Vaughan

"The sergeant was the last to jump and first to hit the ground and he ain't gonna jump no more." I am sure you know the words, Poppy - "Glory, Glory what a helluva way to die. . . . "

I have done some free-fall parachuting and I still have my log book. It is very possible to steer yourself accurately to a target when free-falling. This is the principle of HALO (high altitude low opening) when inserting special forces into a small target area from a high flying aircraft, so as not to alert one's enemy. It seems that this man was an instructor of special forces and is also a film stuntman. Even so, I wonder how many young men are now going to be killed trying to emulate this most un-necessary stunt. And I wonder how all his family, friends and colleagues, all assembled to witness it, would have felt if he had splatted himself into strawberry jam on the adjacent mountainside. He didn't hit the centre of the target, did he? The terminal velocity (falling speed through gravity) of the human body is 125 MPH.

There are various versions of the MC42 and this one was marinised by Duffields, who are no longer in business (unfortunately). I have found two pictures of the MC42 water pump, both of which have a thermostat housing, behind a back plate, which is removable by 3 cross head set-screws, once you have removed the pump body from the engine. Unfortunately Susie and I have been unable to link these to you from the internet site. Presumably because we are not allowed to. . . . I simply Googled Perkins MC42 and then there are pictures of parts, one of which shows the various water pumps. I have also looked up the thermostat rating for this engine, which is 82 degrees C. It occurs to me, when you say "water pump" do you mean the internal "circulating" pump, as would be found on a car, or do you mean the raw water pump? "Raw" means sea water cooling (or river water) and it is this which cools the "fresh" water in the heat exchanger. Your engine has these two pumps, but only the "circ" pump will contain the thermostat. I have never had to change the thermostat in an MC42 as they are very reliable, which is why I had to think about where it was! So does your problem come from somewhere else? It seems your engine has been overheated in the past, so why? A blocked weed filter, which stripped the blades off the raw water pump impellor? And are bits of those blades still hanging around in the tube stack? As MBA has said, someone may have just taken a short cut to this problem, and "binned" the thermostat? I suggest the time has come, if you want trouble-free cruising, to consult a professional marine mechanic. There is one who has already made excellent contributions to this thread, who would seem the obvious choice?

Oh Gawd, I noticed that as well. I fear that if we want publicity from the TV nowadays, we also have to put up with their cringe-worthy ignorance of the subject they are supposed to be presenting. Actually it does remind me that the MTBs my father served on in Hong Kong before the war made a lot of noise with their 3 petrol engines. The local Chinese fishermen christened them the Wind Thunder Boats.

Just out of interest, how did Seriously get on with the heating problem? Is there any news?

That's most interesting. These boats were built of double diagonal construction, which included a sheet of oiled canvas between the two skins. The bottoms were often triple diagonal, and a lot of them were built in the sheds upside down, for ease of construction. As she was Vosper's prototype her planking is almost certainly teak. In which case, if they are only now starting to notice rot in the canvas membrane, then it has lasted a very long time.

It was paid for by the film company so that she could appear in the film, so it was not what "we" would call a restoration. There is no doubt though that it saved her, at the time, from just becoming a sunken hulk like all the rest. I have always regretted that I didn't get involved with MTB 102, during those years that she was in Brundall. I feel that I should have done. I suppose I was too involved trying to save the Albion at the time!

This reminds me of the film, The Eagle has Landed, in which MTB 102 played a starring role, and which paid for her original restoration. The American colonel, trying to encourage one of his young soldiers before they attack, says "Son, when this is all over, pigeons are going to crapping on statues of you all over the Goddammed State of Nebraska!"

When I am in Norfolk I always "top up" my shopping with Great Eastern Models, who now specialise in railways. There is no doubt that model shops are the best way, as you can not only see the products but you can also get free advice on modelling! When in France I have to buy direct from the manufacturers, using their adverts in the Railway Modeller magazine. I think the problem is that a modeller like me is not a good customer! I do not buy "out of the box" as I prefer to make my own models, from brass kits or from scratch. This is the fun of it! So when I go into a shop and spend 50 quid on a few parts, they won't see me again for 3 or 4 months, until I have made the model. I fear this may be the reason why so many shops have closed, or gone solely mail order. As to cows, always try to buy ones that are just standing or lying down, but not walking. This looks more realistic, and the same applies to people : always have them in a stationary pose. The guard holding out his green flag is not going to be standing there all day like that in real life, so he looks silly on a model. Especially as the train then leaves the station without him!

That is also my point. Wheel chair users on boats are never on their own. They always have friends and family to help them on and off. So just because a certain type of cruiser is not specifically "adapted" for the disabled, this does not mean that they cannot have a fabulous holiday on board. As I said elsewhere, the Bounty 37 design can actually be driven by someone sitting in a wheelchair. By the way, when I said Surlingham, of course I meant Salhouse. Must have been thinking ahead to the Autumn meet!

Very interesting, thank you Poppy. It does show how much of the Broads can be appreciated by the disabled, with not too much extra effort on the part of the organisers. When I attended the Spring meet at Surlingham, I came by car and the walk down to the broad through the fen and carr, which was obviously specially managed by the BA, was delightful. It would have been just as easy if I had been in a wheelchair or scooter. One thing though - what is "accessible"? Does this mean that you can wheel yourself on and off? After all he had a lovely sail, but he had to be craned onto the boat, didn't he? I have said on a different thread that many Broads motor cruisers can offer an excellent holiday to the disabled. The mere lack of a complicated hydraulic ramp arrangement does not make them "in-accessible" in my experience. As to their pushing of the "natural beauty" of Whitlingham gravel pits, that is a different subject!

It's not irrelevant - it's a hippopotamus. (Flanders and Swann).

Griff, and all others involved, my heartiest congratulations on a memorable event. I wish I could have been there! I am posting this photo as I noticed, in the video from Anglia TV, that the skipper of MTB102 was wearing a shirt with the crest of Coastal Forces MTB's on it. The photo below is of MTB07, one of the 2nd MTB Flotilla in Hong Kong in 1937. My father is on the port side of the bridge (known by MTB's as the conning tower) and the boat is at full speed. 37 knots on 3 Napier Lion engines. The MTB crest can be seen mounted on the spray rail on the front of the conning tower. The canisters on the side decks are depth charges but the torpedoes were stored on rails in the engine room and launched backwards through ports in the transom. The MTB then got out of the way while the torpedoes ran underneath! Hence the motto which goes with the crest of Coastal Forces MTBs : Caude spiculum caveo. "Beware the sting in the tail".

There's not much going on here today, so let me go off piste again, with a true story of my school days. The Nautical College Pangbourne had a chaplain who was ex wartime R.N., and when in a cassock and surplice he wore an impressive array of medal ribbons. He had the most dour and dry sense of humour I have ever known and whilst he was never seen to smile, he had us all in stitches with everything he said. Maybe that was because we couldn't see him smile behind his thick, flowing red beard. His name was Joe Laxton but to all of us he was Red Fred the Sinister Minister. When we assembled in the mess hall for meals he would say Grace, and often quoted Rabbie Burns. One of his favourites was "Some hae meat but canna eat, and some would ain that want it. But ye hae meat and ye can eat. And sae the Lord be thankit". I hope I have spelled that right as I have never seen it written down. Pangbourne had a Captain Superintendent instead of a headmaster and he was a serious and imposing Captain RN, who had been "Captain D" of a destroyer flotilla in the Med during the war, although we didn't know that at the time, as he never spoke of it. When Red Fred was not there at meals the Captain would say Grace, but as a specialist signals officer, he was rather more brief and to the point. He preferred "We thank the Lord for our meat and gravy : we thank the Lord for the Royal Navy!" If he was in a particular hurry to sit down he would just say "Thank God!" To which 400 young cadets would shout "Amen!" The day came when we all assembled for lunch and stood up as the staff filed in and took their places at the top table, with the Captain in the centre and the Padre normally at the far right. There followed a long silence, after which the Captain leant forward and looked to his right. Red Fred was not there. The Captain drew himself back up to his full uniformed height and announced "No Padre. THANK GOD." And 400 young seamen bellowed "AMEN!"

Doon chew lot know ho 'er talk praarper? A so called "white boat" is a Yare and Bure one-design. Peter has noticed (astutely) that as there is a tide mark on the sail, it was probably sunk about fifteen hours before the photo was taken. I would say "please try to keep up" but I am sure I would fare no better if I went north of Hadrian's Wall. Here speaks a man whose first wife is Scots!

Oi 'er sin wun 'er them afore, yer know. Oi reckun thass wun er them "Yair an Beures".

I realise that you posted this in a light-hearted manner but you are, of course, right in making that distinction. In my experience, these people always leave the boat in far better condition, at the end of their holiday, than the "average" customer. You can never tell, at the end of the day, what your customers are going to be like, or what kind of destruction they are going to wreak on your boat. On the Thames I once had a customer who arrived in a brand new Range Rover, with his family, for an 8 berth boat. When he came back I found, although he did not tell me, that his Mastiff dogs, which he had left on board while they were in pubs, had eaten their way through the doors of all the cabins that they had been closed behind. I was the one who had to somehow re-present that boat, in good order, for the next customers who arrived that same afternoon. The "dog man" actually threatened to sue me, by letter afterwards, because I had not refunded his fuel deposit. It is therefore not surprising that a quality boatyard will seek to limit the "collateral damage" by imposing restrictions on the boat's availability, which are, after all, advertised before the "point of sale".

Oh dear, Kadensa, surely the Broads is not now going "P.C."? No-one is being threatened or discriminated against. This condition of hire has been in place for donkeys' years. Anyone with any long term knowledge of the hire boat industry only has to look back through their old Blakes and Hoseasons catalogues, ever since the 1970s, to see this. Might I remind you that campsites and hotel chains are now advertising (on TV) adult only holidays, for those who want a bit of peace from screaming kids? Is that discrimination, or customers being offered freedom of choice? Surely Summercraft's intention is obvious? This is what is called "horses for courses". They offer (and have always offered) the highest quality in a hire boat. Believe me, they are hard to beat! But they can't maintain that standard for their discerning customer base if they are going to allow their beautiful craft to be degraded (or trashed) by lads' outings or hen parties. There are plenty of other boats on the Broads which are better adapted to this, and I have never heard of "the lads" having any difficulty in hiring a suitable boat, whenever they want one. Also at a lower cost than that advertised by Summercraft. I suppose an analogy would be the difference between flying business class, or "cattle class".

Spot on Chris! This is at the Abbée de la Maguellonne, just south of Montpellier (which you can see in the distance) and about an hour's hours cruise from Sète. Here you are only a few hundred yards from the deserted beaches of the Mediterranean, known as the Golf du Lion, and hence all the "liveabords" who chose to eke out their otherwise useless years on free moorings, with the sun on their backs. They do the place no credit. Especially as in this photo, the boat is squatting on overnight moorings, provided free of charge by the "Conseil Municipale". Sorry Mods, I'm talking politics. . . . Albeit French politics

We have been talking about Bounty Boats in the hire boat section over the last couple of days, and here is what you can do with a 1980s Bounty 37 if you really put your mind to it. You have to be French of course, as only the French could appreciate the ambience of such a work of art!

Yes, that is a Broadheart from Hearts. Can't remember the name of the mould design for now, but I seem to remember Tony Thrower built them with a centre engine? Incidentally the boat moored behind is the King of Hearts, now beautifully preserved. In all my career she has always been my favourite boat, and also the easiest to handle.

Yah, boo, sucks! It will be 37 degrees here today.

Not sure if this should be posted on this thread : maybe it should be "A blast from the past"? I have just posted these photos on a website about the fall of Hong Kong in 1941, and the Arakan Campaign in Burma in 1945, both of which concerned my father, and I thought you might like to see them. He, and the crews of the 2nd MTB flotilla, escaped from Rangoon on a Danish freighter, the Heinrich Jessen, by actually sailing out between the Japanese invasion forces, who were not interested in an old tramp steamer. Years later, in 1945, my father went back to Burma as senior officer, coastal forces, in the campaign to drive the Japanese out. He had 8 flotillas of coastal forces M.L.s (64 boats) and his depot ship was the old Heinrich Jessen, commandeered, re-built and re-named HMIS (His Majesty's Indian Ship) Barracuda. The Barracuda was the last merchant ship to leave Hong Kong, Singapore, Rangoon and Akyab before they fell to the Japanese. As part of my father's command she became the first ship to re-enter Akyab, Rangoon and Singapore, when they were re-taken in 1945. This beer mug was made in the engineer's shop of HMIS Barracuda, as a leaving present to my father after the Arakan campaign. The mug is a Naval 3 inch (12 pounder Pom Pom) cut down to make an Imperial pint. The two bullets are from a Vickers .303 machine gun and the handle is a 20mm Oerlikon cannon. All of these rounds were fired, in action, from Coastal Forces M.L.s attached to the Barracuda. The firing cap in the base is plugged with an Indian quarter Rupee piece and the handle is capped with a Royal Indian Navy chief petty officer's sleeve button. The chrome plating is still perfect, after 70 years. The last man to drink a pint out of this mug was Tony Thrower, the chief engineer of Hearts Cruisers, at the reception that we held in the Buck in Thorpe, after my father's funeral.

Here we are in the morning and sorry Iain, I couldn't resist that one! Simon, you were asking about Bounty Boats. The name Bounty 37 has become synonymous with them, just as if you want to clean your carpet, you say you are going to "Hoover" it. In fact the design was called the Solar 37 and one of the designers was John Clabburn, twin brother of Jimmy Clabburn, who founded the first Broads forum. They have a screw-on ventilation panel on the aft cabin side, which Bounty moulded with a large B. Boats not built by them had the same panel, but with a large S, for "Solar". You have to remember that the early 70s were the boom years on the Broads and we couldn't build hire boats fast enough. I don't know whether Bounty ever had their own hire fleet, but not in my memory. Their success in business was that they could build a hire boat more cheaply for a small yard, than if the yard had built one of its own. A lot of people used to knock Bounty for their quality, but you get what you pay for. They were asked to build for the cheapest price and so that is what they did. They were actually very good builders, as can be seen by the boats they built for private owners. The hire boats were fitted out with a lot of flat pack furniture, especially in the galley. This was fine at first, until you remember that chip-board and water don't mix! They had another "feature" in their building. Normally you build the bulkheads into a boat (down to the keel) and then lay floors (a Dutch boatbuilding word) between them, onto which you lay floorboards, which are removable for access. In Bounty's case they just laid sheets of 8X4 shuttering ply right through the boat and then put the bulkheads on top of them. This means no access to the bilge unless you are wielding a jig-saw, but it also gives them an incredible lateral strength at the waterline. They don't often get crushed in a side on collision. This also means you can strip out one or two complete cabins for more space, without affecting the structure of the boat. Thus they are very popular as private houseboats. When I left the Army I worked for Richardsons, when it was owned by the Rank Organisation, during the time when they built 100 new boats in one winter, bringing their fleet up from 200 to 300 in one go. About 60 were hired out on a Thursday and all the rest went out on Saturday. I was there for a year and a half before a little yard in Womack water came up for sale and I "took the plunge". In the short time I was with them I learned pretty well all I know about the logistical organisation of a big hire fleet and I have used their methods ever since. So yes, I have been involved in the building of a lot of "Bounty's"!

Sounds like putting the cart before the phone box.