Vaughan

Thinking back on the BA's lovely little telephone box, I wonder if the selection of bird noises should include the sound of an Egyptian Goose c**pping on the quay heading? A very common Broadland bird call these days and I am sure it would be the children's favourite! All those Greylag, Canada and Egyptian Geese that now proliferate out of all control on the north rivers, are not exactly frightened by the tourists, are they? Nor are the swans, which come and trim your fingernails when they feed out of your hand. Nor the Mallard duck, who tramp over your cabin top in the night. Even the "terribly timid" and heavily protected otter will stand there and smile at you, from time to time. They have even been seen in Richardsons wet shed, in broad daylight. That would never have happened in Philip Wayre's day! And yet we now have the idea being forced on us, that our "natural" environment has become so precious and fragile that we are not allowed to venture out on it any more. Unless we want to build "affordable" housing estates all over it, of course.

But they have already been given a telephone box at Thurne, with clockwork bird noises. More seriously, I think this is where the balance between tourism and its "environment" has gone wrong. I look back to the days when renowned naturalists such as Dr Ted Ellis, Dr Martin George and Philip Wayre all understood that the wildlife and habitat of the Broads was not at all affected by the crowds in boats and was co-existing quite happily in the marshes and fields around the rivers. Yes there were problems of pollution (which have now largely been solved) but the tourists themselves were not disturbing the wildlife. What is more, these men understood (and said so) that the Broads had to have a good commercial income from tourism and navigation in order to continue to exist as a wildlife habitat. The Broads are not natural - they are Man-made and must be maintained by Man. Nowadays it seems the environment must be protected by such as the RSPB who, as owners of increasingly large chunks of Broadland, have actually announced their intention, in their own publications, to keep the public off their closed land, in case they frighten the birds. I remember when they complained about the noise of Brooms testing boats on the river near their Strumpshaw reserve, despite thumping great class 37 Diesel engines thundering past on the railway about every hour, right beside their land. It is a well known fact that some of the best preserved and protected wildlife habitats in the country, are our motorway embankments.

Yes indeed and thank you Robin, for your thoughts, which are very well expressed and I agree with all you say. I think it is significant that Clive (Ricko) has said in an earlier post that they are parting company with their current agent. I think we can all guess who that might be! I regret that I have not yet met Clive but I very much look forward to one day when we might! I certainly knew his father well, as he and my father were good friends. So I know why "Bob" made the decision to sell Richardsons to the Rank Organisation, back in the days when there was also a big recession on the Broads. I also remember how we all applauded when he bought it back, only a few years later, for around half of what he had sold it for! In other words, we have known crises on the Broads ever since the War (which was probably the first one!) and we have somehow always found ways to get over them. It is tempting to think that nowadays a travel agent does not "hit the spot" as well as the internet and social media. After all, Faircaft Loynes (NBD) is supposed to be based on just that. Cut out the "middle-man" and book direct with us on our website. But do they really believe that a private company's website, on its own, will generate enough marketing and business to fill a season? Another question : Why do we regard the Broads as a "staycation", UK - based holiday choice? Where are all the customers from other countries of the World, who flock to Britain to see London, Edinburgh and even Shakespeare's birthplace? Why don't they combine their visit - sometimes all the way from the States or Australia - with a week on the Broads? Answer : because they are not being marketed. In 1993 I joined Crown Blue Line in France and we were marketing World-wide. We had our own brochure, which was well known in the Travel Trade as we only offered 30 boats, of the different classes, so you didn't have to wade through literally hundreds of little photos of the same boat, all owned by little independent yards and all insisting on their own brochure space! All the same, you could hire any one of those 30 boats (450 in total) in any one of 17 bases, around France, Belgium, Holland and Italy. So customers could come back to us every year, hire the same boat that they liked, but in a choice of 17 very different cruising areas of Europe. At that time, we were able to prove a rate of 35% repeat custom. We did this by using the principle overseas travel agents of the various countries. The breakdown of our customers (from memory) was more or less like this : Germany. 25% Swiss. 20% U.K. 15% France. 10% U.S. 15% Others *. 15% * The others included Australia, New Zealand, Canada and (more recently) China and Russia. We discovered later, that the main part of these "other" bookings were actually coming to us via Blakes overseas division, which we were also using as an agent. So the French themselves only came to between 7 and 10% of the total and even those, only came in the off season when they knew the price was half as much and the weather here is lovely in late September and October. One wonders if that is what is now happening to the "staycation" market on the Broads? Later on, Crown Blue Line suffered an "arranged marriage" with Connoisseur and became part of the new "Le Boat" set-up, run largely by ex management from Sunsail, who casually assumed that their main customer base was the upper middle classes from Tunbridge Wells and the Shire Counties. How wrong they have turned out to be! And another question : Do today's customers expect far too much out of the boat, and the holiday, than they have in the past? I would say definitely yes. What is more, the British have all been taught exactly how to complain, by Esther Rantzen and all her successors in the media. If they can't get a refund of at least 15% by moaning about a water pump, they no longer feel they have enjoyed their holiday! Call me a cynic if you like but have seen it, from week to week! And my last question : Do we really think that a Broads holiday is as much FUN as it used to be, in the "bad old days" of the 50s, 60s and early 70s? Many on this forum, who now own their own boats, first came here as children with their parents, or as Sea Scouts, or as members of organised school parties from state schools all over the country. They were able to grow up with the magic of the "playground" that the Broads could offer. Groups of young men and women could come to Norfolk by train, probably on their only annual holiday from the place where the worked, and have FUN that they have always remembered in their later lives. Do we really think that the Broads these days, is able to offer as much innocent FUN?

That should have been written on one of the tablets that Moses brought down from the mountain.

It has always amused me, that no electrical connections are allowed in the bathroom - where even light switches have to be on pull strings - except for the little razor plug point, right above the wash basin!

These were fitted in the late 60's, a long time before the days of mobile phones and all the other gadgets and were advertised as one of the "symbols" which were available on your luxury Blakes boat : From Blakes catalogue of 1975. Taken (at random) from the same 1975 catalogue. So if the boat you wanted to hire didn't have all five symbols, it wasn't worth hiring! At least, that was the marketing at the time. The problem was that hirers thought they could also plug in their hair driers and overloaded the circuit, thus burning the insulation in the transformer windings. Funnily enough, in these modern days of mobiles and I phones, the little shaver point is perfectly capable of charging them without overloading.

There are some facts to add to this story, which I found very interesting and hope you do too. I happened to get on very well with the Police at Egham (for reasons I shall not divulge ) and when I showed this winding to them, they were able to have it forensically tested, to prove that it had not been melted as a result of the fire : rather that it had overheated and caused the fire. The insurers couldn't argue with that! In the photos, you can see the gas bottles stacked on the quay behind the boats, where the fire brigade had recovered them. But they were recovered after the fire, and after the whole back end of the boat had been burned away. They were collected by the gas company and I was told that they were tested, re-painted and then re-used. All 3 boats had full diesel tanks, which were not involved in the fire. I imagine this was because they were a large volume of cold liquid, and diesel has to be heated up before it will ignite. Hence the term "compression ignition". I suppose this large volume of liquid also kept the tanks cool and prevented them from rupturing. There was a lot of diesel spillage afterwards, as filler pipes and other fittings had burned away. In the boat which started the fire, all the copper gas piping and brass fittings, for 3 heaters, a cooker and a fridge, was lying around in the boat on the floorboards, as it was no longer attached to anything that had burned away. It was still intact along all of its length and, out of curiosity, I was able to carry out a successful pressure test on it, with a water gauge. Gas on a boat, when installed and used correctly, is nowhere near as dangerous as we might be led to believe.

The boatyard only ran for 3 years and the basin was later half filled in, so as to build another office block on the site. So what you see now is less than half of the original basin.

Indeed not and I am not going to speculate, either. All the same, members who own boats and are concerned about fire prevention, may want to hear about a fire that I suffered while running a hire fleet on the Thames, at Staines, back in 1991 : The boat was an old Bounty 37 bath-tub, which had gas heating, gas cooker and a gas fridge. This meant the electrics were very basic, consisting of neon strip lights, a water pump and a shower tray pump. It didn't even have a charge splitter and relied on two batteries in parallel to provide all the power needed. No shore power either! The boat was not on hire and had been moored in our basin for 4 days, un-occupied and with both gas bottles turned off. Not much could go wrong with that, you might think? It caught fire in the middle of a Friday night and by the time the Fire Brigade had got there and got access to the site, it had burned down to the waterline and was sunk by the fire pumps. A few days later I managed to raise the wreck with our mobile crane and pump it out, so that what was left could be seen. At this point a fire officer from the local brigade arrived, to make his inspection, for insurance purposes. He spent about two minutes looking at it, saw the remains of a gas fridge and therefore announced that this must have been the cause, so just another gas fire. This was until I gently reminded him that his men had been able to recover two full gas bottles, during the fire, which were saved intact and were both turned off. These bottles were undamaged and were later returned to the gas company and re-used. I then (also gently) pointed out that the floorboards all through the boat were intact and were not burned, although scorched by falling debris. This meant, quite clearly, that the fire had started high up in the boat and was not caused by a gas explosion in the bilges, which would have lifted and shattered the floorboards. After this "worthy" had departed with his tail between his legs, I thought I had better have a good look and see if I could find out what had actually happened. It was very obvious from the wreckage that the fire had started in the aft cabin, somewhere above the floors. We were in a basin just off the towpath in Staines, where a lot of "youth" would have a lot of fun on a Friday night, so I suspected arson, from a firework thrown in through a window onto a bed. Except that a Bounty 37 has no hopper windows and the aft door had been found still locked after the fire. I sifted about on the floor among the mess until I came across a lump of what appeared to be a melted copper wire winding, maybe from a solenoid or a small motor and about the size of a golf ball. I realised that this must have been the small 220v shaver point which had been screwed on the bulkhead by the mirror, for those who wished to use an electric razor. There must be thousands of these little boxes on boats all over the Broads. Had it been installed in a circuit with a fuse? Yes it had. But fuses only blow because of a surge in amps. They will not react to a breakdown in the insulation of a transformer winding, which causes resistance, which causes volt drop, which causes heat and which catches fire. It then set fire to the plywood bulkhead and the result, next morning, was three boats written off and sunk with a further two seriously damaged, before they could be dragged out of the way. There are two morals to this story : 1/. Don't ever assume that an officially appointed fire safety officer knows anything at all about boats. 2/. Check the shaver points on your boat and make sure they are the new type, with a switch and a red warning light. The same sort of fire can be caused by inverters or battery chargers if they are not installed with good ventilation. If not, they can overheat and may catch fire.

Exactly! A double negative is typical in Norfolk dialect : Doon choo know narthin? There is also the triple negative : Oi hint niver haard narthin loik it!

Known as A triple F. Aqueous Film-Forming Foam. Used extensively in airports and on offshore platforms for fighting aircraft fires. Yes, it would have been the best (and only) way to put out the fire on that Fibreglass boat, without actually sinking it with the water from fire pumps. I have seen Fibreglass boats burned down and sunk, which continued burning underwater, for a long time. Burning GRP creates its own oxygen. All the same I rather doubt that the local fire brigade would have turned up on Daisy Broad with appliances equipped to smother a fire such as that, with AFFF.

The BSS does include electrics and the requirements are most comprehensive.

That is going to be a big pollution problem, right there at the mouth of Daisy Broad. When a Fibreglass boat burns down to the waterline and sinks, it leaves a ghastly mess in the water. Unless they managed to get some kind of boom around it, I think a lot of boats in Wroxham will be going around with black waterlines for a week or two.

I would think it was set adrift from the mooring to prevent the fire spreading to other boats.

Sounds as though someone may have spilled fishing maggots in the bilges, and now, a few days later, they are hatching out.

Just a little hint for other members if you haven't got a hot knife like in Griff's photo : The best way to cut polypropylene rope is with a junior hacksaw. It is also the best way to get the rope off a propeller! I always have one on board.

I see. So the logistics and management involved in the efficient and safe operation of a yard running 200 hire boats, have now become subject to the opinion of the "ranger" on the quay at Reedham. A very sad reflection on how much the BA really think they know about the business.

All this makes me rather glad I am retired.

I quite agree - in all my career I have never heard of that one before. Also, in all my career I have only ever had to "fail" two people. Seems very strange since normally you don't ask for the trial run until you are all ready to leave. You have your run and when the instructor is happy, he jumps off and away you go. Don't tell me this is some sort of new "safety" procedure that yards are being told to adopt?

Absolutely yes.

My mother attended this banquet, then aged 20 and this was her souvenir programme.

The staithe is exactly the same size that it always was, when I was selling boats for Tom Percival on Lower St. in the 60s, when it was known as the busy-est village on the Broads. But then, you could moor free of charge on the south bank of the river all the way from the Swan Corner to beyond the Ferry, free of charge and row across in a dinghy. Last time I saw those moorings, 4 years ago, they were "banging" you £8 just to stop for lunch. Sure enough, they were empty - every time we passed. If the businesses on the street want to know why they are not casually "raking it in" any more, they might stop to consider how they have almost totally excluded the motor car from the village, unless you want to pay extortionate charges in the car park, which in those days was the Swan car park, in part of what was called the Swan Lawn. Nowadays if you want to visit Horning by car, it would probably be cheaper and easier by taxi from Wroxham. I totally agree with you that the BA have started a trend they will live to regret.

Hogging the moorings?? Herein lies the root of the problem. You can't be "hogging" a mooring with a tolled motor cruiser, on a BA 24 hour mooring, which your toll has paid for. If there is now to be a "sea change" in BA policy in places such as this - wait for Ranworth to be the next - then day boats are going to have to be tolled at a higher proportion than motor cruisers.

I have heard elsewhere (from an unmentionable source) that Horning Staithe is now being reserved for day boat moorings only. Also that the Good Doctor has got involved by making some sort of speech about it. Does anyone know any more about this?

Excuse me, sutthun must 'ave 'appened to the English wot I was taught. Surely last May means May last year. This May, would be May this year. All the same I think my point is valid. For Goodness' sake, let's enjoy the Broads for what it is and what we have left of it, without knocking it. It's future is fragile enough, just now.