Vaughan

The EDP has just reported that a man has been charged over this incident and will appear in Magistrates Court on 28th December. He is named as Tom Smith, of no fixed address. Draw your own conclusions from that!

In Broads sailing, we call that a nautical embolism. A clot between the tiller and the mainsheet!

And I wish cars were still like that as well. In those days you could mend the things!

Wow! Best we don't comment on this I guess, until more is made public.

Perhaps going off the subject a bit (perish the thought!) but it's my thread - so there. . . Around 1949 my father was at Southgates for a duck flight, and in an old dinghy dyke behind the sheds, he found an old yacht, sunk and abandoned, since before the war. I think he fell in love with her because she reminded him of the gaff cutter that he had owned in Hong Kong, in the late 30s. No-one knew who owned her and maybe, the owners had not survived the war, but father was eventually able to buy her from Southgates, raise her, get her back to Thorpe and completely re-build her. As a young boy, I remember being taught how to pour the pitch in the seams of her teak laid deck. She is still going today, as River Cruiser No 53, "Crystal" and here she is, winning the all-comers race at Barton Regatta, in 1958. One of my oldest and dearest friends, John Walsh, an ex owner of Crystal in the late 60s, has passed away in the last few months, so I am also posting this in his memory.

I hadn't thought of that - I suppose there won't be shoots on Boxing Day this year, as you don't shoot game on a Sunday. They do here in France, though! Once they have shot everything they can find that moves, they then shoot road signs and speed cameras. Now the latter, I regard as "fair game"!

Hope you have a good day out. Tell us how you get on!

I do indeed, and it is a very famous Broads family.

If you look up "The Big Six" by Arthur Ransome, you are talking of the area he called The Wilderness, between The New Inn and the old Chumley and Hawkes boatyard, which used to be what is now called "carr". Just marshy land overgrown with osier bushes. If you Google it now and look on the satellite, you can see what they call Ropes Hill Dyke, with another lane beside it called Southquays Lane which leads down to what used to be Southgates Main Yard, just upstream of Horning Sailing Club. Nowadays heavily developed with marina moorings and houses but in the 50s and 60s, just open marsh, with no trees. Perfect for duck shooting! And well sited for a return to the Black Horse, just up the road, once night had fallen!

This has reminded me of another classic bit of "Norfolk" from a bill submitted by a blacksmith, to the local farmer : Hay for the 'orse. water for the 'orse. a fetching' on 'im - a shoe 'in on 'im and a bringin' on 'im hoom agin.

May I be the first to wish members a happy Boxing Day? Many happy boyhood memories for me, out hunting with harriers, or out with my father (and my school headmaster) as one of the beaters on shoots in Norfolk. In the winter term, my headmaster at Langley used to take my whole form off school for the day to provide the beaters for a big syndicate shoot near Scottow. He then wrote it down in the school curriculum as "nature studies". And what better way, for young boys to learn about the countryside, than a day out with an estate gamekeeper? I also remember long hours, stood in a hide beside a pond, on evening duck flights on the Broads marshes. My father used to rent a flight pond in the marsh behind Southgates main yard in Horning, which is now all marina moorings with new houses. He paid one of Southgates' men, Mr Trory, to feed the pond with barley and they came to shoot about 4 times every winter. The other members were Perci Percival, Ray Bondon, Miles Simpson and Gilly Tallowin, from the New Inn. Over the years, father began to do less shooting, owing to rheumatism and one day, he got a phone call from Southgates : "Is that the Commander? Thass Trory here". "Hello Trory, how are you?" "Well" (he say) "thass this here pond o' yours and oi int verra happy". "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that - what's the trouble?" "Well thass loik this hair. Oi go down the pond of an evenin' with a sack of barley, loik yew pay me for, but these days, oi keep a'hullin' on it in - them duck come a' tearkin' on it owt - but yew never come down hair a' shootin' on 'em!"

I am posting this today because, for almost all of my adult life, I have gone down to whatever boatyard I was running, on Christmas morning, to check the moorings and make sure the boats are all right. No-one else is there at that time as the staff are all on holiday. I have always done the same visit even in retirement and here is the Locaboat base at Argens this morning - the last place I worked before retiring. Compare this with my photos of another base, and you can see how it should be done! Some of them were lifted out by the fixed gantry on the yard and then they hire a large mobile crane and get all the rest out, in one day. The only boats left in the water are privately owned.

By the way, did you know that the Graf Spee had to be scuttled because she had run out of diesel? She was one of the first big ships to have a Diesel engine rather than steam boilers and she had bunkers of boiler fuel oil, with a distillation plant to refine it into "heavy" oil for the engine. Unfortunately this plant was in the upper superstructure and got hit and destroyed during the battle. The delay in sailing again was due to them trying without success, to get another unit sent to them. So when she sailed, she only had about 8 hours steaming left, in the ready use diesel tank. This was all kept secret until after the war.

All the same, it is great to see Ajax, Achilles and Cumberland all playing themselves in the film. Exeter had been sunk later, in the Java Sea after the fall of Singapore. Bletchley Park and the Enigma code came a bit later, I think. This was 1939 and still very much a "line of sight" war, much like the 1st War. The meeting of the ships' captains at sea never happened in fact but it was a good way to show off some film of the ships, introduce the main characters and explain the basic plot. Commodore Harwood did indeed find the Graf Spee by estimating where he thought she might be going next. An excellent film which is almost entirely true to the facts. My father took me to see it in the cinema in Norwich, when it first came out.

I also offer very best wishes for a happy Christmas, from Susie and I. In doing so I am conscious of several well known members and regular contributors who have not been posting for a while and I miss their welcome input. I very mush hope they are all well in these awkward times and hope to hear from them again in the new year. So I offer you a toast well known in the Navy: "To absent friends!"

With me, that applies to falling in the river. I must have fallen in a hundred times by now but never on my own. There always seem to be at least 10 people standing around to have a good laugh!

Another Naval expression from those days : "It came away in me 'and, sir!"

This is exactly right! Another thing we say is "let the boat do the work". Work out what the tide and the wind are doing and come in to moor against them. Never be in a hurry, when you are handling a boat.

To learn the ropes! Taken at the Beauchamp Arms in 1951. Cruiser was the Ten of Hearts.

I have just remembered how to do it, at about 3 o'clock this morning. You'd think I would have better to things to think about at that time of night . . . You need a woodworker's bench vice with wooden jaws, to get a good grip on the handle. Hold it almost horizontal with the head just a bit raised off the bench. Cut away all of the old mop head as well as the leather washers. This will leave room to get the flat, forked end of a crow bar in behind the head of the nail. Holding it steady with one hand, hit the crowbar with a lump hammer. Or as the site foreman once said : "When I nod my 'ead, you 'it it!"

I fear that the reason why the bits fell out of your old mop head is because the copper nail was not driven in far enough, to clamp the two thick leather washers together and hold the mop head in place.. The risk is that if you drive the nail in too hard, you will split the mop handle. Which is why you often see them with a Jubillee Clip tightened around the top of the handle, to contain the split in the wood! It probably means you will have to buy a new handle and drill it out first, so that the copper nail is a tight fit, but not too tight to split the handle. If you don't get the two leather washers clamped up tight against the mop head then the cotton tails will all fall out of your new one. Sorry if this all sounds a bit like Trigger's broom!

Taken this morning, as the sun was burning off the mist over the whole valley. We live just to the left of the church.

I am not a fisherman but I most certainly agree with this. A blot on the landscape, would be a perfect description. This rape of our Norfolk countryside may be "outside the BA's area of authority" but its detrimental effect on the quality of the waterways (including flooding) is most certainly not.

Upton Dyke?

You're quite right right Andy but this was a special occasion, when the boat was finished early, so that Grendel could take her to the wooden boat show, I think. I must say though, that customers seemed to "muck in" a lot more in the old days.