Vaughan

Another way of doing this, is if your pump comes with a built in pressure switch. This should indicate what the cut in and cut off pressures are. In this case, set the air pressure at 2psi above the cut off pressure given for the pump. You mentioned talking to the marina about it and this is probably a good idea as it is a complicated job to get right but it shouldn't cost more than an hour's labour.

I forgot - you have to set the air pressure with the water pressure at zero. So water pump off and taps open. It sounds to me as though the pump cut in pressure is too low. But first you have to get the air pressure right. You then set the cut OUT pressure a little bit (about 2psi) below the air pressure. With the shower running with both taps open, you then bring up the cut IN pressure until it runs constantly.

I assume you have a pressure vessel and this must first be set at the right air pressure. Very often these are set too high. Normal pressure is about 1 BAR. Best done by taking a small portable air compressor on board, which has a tyre pressure gauge. This may make a big improvement before you go any further. You may then have a Square D pressure switch, which I can tell you how to adjust, but it is not easy! Some photos of what you have got would be a great help.

Taken in Portsmouth in 2017. The boat herself was in winter maintenance at the time, so I couldn't go aboard. That would have been a bit nostalgic! Perhaps another time.

If I can identify what I have done, from looking at a photo, perhaps the surveyor should have known why the bell housing had been fitted with a temporary drain pipe? The things I have mentioned are quite typical on a Perkins 4108. As to liability, I suppose that would depend on what type of survey the surveyor was asked to carry out? Was it an "on the water inspection", or a full survey?

It is very difficult for me to say this, to a new owner of a boat, but you have posted photos for a forum discussion, so I feel I should voice my concerns from this photo. The water injection bend is badly rusted and the exhaust manifold gasket is leaking. The exhaust pipe looks brand new. I wonder why it was replaced? I can't see much of the cylinder head but it looks very dark, as though there is no paint left on it. I fear this engine has been badly overheated in the past and may have seized. This would explain the blown crank oil seal, which has obviously been there for some time. I fear you may be looking at new bearing shells and a possible crank re-grind. The photo is a bit fuzzy but there seems to be no writing on the front plate of the water pump, so it may not be a standard part. I wonder if this may have been part of an overheating problem? By the way, the Morse control cable to the injector pump is installed in a very sharp curve and does not look to be in line. This may break sooner rather than later. I hesitate to say this, but you may have one or two questions to ask your surveyor.

The engine is a Perkins 4108 Lowline and I have to tell you that the crankshaft rear oil seal has gone. That is what the pipe and oil can are for. Take off the gearbox, bell housing and flywheel and with luck, you can change it without lifting out the engine, as it has its own separate housing on the back of the block. You should read the manual carefully as it needs trimming when fitting. I am afraid you also have to think about why the oil seal has gone. This may have something to do with the crankshaft main bearings. The raw water pump will need removing and stripping to replace the water seals on the shaft. If the seals have worn a groove in the shaft this must also be replaced, at which point you probably buy a new water pump complete. Be very careful when re-fitting, to get the water pump exactly central on its mounting in the timing cover, as it is driven by a key on the injector pump timing gear and bad alignment will wear it. The pump shaft is best removed and re-fitted on a hydraulic bench press.

Photos of these things are always a great help.

It is the nickname for a Broads half-decker, called a Yare and Bure One-design. Very popular and nowadays the class has allowed them to be built with Fibreglass hulls. Very similar to the Waveney one-design, which has a W as well as the sail number. Edited to add : the White Boats are all named after butterflies.

Just going "off piste" for a moment, the boat at the right is a regatta houseboat, called "Picken Jack" and owned by Cecil Jeckells - father of Peter and Raymond. With her own engine, she was taken round all the regattas, where she could be seen on a mud weight, usually with a White Boat, a couple of Norfolk Dinghies and a launch alongside. There were stairs to the top deck, where deck chairs were placed to watch the racing. Beautifully wood panelled inside and usually kept at their mooring plot and bungalow, upstream of Horning Sailing Club. A lovely, purpose-built boat from an almost bye-gone age. I wonder where she is now?

Congratulations on your new boat! This sounds like the thrust bearing and if its mounting has come loose it is not doing its job properly. This is where the thrust from the prop is taken up by the boat, so that bearer must be glassed in very solidly. It must also be done ensuring that the prop shaft is properly aligned with the tube when you do it. Afterwards you must check that the engine is properly lined up to the prop shaft. I would advise you to talk to a boatyard about it. You can still drive the boat at the moment - gently - but it means that the thrust from the prop is being taken up by the engine mountings and not by the thrust bearing. It also puts a severe strain on the gearbox.

I appreciate the question but I will perhaps leave it open to the forum to reply for the moment, as I sometimes think I am the only one who seems to remember! It has also been discussed in other places on the forum over the last few years. Perhaps you only have to look at how this latest Breydon incident has got to the Tatty Tabloids and how they have delighted in reporting it, to see how fragile the tourist market can be, to a bit of Doom-watch journalism.

Looks like a "prayer book" but I don't think Griff would do that! I guess it is the support for the through bolt at the front of the rubbing strake. I also notice where small shapes have been "let in" to the wood of the transom, to make good repairs without having to replace whole boards. Very skilled boatbuilding.

And you carry on speculating, if you wish.

Well, here we all are, looking back on a thread that has run to 8 pages over almost a week, all based on an incident which, for all we know after a couple of very sparse press articles, is that a boat drifted onto the mud after an engine failure. Even that may not be strictly accurate. Something that could just as easily have happened to one of the private boats that one tends also to see lying high and dry on their side from time to time. But of course, we are not allowed to "name and shame" them, are we? So let's have a go at the boatyards instead and tell them all how we think they ought to be doing it better. Some have asked what was it like in the old days before the SAR helicopters? There were 3000 hire boats then, so there was always someone passing, to take a message to the yacht station. If not, the Commissioners launch would spot them and radio the office in Yarmouth, who would notify Blakes tow boat. A lot of use was made of dinghies, so as to get a line across to a boat and tow it off as the tide rose. People were very rarely taken off a boat but if it had to be done it was often by walking a pram dinghy across the mud with a "victim" sitting in it. There were, of course, over 100 boatyards in those days, providing a co-operative rescue service in all corners of the Broads, not just on Breydon. They also provided free moorings, water, pumpouts, showers, rubbish bins, mechanical service and sometimes even supplies from their own riverside shop. What happened to them? They were killed off in the 80's partly by recession, partly by foreign holidays but mainly by bad press publicity. There aren't many left now, but just think for a moment what cruising your private boat on the Broads would be like without them, and the tourist "dollars" that they bring to the Broads economy. Would the various authorities still have the budget, or even the motivation, to maintain the navigation and its facilities in the same way? If there are some on this "media platform" who feel it is their "right in debate" to have a good go at giving the boatyards a bad name for things which are so often due to an actual lack of public common sense, then go ahead. Have your fun, at the expense of those businesses upon whom the Broads navigation depends. Just be careful what you wish for, is all.

The old gunboat is a piece of Broads history and reading back over this thread, I don't think we have explained, between us, what actually happened to her. It goes back to 1965 when my parents sold Hearts Cruisers to Jenners. The deal was that David Millbank bought the yard for a bargain price but also bought the gunboat, giving them them the right to live there free of all charge for the rest of their lives. As David was expanding Jenners all on venture capital, and as my parents were very comfortable where they were on the island, it suited both parties very well! The deal was honoured by Ladbrokes, who bought Hearts from Jenners when it closed, and later by Richardsons. Problem was that the deal included the maintenance of the gunboat by the boatyard and this became impossible as she could not be hauled out there and could no longer get back under the railway bridge. So when my parents and I moved off the boat and bought a house elsewhere in 1989, Hearts were left with the problem of what to do with the old boat. Two young people had the dream of restoring her, putting engines back in and cruising the Med, so Richardsons sold them the boat for £100 on condition that they moved her off the mooring. The new owners stripped off the superstructure to try and get her under the bridge but were then refused permission to navigate the Yare, by the BA. In the end Brian Coley, Hearts manager, decided to tow her up to Jenners basin, which was also owned by Hearts, where she sank in the corner nearest the Town House and was heavily vandalised. It was after this that the British Powerboat Co. museum got to hear of her, as she was in fact a historic prototype, designed by Scott-Paine in 1936 to try and get the Admiralty contract for 72ft fast patrol craft. This contract was eventually won by Vospers, with their prototype MTB 102, still well known to us today. Scott-Paine then took his design to the States, where it became famous as the ELCO PT (patrol torpedo) boats. As a prototype, she had been fitted with genuine supercharged Rolls Royce Merlin engines. The museum raised the boat and moved her into the middle of the basin, ready to put in an internal metal framework so that she could be craned out on to a truck and transported to Portsmouth. This eventually proved too expensive and impractical so she sank again and remains in the same spot to this day. The BPBC museum eventually found another boat of exactly the same class which they did restore and which is still in use at the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth.

And I politely ask just the same.

I'm not sure where you got all that from . . . . .

Do you really think we don't take those measures? I really get rather tired of these armchair forum suggestions that we just cast people off and wish them a happy holiday. If you knew what it was really like to be responsible for people's safety on a boatyard, or how many sleepless nights are involved . . . . . All right, let's look at it another way. How many times did volunteer rescue services get called out to the Breydon flats last year? Compared to the number of boats that crossed there safely? I am afraid our modern risk averse society will not be changed by filling in another form on the hire boat trial run.

Good grief. How have we ever managed, without all this "risk based management", for the last 100 years in Broads boat hiring? I asked this question on page one of this thread and I ask it again here : How many people have been killed or injured as a result of grounding on Breydon? In living memory?

They could always keep in on the slip at Somerleyton. Where it was invented.

Funnily enough I went aground many years ago in about the same place, in Jenners' tow boat, while trying to get near enough to another aground, so as to throw a heaving line. I eased in very gently but you only have to touch that mud and it sticks like glue. I was on a rising tide luckily but I still had to wait over an hour to get off, even with the power of a 6 cylinder engine. You can walk out on the mud but that is very much a last resort. The mess is incredible!

Exactly. A "pilot" rail like yours is much better on inland waterways as you have a rail close to hand but it does not obstruct when getting on and off or handling lines. Most hire boats don't have pulpit rails, traditionally. Just something else to get knocked off!

You will often find this on boats which are used on waterways with locks. It prevents the fender ropes being frayed by friction against stone lock sides. For hull and fender cleaning I have always used JIF, for some reason now known as CIF.

Just to clarify, the requirement in most European countries, certainly France and Germany, is for all private boats to have an inland waterways skipper's ticket, or recognised equivalent. The RYA Yacht Masters is not a recognised equivalent. There is also a commercial ticket for barge skippers, which is anything over 15 metres. In France, hirers are issued with a "Permis de Plaisance" after an instruction by the boatyard, and this is only valid for the duration of their holiday. The French do love to have a piece of paper with a stamp on it! Apart from the need to pass through locks, the instruction given to hirers does not differ in any way from that given on the Broads. The boatyard instructors however, all have to hold the French "Permis Bateau" which is simply a paper exam taken in the canal authority offices. In Germany, you cannot hire a boat without a German skipper's ticket, which is why there are almost no hire companies in Germany and all the Germans come and take their boating holidays in France!