for more than about a year, anyway. So did she die of the flu? Perhaps "the jury is still out" on that one. Government figures from the Dept. of Health and Social Care (DHSC) state that deaths during wintertime from "flu related complications" average 17,000 every year and in the winter of 2014/15 they were 28,330. Funny we never heard about that at the time! So how many people have "died of the flu" this last winter? Funny we haven't heard about that either, have we? Possibly because those statistics have just been "lumped in" under Coronavirus deaths, for want of any more detailed research? Me too!!

That is what they say about an awful lot of data, these days!

I would love to see a photo of them, or a video? Meantime, a warm welcome to the forum!