Vaughan

You clearly know nothing about Jenners, how it was set up and how it passed on later to the Caister Group, before being sold off again. This was a most significant period in the history of Broads hire boats and before attempting to tinker with Craig's website I suggest you do a great deal more research of your own.

The wording was : Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Yacht Owners' Association. Which explains the "A" in Blakes flag, which stood for Association. The London based booking agency that you mention was started in 1908 by Harry Blake, who was already the holiday booking agent for the London and North Eastern Railway. He teamed up with John Loynes and others to form a co-operative of boatyards, with his agency doing the marketing. This agency eventually became Blakes (Norfolk Broads Holidays) Ltd., which was a non-profit company doing the marketing for the boatyards' association. I hope I have their exact company title correct to your satisfaction, as I was a director of Blakes during the 1970s.

Wrong. If that is the sort of info that you wish to add to Craig's website, I suggest a lot more research first. Perhaps starting with my posts on the thread "legal battle over Thorpe Island" on this forum, about 6 years ago.

That means he must be the son of Jimmy Clabburn, who is twin brother of John? or maybe of their elder brother, Ken? Their father, Jimmy Senior, may indeed have been born on a wherry as I remember that they owned one, moored in Brundall. I shall have to think of the name . . Jimmy senior grew up in Guild house, which is the large White House on the Norwich side of the old rectory, on the Yarmouth Rd in Thorpe. Jimmys' father, W.L. "Bay" Clabburn was well known on the Broads as one of the founder members of the Norfolk Broads Yacht Club.

Interesting that your photo shows many of the gravestones are touching each other. This usually denotes that they are buried in a mass grave.

This describes how I felt when I was truck driving in France and drove every week through the battlefields of the Somme and Flanders. The countryside there has fields of wheat, fields of sugar beet ; and fields of graves. Until you have driven right through it, you cannot understand the enormity of it all. The first battle of the Somme, on 1st July 1916, took place over a 28 mile front. I often stopped at the cemeteries and read the history in the books of remembrance. One of the most poignant, for me, is the "Trench Cemetery", on the Somme. This is where a company of the Devonshire Regiment advanced over no man's land and took a German trench position, which they then had to hold until the next wave arrived. By the time the relief arrived, they found them all dead. They were buried in the trench that they had defended, as a mass grave. This has now become a War Grave cemetery and the inscription on the main memorial reads : The Devonshires held this trench : The Devonshires hold it still.

As a complete outsider in all this and as someone without any of the IT skills - I wouldn't know a gigabyte if it came and bit me in the ankle - could I perhaps suggest that there might be a subtle difference here, between offering assistance, and muscling in? Your tone of assertive questioning seems, to me, overbearing to a team who are clearly doing their best. I wonder if it is reasonable that they should have to explain themselves in such detail?

I don't suppose it really matters that much, does it? "That which we call a rose, by any other name, would small as sweet". I don't want to disparage John Clabburn as he happens to be one of my oldest friends, but after a year or two he moved the business to a unit on the Airport industrial estate in Norwich. He had a lot of finance problems and went out of business shortly afterwards, which was when Bounty boats became the main builder of the Solar 37, which they fitted out in large numbers for small boatyards who didn't have the facilities (or the money) to build their own. I suppose it is fair to assume that it was at this point that Bondons started to use the mould to build the Safari 26.

Perhaps I had better tell the full story, for clarity. In the mid 60s the Broads was in recession owing to water pollution, which the authorities blamed on boat sewage. The boatyards responded by fitting pumpout toilets on all their boats. A mobile pumpout machine on wheels, for small boatyards, was developed and made by Jim Topliss of Topcraft, whilst the first fixed installation running round the boatyard quay was installed at Hearts Cruisers by my father, in conjunction with Sykes Pumps. Meantime Alec Hampton designed and produced the "Safari Toplet" holding tank toilet, which was fitted by the boatyards, as it could go into an existing toilet compartment, without having to re-design the whole boat! They were basically a Thunder Box, with a counterweighted flap in the toilet bowl and a sink pipe in the bottom, for pumping it out through the deck fitting. It had a Whale hand pump which simply circulated the water in the tank (!) and you knew it was full when the flap touched the liquid underneath. Those were the days!! In fact we owe Alec Hampton a great debt of gratitude for getting the business out of what was a disastrous problem at the time. We were all able to convert our boats to holding tanks, without spending the kind of money that might well have put us out of business. That, may I say, was what the Blakes co-operative was all about, in those days. Problem was that Ray Bondon stole Alec's design and started making them and selling them himself, although Alec started legal proceedings against him. I attended Blakes AGM (and big lunch!) in 1966 as a guest of my father, who was retiring after 8 years as chairman. During the meeting, we were all astounded when Alec stood up and denounced Ray Bondon, to his face, in public, in front of all the members of Blakes, calling him a thief, a liar and a fraud. For his part, Ray Bondon sat there and said nothing. This, you will note, was before the Safari 25 was designed and built. One night, about this time of year, all the staff went home in the evening and Alec stayed behind to do some more work on one of the boats on the moorings. It was a sharp frost and it was assumed he had slipped and fallen in. His body was found in the broad the next day and the verdict was "accidental". Knowing the strain he was under at that time, there are many of us who knew him, who still wonder.

You are no doubt correct, in that a boat "in building" would have had a line drawing in the Catalogue, which would have been printed before the boat was finished. As the 1970 catalogue shows a photo of the boat I assume it was built the year before. It does not appear in the 1968 catalogue.

I shall try to cut a long story short and I emphasise that this is just from my memory, without reference to any historic documents. Dawncraft was an old established business on the Broads, building wooden varnished cruisers, some of which looked a lot like the Jack Powles craft of those days. Some said they had been copied - which would not be the first time on the Broads! In the early 60s they also built a few large aft cockpit craft looking much like the Hampton Classic Safari - quelle surprise . . . In the early 60s the Broads was in one of its recessions and yards were selling boats to each other all over the place, so it was difficult to tell who had built what, just by the name of the yard in Blakes Catalogue. Dawncraft was one of the hire fleets (including Landamores, Windboats and others) which was sold to Jenners of Thorpe in 1968, by which time their fleet, under the name Dawncraft, had boats built by Porter and Haylett, Brinkcraft, Newsons, Fowlers and a few others! The company in Wroxham still existed with its premises and was bought in the early 70s by John Clabburn to design and fit out GRP hire boats. John was (is) a naval architect from Vospers and was one of the designers of the Solar 37 - now known as Bounty 37 - of which Dawncraft built the early ones before they were fitted out by yards all over the Broads. I didn't realise he also fitted out Safari 25s but apparently he did. I don't know where the Bondons connection comes in as Alec Hampton and Ray Bondon were sworn enemies who would never have done business together. That is another story and a very sad one, since many believe it may have contributed to Alec's death from drowning on Oulton Broad. The Safari 25 first appears in Blakes catalogue of 1970, as Hampton's own boat, presumably built the year before :

If you are considering a diversion it is best to fit a Y valve on the pipe between the toilet and the holding tank, not forgetting a seacock on the hull skin fitting, for safety and for passing regulations. That way you don't need to use the toilet tank at all, unless you are in an area where pumpouts are practicable.

Good for you, although I have never heard it called the Great Loop before, having been involved in hire boat charter on the Hudson River and Erie Canal in New York State, as well as the Intracoastal Waterway on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

That's exactly how we like it, thank you and long may it continue. Sods' second law of engineering states : If it is running smoothly and performing as it should - don't bugger about with it.

Excellent! At least when you find the engine number and details on the plaque, you will know for sure.

I was assuming your boat was probably built around 1991 to 92. In which case the 4220 must be a replacement. I can't remember when we started fitting them instead of the 4190, but it would have been around 1995 to 96.

Your boat is a slightly larger version of a boat we called Capri, moulded by Aquafibre and fitted out by Crown Cruisers for France. We had about 25 of them (very comfortable boats) and they all had the early Nanni 4150 - with KUBOTA stamped on the rocker box. So I am thinking that your boat spec may be correct, but the boat has since been re-engined with a 4220. 3000 hours is hardly anything for an ex hire boat. Not even 4 seasons, in fact. So you may have got yourself a good deal, there!

I was also rather pleased to see that their blog - at least until now - did not have to include the almost obligatory collision, with hoots of laughter, that we always have to see on holiday TV programmes. The producers always encourage it as it "makes good TV" but I can assure you, collisions do not sell boating holidays.

Very nicely produced video, which was relaxed and chatty. They also got the history of the canal, at the beginning, exactly right. This was obviously an organised "press trip" such as we used to do with travel journalists but nowadays, internet bloggers can come and have a freebie cruise as well. Nothing wrong with that, as I think they did a very good promotion. I was the manager at Port Cassafières 40 years ago and it doesn't seem to have changed at all. Except that in early October, they seem to have more boats laid up in the car park than they have in the water. We were usually fully booked in October. I had a job to recognise some of those drone shots as the canal has changed enormously since they cut down all the plane trees, a few years ago. So no more shade over the canal. They have planted new trees but we won't see the effect from them, for another 50 years. The locks at Fonserrannes are spectacular when you go up them and you can see why the Canal du Midi is about the only one left in France where they insist that the locks are manned by lock-keepers. You couldn't leave it up to hirers, to work a staircase like that! The stone work in the locks is original. They are built egg shaped to prevent the sides falling in when the lock is empty. Seems to have worked, after 450 years! What fascinates me about them is that when Riquet built the canal, he worked out that if he dug the short tunnel at Malpas and then had a staircase of nine locks at Beziers (which went right down into the river, then) this would allow him to have a "pound" of 54 kilometres until the next lock at Argens, near Homps. It is all built halfway up the side of the valley as well, so it never floods. Not only that, but he then used those 54 kilometres of water as the headwater lake to supply the staircase of locks. A fantastic piece of engineering, long before the days of theodolites, and such like. I look forward to seeing their part 2, which will be where the canal winds around the contours of the hills, with the vineyards of the Minervois on one side, and the Corbières on the other. Hopefully, Lulu will link it for us? As for the boat itself, I think the least I say about that, the better!

You can certainly notice Cromer, Broadland and central west Norfolk as a bit different. And then there is Naaridge, which is a language all of its own! Sadly, most people in Norwich now seem to speak "Estuary".

I have never seen one like that. Disgraceful.

OK, so here's how most of us limit the speed on hire boats. I hope I am not giving away any trade secrets! Take a standard electrical "Domino" or "Chocolate block" electrical connection, with the hole the right size to fit the inner wire of the 33C Morse control cable : Strip off the plastic insulation with a Stanley knife and you are left with the brass body and two little grub screws. Take off the end terminal of the Morse cable, then remove the little rubber sock over the end of the outer cable. Slide the block onto the inner cable and then re-fit the Morse cable to the control : I haven't got a Morse cable here in the garage, so I am using plastic tube as the "inner" and brass tube as the outer. I hope you get the picture? Take the boat out on the river, choose the speed at which you want to limit the engine, slide the block up to the end of the outer cable and do the grub screws up nice and tight. The engine speed is now set, and the Morse lever cannot be advanced any further. Even if you force the lever, it will not move. So if you find a little thing like this on one of your Morse cables under the dashboard, just loosen the grub screws and let it slide. You may find you have a lot more power available!

In which case your engine is quite an early one, and probably has the word KUBOTA pressed into the top of the valve rocker box? They are a good engine and were used a lot for boats in Italy, where they have a horsepower limit on the size of a hire boat engine. Should be easily powerful enough for your boat. The engine number is on a small tin plaque on top of the flywheel bell housing, where it may be hidden behind the gearbox oil cooler.

This sounds right and I had a feeling that both your boats came from Emerald Star on the Shannon, where they need forward speed in the currents on the river, therefore a finer pitched prop to give speed. On the Broads we need a coarse pitched prop, to give good manoeuvring at slow speeds. And, of course, good power in astern! Only problem with a coarse prop is that when you do go fast ((across Breydon) this might slowly overheat the engine.

The Nanni injector pump is of the common rail type and has a screw on the front that controls its maximum output. I can't remember where it is, but I know it is there, as Nanni explain it on their mechanics' courses in France. Boatyards usually limit the speed by screwing down the limit screw on the pump lever - there are two, one for speed and one for tick-over. Others (like me) know that some hirers can sometimes find these screws, so we limit the travel of the cable itself, by putting a small screw clamp on it. With a Nanni, this would be found at the Morse control end, under the dashboard. This is because the Nanni pushes the pump lever to accelerate. The Perkins and BMC pull the lever, so the clamp on the cable would be found at the injector pump end. If you can't free off the speed any other way, ask Peachments or a good mechanic (such as John Spruce) to have a look at the screw on the injector pump body. Edited to add : Some boatyards actually made up a brass bracket, which limits the travel of the mechanism inside the Morse control but this is pretty rare, these days.