Vaughan

I promise you, Wussername is not exaggerating. If anything, he is down-playing it! I sense that perhaps like me, he feels that the full story of that chaotic weekend of Easter, 1976, is best left un-told. Suffice to say that the last of the new boats to go out on hire left at 10 AM on the Monday morning. Amazingly, only 2 customers packed it up and went home. All the rest stuck it out, with some actually sleeping the night on their boats, before the men came back and carried on building them on the Sunday morning. Some customers flatly insisted on starting their holiday that day and we were giving trial runs with a torch, taking them down in the dark to moor at Sutton Staithe, where one of the vans was waiting to take us back to Stalham for the next lot. A weekend of my life that I shall never forget. He is right about the nicknames as well - some great people, whose skill and experience was what kept the whole place running. Reggie Champion, "the wonder horse", who did all the gas installations, on 300 boats. Billy Webster and his mate, "Old Ernie", who maintained and organised all the rowing and sailing dinghies. Walter Nicholls, the electrician and "Billy Wizz" the second engineer. Ambrose, known as "Bar", who did all the hauling out and boat movement in the winter, with 3 men and a couple of old RAF towing tractors from the war. His towboat was an old aft cockpit cruiser called Halcyon and he could push a Broadsventure with the transom, stern first into the wet shed and moor it in any space between the others - single handed. David Platten, the signwriter, who hand painted all the names on both sides of the new boats, usually standing in a dinghy, tied to the side. I have missed out a lot but I can't forget Russel Goose, the foreman painter, who organised all the departure boards so that each section could keep in touch with the progress of the servicing. A system I have always used ever since, on other boatyards. His famous battle cry was "Git 'em orf the yard, boi!" He knew that the longer they stayed sitting around on their boats waiting for a trial run, the more things they would find that needed fixing. If you can get them started on their holiday, they will just put up with all these things without complaint. "That don't matter if they break down on Barton Broad - git 'em orf the yard, boi!"

He did indeed!

A while back? That was 40 years ago.

Here is "My Lady", racing as "Evening Flight" in Wroxham regatta week, about 1969. Considered by many to be Herbert Woods's masterpiece. Photo by EDP. Mark Dunham and I had some wonderful races between the two boats in those days, in regattas all over the Broads. There was nothing to tell between them!

Yes, I was 10 years old at the time. Lots of memories of when the Broads, in my opinion, was at its best. I have noted a few things that might be of interest : At 1m 13s, the boat is a Loynes Kingfisher. 2m 15s The yacht is a Sabrina, of Geo. Smith & sons, of which several are still registered as River Cruisers. 3m 48s, notice the standard issue cork lifejackets of those days! 6m 04s, a good shot of Percivals boatyard in Horning, with Perci's private offshore cruiser "Zeemaus" moored on the front. 7m 35s, and the Bridge at Acle looks a bit different nowadays. at 10m 01s, so does Coltishall common! at 14m 16s, the sign is the proof that Cockshoot Dyke, and the broad, were leased by Blakes in those days. 13m 12s, the yacht Summer Breeze is actually a Woods Fine Lady, operated out of Southgates main yard at Horning, as Woods owned Southgates as well. Hence the red star on the sail, and not a blue one. The motor cruiser from Fowlers which features mainly, cost £8. 1s per week low season in 1964. Of particular interest to me, at 2m 44s, is some rare film of the Woods yacht Ladybird, which Herbert Woods built as his own private racing boat. A very radical design, with a canoe stern and a Bermuda rig, which won all the prizes on the Broads when new in 1936. The next year, the Cruiser Class handicapped him out of the running, so he built a new boat, on Ladybird's old keel, called her My Lady, and won all the regattas again, in 1938! Ladybird was put into the hire fleet with a larger cabin and reduced rig, which is how we see her here. Meantime My Lady was sold after the war, re-named Amanda, and later owned by my parents, as Evening Flight. Ladybird was bought in the late 60s by Mark Dunham and rebuilt back to her original design and rig by Leslie Landamore. As far as I know Ladybird is still on the water today, but sadly "My Lady" is not.

This is why UK passport and immigration controls have been at Calais, not Dover, since a ship becomes responsible for any illegals who are found on board and turned away from Dover. They can''t repatriate them as often, they have no legal country of origin anyway. So they might well get stuck on the ship. Same applies to aircraft.

I am no fan of the RNLI these days and cancelled my subscription of 40 years duration about 5 years ago. This is because of the politics of their shoreside management and nothing to do with the raw courage and seamanship of the crews themselves. Their calling is to save lives at sea and so, naturally, they cannot choose which lives to save! The immigrant problem has to do with territorial waters. At the narrow eastern end of the Channel, there are no "High Seas" , as there are in the Med, between Africa and Greece, or Italy. Between Calais and Dover, you are either in France, or England. So once you are half way across, you are "in the country". That cannot be the RNLI's fault and cannot influence their own duty.

Very important point, on an electric powered boat. If you want a shower, it's either that or have an immersion heater, plugged into shore power overnight.

Worth mentioning that even when it is finished it will not be fully effective as a bypass, as there are no fly-overs. It has been built on the cheap with roundabouts and the Postwick Hub is just an embarrassing joke. When you are driving a loaded 40ton artic and have to play around up and down a 12 or 16 speed gearbox every time you come to a roundabout, the fuel consumption goes up enormously. These things only do about 7 miles to the gallon at the best of times. So the only HGV traffic will be local deliveries. Long distance trucks coming down the A47 from Kings Lynn to Yarmouth will stick to the southern bypass where there are no roundabouts. A great deal of money and enormous disruption to achieve not a lot, in my opinion.

Funny no-one seems to have mentioned pure wind power yet - sails! Wherries don't have batteries, or engines but they have been happily getting about all over the Broads for hundreds of years.

Co-incidentally, there is a very good article on the EDP website this morning by Keith Skipper, who is a well known Norfolk journalist and commentator. Well worth a read and I am sorry I still can't get my fingers around linking it!

Well, at least it wasn't presented by a certain person, so I didn't have to be put off by his attitude! I very much agree with Floyraser about the bats : nature is adaptable and worth remembering, that some of the best protected nature reserves in the country, are our motorway embankments. On the map that she showed, the road route went through the big bat roost she had found but there were about 6 others around it which would not be affected (at least not at first). But there was so much about this that was not covered:- There were originally about five alternative routes for this road, of which this one seems to be the choice, but not yet definite. It is not what Heron calls a ring road, but is designed as a distributor road to feed into the vast dormitory housing estate being built between Wroxham, Rackheath, Brundall and Acle, which will swallow up all the farming countryside in what is called the Norwich Growth Triangle. An extension to the NDR westwards will simply extend the housing estate westwards as well, filling in all the countryside on both sides of the road. It is the planning officer's version of "mission creep". If or when this road is built, it will not only be the bats that are displaced but all other bio-diversity (whatever that is) will have to pack its bags as well. The view across the Wensum valley from the Ringland Hills is Norfolk's version of Dedham Vale. Enjoy it while you can.

Thank you for that Timbo. It will help me and maybe others, to view this evening's programme with a more open mind.

The EDP reported yesterday evening that the Yare has now closed for good. The article has comment from both owners but does not say anything about an auction.

"Bingo!"

I do apologise to YnysMon for our wanderings off this thread! Trouble is, If I hear much more about the perceived necessity of wearing a disposable nappy on my face, I think I will go round the twist. Nor am I prepared to suffer the submissive indignity, in full public view in a ferry port or airport, of having some petty official of unknown qualification (other than a hi-viz jacket) poking a cotton bud up my nose. Until we get back to normal human interaction again, we are not travelling.

Tell me about it! It was the same for us in the Military Port at Marchwood. Except when we had an ammunition train in the port, being loaded for the BAOR in Germany. Then we were (as far as we knew) the only army armed guard on English soil. "Not a lot of people knew that" at the time!

I always knew old Wussername had it in him! This does rather remind me of the famous glider attack by the "Ox and Bucks" Airborne on Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal on D-Day. I only mention it because the original bridge was later found to be an obstruction to modern shipping, so they have moved it into a field nearby, preserved it as a monument and built a new wider bridge over the canal.

For those who might be seriously interested the western link to the NDR "Broads National Parkway" is being discussed on BBC Countryfile at 5.20 tomorrow, Sunday, on BBC1. The EDP says that a presentation about rare and imperilled bats will be given by Dr Packman. No, not him - this is Dr Charlotte Packman who, it seems, has spent the last three years following a so-called "super colony" of bats around the Ringland Hills to see what they get up to. My addled sense of humour has visions of Margaret Rutherford in tweeds, rushing about in a field brandishing a huge butterfly net on a long pole. According to the EDP, she has refused to give details of her survey to the NCC planning department, as this would "prevent her publishing it". Martin Wilby of NCC Highways replies (for once quite reasonably) that if they cannot include her details of the location of bat roosts in their planning process they will continue to base their decisions on their own surveys. It doesn't say who is presenting the programme but I think I could hazard a guess. All sounds a bit bats to me. . . .

While we are on the subject, I would suggest that stern on mooring is really only for places with still water, such as marinas, boatyard basins, Horning village or Malthouse Broad. Mooring stern on in a tideway is not a good idea. I only did it that time at Surlingham (in October) as I expected more boats to arrive, which would then hold them all together in a line. As it turned out, we were the only ones on the mooring that night, although the pub was well full!

If you are single handed, it actually helps. The river bottom at Surlingham is quite hard and gravelly (not like Barton Broad!) so your astern gear is powerful enough to drag the mud weight as you back in. Approach the mooring against the tide and turn out a little up-tide of your mooring place. as you stop the boat and before going astern, throw out the mud weight. As you back in, this will keep your bow in place and prevent it drifting off down-tide. If you are single-handed, you can even leave the boat in slow astern against the weight, while you step off with the ropes. Try it some time!

Here is a photo of what John describes, at Surlingham Ferry. We dropped the mud weight on the full length of line before we had finished backing in. Always approach a stern mooring against the tide.

Could I just remind this discussion of some salient points - Is that perhaps a pun, in this case? 1/. The sealing off of the meadowland "washlands" with high river banks has caused the need to raise flood defences in several towns such as Reedham and Stokesby, which never needed them before. So the tidal water has to go somewhere else - upriver! 2/. Rainwater flooding (nothing to do with tides) has the same restriction, caused by (1) above. 3/. The whole river Yare from Yarmouth to Norwich used to be dredged to a minimum 12ft at low water, for the maritime shipping traffic. A huge volume of water to absorb incoming tides. How deep is it now I wonder? And where does all that water go now? 4/. I was not impressed with the clip about dredging as it takes no account of the constant flow out to sea of the Broads rivers, from their headwaters. The river Bure starts flowing somewhere between Kings Lynn and Aylsham. All of this area of country, in times of heavy rain, drains out through the Broads. Just like the Somerset Levels, or the upper Thames above Teddington. 5/. Every time you build yet another huge retail park or housing estate on what used to be farmland and cover it in Tarmac, you are just adding to the run-off of rainwater into these rivers.

I do as well!

As a matter of interest I have been looking up my copy of the CITB gas regs. A 13kg bottle of Butane liquid will produce 5.4 cu. metres of gas. Judging by how often we have to change gas bottles, one can estimate that a large hire boat will use around 2 cu. metres of gas per week on the cooker. Propane gas would be about 2,5 cu. metres per week. Another very important thing to bear in mind: One volume of Butane gas needs 13 volumes of oxygen for complete combustion. As oxygen is about 20% in air, that means that one cu.metre of gas needs 65 cu.metres of air in the galley, if it is to burn cleanly. That is why fixed ventilation is so important.