Vaughan

Go out and have a look at your boat from the front, with a "new pair of eyes" while she is sitting still on her moorings. You might be quite surprised at what you see. I should add (for all Alpha owners) that this is not a problem. If the boat was fitted out that way, then she will be perfectly all right that way. The strength of a Fibreglass boat is in the furniture inside it.

I first noticed this twist when I got one of those two boats out into the shed, to do the conversion of the upper sundeck. Having got it off the trolley and the keel onto chocks, I jacked it up level in the usual way by checking that the transom was the same height off the floor on both sides. When finished, I walked off towards the office and looking back, saw that the bow of the boat was leaning over about 5 degrees to port. I had to go back and make sure that I had chocked it up right!

And I would add that normal marine insurance should cover the owner for such a repair, in order to leave the vessel "in commission".

Dear me, I didn't mean it was the key word of the report, just of that part of it. It is so very easy to be misunderstood, on a forum. I totally agree with what you say, as accident investigators will always talk of a "cascade" of events, none of which, on their own, would be serious but put all together, they add up to an accident. In this case, one assumes that this communication would only be necessary if it were decided to change both the control position, and the helmsman, at the same time while under way. No reason in theory, why one shouldn't. Perhaps this is the vital connection between the safe design and installation of the equipment : and its safe operation by the user.

It is quite a serious twist as well! You can even see it in these photos : Here, the boat is level but the bow has a list to port. Here, the bow on the left is level, but the boat has a good list to starboard! Probably because the water tank was empty.

Excuse me but I think the key word in the report was communication, rather than access. The ability to communicate, either vocally or visibly, between the two positions. A sunroof over the saloon or especially a sliding window between the saloon and the sundeck, would serve that purpose.

I thoroughly agree! All the same I feel your post is rather spoiled by the almost automatic assumption of "inadequate tuition". As you were a witness to this incident, is there any basis for that?

Don't worry - we know who you are!!

BBC Look East did an interview yesterday on the NBD front quay at Wroxham, on the theme of how not to fall down and die in the street because the sun is shining. Interestingly, you could see most of the basin behind, at only 5PM - all three big trip boats were in, what looked like almost all the day launches and a good long row of empty hire cruisers behind, in what is now mid July. I have also been enjoying members' photos and drone images of their holidays. There seem to be plenty of moorings available on the north rivers just now! Sadly it has also turned out to be a dreadful year for tourism in general here in France. I haven't seen Le Boat with any more than half their fleet out yet and it is normally only about a quarter. On Sunday there was only one English car in the park out of only 11 others, mostly Spanish.

In Blakes, you paid a reduced commission on an "owner's booking" and Hoseasons had a similar system. This is fair enough as the agent is still handling the booking and in a lot of aspects, guaranteeing it. Blakes had what they called a "hirer's hardship scheme" a long time before ABTA was invented.

Is that Ladybird, I see in the shed there?

This could also have been a marl pit, part of the very extensive clay workings, known as Little Switzerland because of of the big pine plantation that was also part of the Wroxham Hall estate. Where it says Grovesend on the map, you can see some of the dykes where the wherries could go for a long way into the workings to load up. Marl was what they used for bricks, and would have been transported from there by wherry to brickworks all over the Broads area.

I am very glad that your holiday was a success and thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. I wish you clear skies for your return home and look forward to hearing from you again next time.

My father was one of the "band of men", all boat hirers, involved in the forced entry to Black Horse Broad, led by Herbert Woods in 1949. It was re-opened on the basis that it was officially tidal, so the landowner didn't own the water in it. Weed has become a problem everywhere now that the water quality has improved so much. In the 50s and 60s the water was a sickly green colour, so no weed. Boatyards had a lot of influence in those days and Blakes paid for a great deal of maintenance to navigations, including the lease of Malthouse Broad and the staithe, or that would have been shut too. They leased Cockshoot Broad and the dyke until it was closed for mud pumping in the 60s. This was a great success but for some political reason it was never re-opened to navigation. So who looks after these places, now that hire boats no longer hold so much "sway"? The private owners? Where is the Broads Society, in all this? I ask especially, as Black Horse Broad has a staithe, just beside where the pub used to be, and which was identified on this forum by Timbo and I from old maps a few years ago. If an association such as the Broads Society had the clout to get that staithe officially recognised and opened to the public, then the waterway onto the broad would also be re-classified as a navigation. When I was on the committee of the Broads Society with Roy Kemp, this is exactly what we were successfully involved in.

Wow! Hello Clare. How great to hear from you after all these years. So you are in Australia. Last I heard, I thought you were in Africa? We grew up together in Thorpe and you lived on the Yarmouth Rd, right opposite the old gunboat. So you really were "the girl next door". Except we had a river that came between us. Yes we did cross it many times and by no means always in a boat! We also grew up together at the NBYC on Wroxham Broad, where there was quite a lot of swimming as well . . . Very fond and very happy memories of our teenage years. I will send a message with my e-mail address. Don't pay any attention to Old Wussername - he comes from up the Norwich end. Thorpe Narrows . . .

"This blasted heath" and all that . . . .

Exactly what I have been banging on about for a long time now. If they don't HAVE to maintain it, by law, then sure enough, they won't.

Yes, and why have all the various "responsible" authorities allowed it to get into such a state, we ask ourselves?

You may like to put the kettle on before reading this, as it is early morning on what promises to be a 40º day, and I feel like "waxing lyrical". Without troubling to verify it on Google (as I don't spend all day with my face in a screen as some appear to think) I always thought the Great Unwashed was a term from the Indian Empire, which referred to those not of the Hindu faith, who had not ritually washed themselves in the Ganges. I am not sure we can apply that to the Bure at Coltishall Green! All the same I know what Hylander means and I have been guilty myself, of talking about the Great Heaving Public, as a generalisation. Marshman and I are wherrymen (among other things) and I am sure we both keep in mind the real origins of what we now call the Broads, when it was re-claimed from a marsh (by the Dutch) and made into a commercial navigation for the carrying of all the general cargo in wherries as well as other vessels. The classic Norfolk reed barge has a history much longer than the wherry. In the 1840s the railways came to Norfolk and steadily killed off the trade of the wherries, but they also brought the working classes (a definitive but not derogatory term) from the factories of London , the Midlands and the North, for their week's holiday on the coast at Gt Yarmouth. From there, pleasure steamers took them up the rivers for the day and very soon, the Broads became a major holiday centre in its own right. I have mentioned before that all the major boating centres here - except one - are beside an old railway station. Let's also remember that Harry Blake's boating agency was founded in 1908. John Loynes, one of its founders, had already been in business in Wroxham and Norwich for a long time before that. So the Broads has always acquired a rather "down market" image of fish and chips and shops selling captain's hats or pirate flags. I well remember when some "expert" lady from the then new BA, announced in the EDP that the Broads were attracting "the wrong kind of customer" and should go more up market. I well remember my dear friend Angie Sabberton, of Sabena Marine, writing a brilliantly scathing reply to that article! I am quite certain that there are many of you on this forum who were introduced to the Broads as kids with their parents (or grandparents) on annual holiday by train, or as members of the many school parties and I hope you are proud of it. Broadscot was one of them and he was never ashamed to admit it! This has always been the "customer base" of Broads boating and please God, it always will be! They may have misbehaved a bit over the years but they made the Broads into what we know and love today. So what is different now, and what is the future? The difference between now and the early 70s is that there is much less tourist revenue to maintain the Broads, since it went into decline in the 80s. So if staycation tourists are coming here by road to get on the river for the day that can only be a good thing for all of us. Yes they do pay a river toll for their paddle board, but the only place to stick a registration number would be on the seat of their swimming trunks! How many of these young canoeists and paddle boarders will graduate to cruiser hiring, or ownership, as they get to love the place as we do? As to Coltishall, well only about half of today's hire boats can get under Wroxham bridge, so it is a good place for other waterborne activities, in fairly shallow water with little current, easy access to banks for safety and access to many points by car. I have suggested before that the river both above and below Horstead mill is a beautiful spot for the enjoyment of "paddling". Much safer than Wroxham or Horning! Something that does bother me about the future, is that a river given over to paddle boards and canoes does not need dredging, weed cutting, bank maintenance or the provision of overnight moorings, pumpouts, electric points and all the other facilities. So the BA can cheerfully carry on taking their river tolls, whilst allowing the old navigations to deteriorate and "fall into disuse". They used to say you could sail a wherry across damp grass if there had been a good dew that morning. I would hate to see the Broads get like that, after over 200 years history as a navigation.

I love it! It takes someone to come all the way from New Zealand on holiday, to tell the riverbank anglers where they start and where they stop. Welcome back to the Broads, and I hope you continue to enjoy a good holiday.

And when joining this forum, a sense of humour is essential! I also rather doubt that you will find the necessary virgins anywhere north of Ludham bridge in August. Most of them will have ended up working for Richardsons at weekends. And that is not a fate worse than death, as I remember . . . .

That'll be the last barbecue you ever light!!

If it came with the mooring plot, it might be a good investment . . . .

As long as you have the facilities, to plug it into the bank.

Never fails! Easy Start is mainly ether, which is highly flammable so it starts engines. Trouble is, it also washes the oil out of the cylinders and leaves its own film on the cylinder bores. So next time you want to start, there is low compression due to lack of oil and it won't start, unless you give it another squirt of the ether. At this point the engine is said to be "addicted" to Easy Start and the only cure is to strip it down and re-build it.