Vaughan

Excuse me, but that is not fair comment and best to leave our armed forces out of this, I think. If they couldn't install things in hostile territory while under fire, they never would have won D-Day.

The apprenticeship for a Broads boatbuilder was 7 years and for an engineer - 5 years. I am a "time served" painter and yacht rigger - 3years. Apart from O levels, it is still my only trade qualification! By the way, whatever happened to the City and Guilds?

Very interesting. Why am I not surprised? Nothing new about that either! In the late 40s and 50s, marine engines such as Stuart Turner had a "Dyna-Start" which was a starter motor on a belt to the flywheel. Once the engine started, it reversed polarity and became a dynamo, for battery charging. I remember them well and very efficient, they were!

I was always taught that one of the main principles of science is that nothing is for free. If you want energy, you will always have to pay for it, somewhere along the line. This is why there can be no such thing as a perpetual motion engine. In fact Langford Jillings built a diesel/electric cruiser about 20 years ago, based on the principle of a mobile crane that he had been following to work in his car! He was that kind of innovator. In fact it did not succeed, as the power for the electric motor had to be provided by a Perkins 4108 diesel generator.

The Princess of Hearts, in fact!

I said I would do another post about the logistics of operating electric hire boats. Luckily a lot of this has already been covered by other posters, which makes it easier for me! I will also let others (who are specialists) discuss the power needed at charging points, the civil engineering needed to install them and of course, the cost in public money! Then there will be the question of planning permission. One little colony of newts or snails at the corner of a field, can stop work for years. Vis : the Acle Straight. So let's look at it from the customer's point of view. You have hired your boat and after what will have to be a comprehensive trial run, you set off, armed with a list of the places where you will find charging points. These will be the only places on the Broads where you can stop for the night on your holiday and it follows that they will be the major and most crowded places. Unless you choose to spend the night at another boatyard, to use their charging facilities. And what about the pubs? They will have to instal and pay for charging points as well, if they want to have customers. So how much will they then charge for overnight mooring? Or, more likely, will they go out of business, so no more pubs on the river? Their business is quite shaky enough as it is! And what happens when you arrive at Ranworth Maltsters to find that the 5 charging points that they have installed amid a blaze of publicity and flag waving, are already taken? If you are the 6th one to arrive, you don't get to charge up. So next morning, the only solution is that you phone the breakdown number and get towed into the nearest boatyard - where you will spend at least the next 5 or 6 hours on charge before you can move again. And what happens when a non electric boat is moored on the charging point and won't move? Its crew may not even be on board. Or when you arrive at a BA mooring to find a group of big hairy fishermen, who chuck live bait at you when you try to moor up. They are not going to move either! On a diesel boat you can just choose to find somewhere else more peaceful, but on an electric one - you can't. There is one essential ground rule about this operation : if a yard has 10 electric boats for hire, then there must be 10 charging points at each major location in the cruising area. Just a couple for luck, will not do. I promise you, this is where it will go wrong. I have seen it happen. I think you can already see that an electric cruise on the Broads is not going to be much fun! It takes away all the choice of location, freedom and tranquility that we know and love about the Broads. No more wild mooring, no mud weight on Surlingham Broad and almost certainly, no remote BA locations such as Rockland Dyke or even St Benets Abbey. I have often said that I feel a Broads cruiser must be autonomous : able to provide its own power for living aboard anywhere on the river, without having to depend on shore facilities. Anyway, the introduction of electric boats cannot be retrospective. You wouldn't be able to convert an old boat from diesel to electric, either practically or economically. So it can only apply to new boat building. As a large number of Richardsons fleet are already over 40 years old and going strong, I think we will have a rather long time to wait before we see any big changes!

No idea. Some boats have keel cooling, which is very efficient. Broads water gets pretty cold in off season so I am not sure how much of a heat exchange would be achieved. Also if there is external pipework involved that would be more drag on the motor. It would also only last as long as it took for the hirer to run it aground!

A big step back! Those things were frightfully dangerous. Trumatic do a combined boiler/heating system which is used on Locaboat hire boats and is excellent, although it uses quite a lot of propane gas. Or of course, there could still be a small diesel tank to run the blown air heating. Webasto also do a heater which heats hot water as well. But all this is fossil fuels again, isn't it? Same thing if you install a generator to charge the batteries. This is just a water cooled diesel which is chucking the same old particulates into the river as the main engine used to, so you are just defeating the whole object of the exercise!

Actually I have just realised I quoted the Nanni with hydraulic drive! On a reduction gearbox it would be 43.35 KW at 2800 revs. I don't suppose there would be hydraulic drive on an electric motor as they turn rather slowly, with a big coarse pitch prop.

By the way, I forgot about hot water for showers. Where's that going to come from?

Well this is quite a thread, isn't it? Three pages in one afternoon and evening! Lots of good comment and I think I agree with all the views expressed. You are all correct in that the big stumbling block will be infrastructure. If there are not enough charging points it won't work and I have seen that proved on the Canal du Midi. But first, let's talk about the boat itself, and how it would have to be fitted out. Electric boats are nothing new on the Broads! My parents were crossing the river in Thorpe every day in an electric launch from 1947 onwards. The batteries needed changing about every 3 weeks and they were still using it daily, 40 years later. They were the traditional NIFE cells which were also used on hire cruisers and were mostly U.S. Army surplus from the War. In my opinion they are still the best form of low discharge, deep cycle battery. The same sort of thing that they use in diesel/electric submarines. Battery technology has come ahead in leaps and bounds these days and I will leave that part to Oldgregg, who knows a lot about it! My good friend Robin Richardson has been successfully running, building and selling electric day boats out of Potter Heigham since the mid 70s. But there is a very big difference between a day launch and a cabin cruiser! Most electric launches are built to look a bit like old Thames steamboats, for the simple reason that they are a long, very narrow fine entry hull that will glide easily through the water so they don't need a powerful motor. I understand that some of the BA rangers' launches now run on a diesel/electric hybrid system, so that they can poodle about at 4MPH on their batteries. This is the same principle, as they are a very long, narrow craft. Waterline length on a displacement hull means less power is needed and of course, less wash. A Broads cabin cruiser is a different matter. They weigh 10 tons or more and have a wide beam for stability, so they need more power. We must accept also that they need enough power to navigate the tidal lower reaches of the Bure and Yare, GYYS and Breydon Water. Which means they must be capable of maintaining 7MPH for 4 hours at least. Anything less would not be safe. Most hire cruisers have the Nanni 4220 engine, which has a power rating of 35 kilowatts. Let's say 27 kilowatts at 7 MPH - around 2000RPM. So an electric hire boat will need a motor of the same power rating. That means it would use 108 kilowatt/hours per day of battery capacity in 4 hours running. Not only have the batteries got to be powerful enough to provide that but they must also have a charging point that can replenish that amount overnight. I don't suppose the motor would run on 12 volts but to give an idea, 27kilowatts for 4 hours on 12 volts would be 9000 amp/hours. And then we come to the domestic electrics - lighting, fridge, toilets, TV and nowadays, the essential microwave. They will no longer be fed by an engine alternator, so they also, must be charged overnight on shore power. I know that a big hire boat without TV or microwave will use 250 amp/hours a day on 12 volts. Oddfellow (Andy) mentions 500 amp/hours for a modern boat with all the electric goodies and I would think he is probably right. And now a another big problem - cooking and heating. An electric cooker would basically mean you would have to be plugged in the bank to use it, so I guess that would still be gas. Most boats have diesel fired blown air central heating. There is also a very good gas version by Trumatic, used in almost all camper vans. If this must now be done electrically, I really don't see how unless it comes direct from shore power. To give an idea, in American marinas each mooring "slip" has two power points : one on 30 amps to run the boat's domestics and one on 75 amps to run the air conditioning. I can envisage electric cruisers actually having to use two power points on a mooring : one at 32 amps for the domestics and another more powerful (on DC by the way) to charge the propulsion batteries. Have I put you off yet? If not, my next post will discuss the logistics of operating within the cruising area and the effect this will have on what we would call a "normal" cruising holiday.

I'm sorry Fred but I don't think that comment does you credit. You are obviously someone who loves the Broads just as I do. I am quite certain that my ashes will be scattered on Barton Broad a very long time before electric propulsion will be the norm, but we have to look to the future and try to plan for it. We can't just turn our backs. In fact, as an ex chairman of the Wherry Trust, I might imagine my ashes being chucked over the leeward side of the Albion, one day. A nice thought! That is actually quite a good analogy, since the wherries are what made the Broads navigations into what we know today. I can't imagine them having to plug into the mains every night! It is a very, very special place where cruising has its own unique pleasures. If we go all electric, you won't be able to moor on a mud weight any more, to watch the sun go down over the flat, Norfolk skies. Or wake up in the dawn to hear a bittern booming in the reeds, right beside you. I am sorry, but pure electric hire boats will never give visitors this sort of experience.

No, you are not! You are asking all the right questions. I will wait to see what other comments there may be, and then I will hope to explain a bit. Yes, a new thread might be a good idea!

It's funny, I was going to reply to Wussername's post but didn't want to wander any further off the thread. Beaten by an MGB? No way my friend! It was all a question of "Varoom"! The TR2 was reckoned to be faster that the later TR3 or TR3A, although the 3A had overdrive. Believe it or not, they had the Vanguard Ferguson tractor engine, tuned up with twin carburettors. Yes, the same engine as the "little grey Fergie". It was such a long reach engine, on a 4 speed box, that when doing 100MPH you were only doing 2000 RPM. It could be beaten by an XK120 Jag of course; also by a Healey 3000 but not by many others, of its day!

I have just seen that Griff's post of Saturday evening has been replaced - thank you! I am possibly the only member here who has actual experience of the operation on hire of purpose built 4 berth pure electric cabin cruisers, on an inland waterway. I know what it took to set it all up and I know exactly what went so badly wrong with it, in such a short time. Luckily it wasn't my company that was involved, as I had already spoken out against the idea, with clear reasons why. This new officer appointment is just environmental politics. It is pie in the sky and it just ain't going to happen, right now or for decades. The BA, in my considered opinion, are going to be wasting a lot of our money on what amounts to tilting at windmills. I will do a detailed post about electric boat hiring if members would like me to.

Very interesting, thank you. I suppose a lot of the answers will be guesswork on the part of customers, since it doesn't say what the price is going to be compared to diesel or what the supply of charging points would be like, etc. I think James is quite right to ask this, since if his business is going to get pressured by a BA initiative, the first thing he needs to know is how his customers are likely to react. If he spends a huge amount in a new boat investment, is he going to get a return on it? He is certainly the sort of innovator who would grasp the technology if he thinks it is worth it. Barnes BC have been doing a lot with electrics for some years now, but only on domestic appliances, not on pure propulsion. I haven't talked to James yet but I would be very interested to see the result of this survey. I'll have to see if I can persuade him to publish it!

Whenever I got my old TR2 over 100 miles an hour, the hood used to peel off of its own accord!

I know it is only possible in a Triumph TR2 if you have got the hood down.

Excuse me for going off the original subject for a moment but the way the thread has developed, it is important to discuss this. I would never wish to criticise Trambo as I know he is a customer of Hearts Cruisers in the old days. So he is a man "after my own heart"! I am am sure he would agree though, that certain words used nowadays have been appropriated to an extent that they even contradict their previous meaning and can now only be used in a specific context. "Gay" for instance, mean't something very different to my mother's wartime generation than it does now. She used it to mean happy and carefree. What was called "gay abandon". Jenners of Thorpe had boats called Gay Bandit, Gay Gambler, and others. We wouldn't dare call them that now, would we? I had the privilege (at my parents' expense) of being taught our language in one of England's Public Schools. I am no scholar but I take pride* in trying to use it properly. They say it is the language of fluid expression.** If only we could stick to its correct use, we might not get into such a frightful (and American) muddle with it. As to woke, this at least is a modern (also American) term which we are already getting confused about! Personally, I take it to describe those, who for their own reasons, take everyday matters far too seriously. Perhaps I should stick to PC, which I also mentioned in my post. As it happens, I used "waves of woke" as a nautical allusion and a useful tool of alliteration to assist the even flow of the sentence. So there! * Yet another common word we must now be careful about. ** They also say : In Italy it is "Amore". In France it is "Vive le sport!" And in a British Leyland Mini it is impossible.

Nice to see you back in the "cab rank"!

Excellent post, thank you! Our forum management have an awful job at the moment, in trying to keep us on an even keel when there are waves of "woke" bearing down on them. The recent controversy over the simple use of the name Cockshoot Dyke is a classic example. What worries me is that, whilst trying to conform to the latest "PC", we must not allow the forum to become the poodle of the BA, the EA, or any other quangos against whom "Thou shalt not blaspheme". We are a respected platform of informed and concerned opinion about the Norfolk Broads. We must ensure that our voice continues to be heard when we feel it necessary!

Some of whom have already left for that very reason. It is also pretty clear to me that this is what happened to the Broads Society.

I would be very interested if you could post that for us

I see a post from Broadambition has been removed since yesterday evening, despite attracting several likes including myself. Are we allowed to know why this bang on target comment has dis-appeared? I very much hope this forum is not going to go woke on us? Or do we all now have to meekly worship at the altar of the Broads Authority?

Are you using toilet blue? This should reduce odours. Trouble is these days, some people say it doesn't Save The Planet!