Vaughan

I was too!

I notice the two yachts behind with their forepeak awnings rigged. There would be two bunks under the deck and with the forepeak hatch off, the awning made it into a comfortable cabin! I have fond memories, as a boy, of waking up with the dawn under an awning like that, on Wroxham Broad , Barton or Oulton.

Takes a lot, for seawater to freeze!

I have been reading back over this thread this morning, as the things we were saying at the time of the two fatal propellor accidents in and near Yarmouth are very interesting. Now that the Coroner's Court verdict has been put in the public domain by the BBC and this morning, by the EDP, I have no wish to re-open the discussion; but I hope Andrew, who was himself a trial run instructor for many years, will not mind me quoting this : We have naturally offered the forum's sincere condolences to the family and friends of the bereaved in these two accidents but I would also like to offer them to the instructors who gave the trial run on those two boats. They will have been asking themselves "Could I have done it better?" and "Was there anything else I ought to have told them?" I would say to them "No, there was not" but I also know that those thoughts will stay with them forever.

I think your file will need to go back several years!

Not that I'll be seeing Norfolk any time soon . . . .

I can't help noticing that there are no windows in the aft cabin. I also wonder how long it will be before that canopy arch gets pinged off under St Olaves bridge? I would not fancy trying to helm that boat single handed when I can only get off on the bank from aft, owing to the very high freeboard and the almost full length pulpit handrail! That would be completely impractical, when working in the locks on the Thames. I am not sure what "market" this design is aimed at.

Just apropos of nothing, I remember one day when Norman Archer put a sign up on that low beam over the bar in Reedham Ferry, which said : WE ARE GOING DECIMAL. When "D" day finally arrived, the "going" was crossed out and the sign then read : WE ARE GORN DECIMAL.

This was a day in May 2017 when we had started that morning in Surlingham and were due back to Richardsons the next morning. Couldn't find a space at St Benets, Ludham or How Hill but were happy to stay on Barton. It had been a lousy day for weather but we moored on the windward side of the Broad in the lee of the trees and the evening turned out to be lovely!

I always enjoy Barton Broad.

I was a continental truck driver back in the eighties, before all the borders came down between the countries of Europe, so we were doing full customs clearance and documentation between each country. And they didn't all have the same rules! So there is a system, which always used to work in the end, and so hauliers will just have to remember how to do it again. It will be back to the T Form, the CMR and the French quota permit system. Now that one might be a problem! It will also create hundred of thousands of jobs on both sides of the channel, as customs clearance requires freight forwarding agencies, who are big employers! They all lost their jobs, after the borders came down in Europe. I think the main problem (as we see already on the M20) will be space, as ports like Dover have long ago pulled down all the customs sheds and bonded truck parking, to make way for more car and coach parks. So until they rebuild it all again, Dover can't handle it. I imagine that is why they are looking at old airfields like Manston in Kent, to turn them into customs truck parks. Clearing the load on a truck in Dover used to take at least 5 hours parked up and I have known it to take 36 hours on many occasions! Doesn't leave much of your weekend, if you get stuck in there on a Friday afternoon! I once spent 36 hours in Ramsgate, because an agent had spelt Cologne wrong on the T Form. They had used the German spelling Koln, but French is the language of the Common Market. We have all that sort of thing, to deal with again!

Nanni engines are Japanese Kubota, marinised by Nanni, near Bordeaux in France and sold by Peachments in England. So there might be a delay getting new ones! In my experience Nanni and Beta engines need hardly any spare parts, apart from pre-heat glow plugs. The raw water pumps are Jabsco and all the filters are standard automotive sizes.

I would guess Broad Ambition at around 12 tons Imperial. When I lifted out George Formby's old boat, Lady Beryl, (built by Windboats) in Staines, she weighed just over 15 tons.

All the same, I am an ex crane driver. If I were ordering a crane to lift a boat like that, I would estimate 5 tons. The crane hire company would send a crane of at least 18 to 20 tons, to allow for the reach of the jib, over the quay. If you wanted me to crane Broad Ambition out, I would order a crane of 40 tons, to allow for the reach out over the water.

That would be British Registered tons, which is a calculation of cargo capacity. I would think the weight when hanging off a crane hook, would be more like 5 tons (Imperial).

Actually it was always the downstream bridge that was an inch and a half higher than the upstream. There was an article in the EDP in the 60s which suggested that this was caused by the new Jenners development, which had caused the island to sink at that end! To which my father replied that in that case, it would have gone up at the other end!

Very interesting thread and a lot of sense spoken. I would say there is no easy answer to this as it depends on several factors : 1/. The condition of the boat when you buy it. If it has been recently restored then you just have to keep it that way. If you have got to do the restoration, it could cost very dear. 2/. The material the boat is built from. Some woods last a lot longer than others and some woods rot more easily than others. 3/. Never buy a wooden boat without a survey, done by a real professional, who is himself a boatbuilder. 4/. The best way to keep them is in a wet boathouse. That way they stay in the water but they (and their varnish) are protected from the weather. 5/. Haul out for maintenance for as short a time as possible and hopefully not in the spring, when the March winds are blowing under the hull and opening up the planking. 6/. You will have to do a lot of work yourself and will need basic skills, especially in painting and varnishing, as these take up a large amount of labour hours, that you don't want to have to pay a boatyard to do for you.

I remember on the early Nanni 4190 engines we had a problem of the bearing leaking oil under pressure, on the rocker shaft above the No 2 cylinder. This caused a fine jet of oil to shoot straight down the crankcase breather into the air filter and out of the exhaust in clouds of blue smoke. It took quite a while to work out what was causing that!

I have just had a thought, that if you have only recently noticed this, it may be due to the cold weather in winter making more of a problem when warming up the engine. By the way, welcome to the forum!

BMC 1.5s take a little while to warm up and you will often see a rainbow of oil on the surface near the exhaust, from unburnt diesel, until they get up to temperature. They will often make white smoke when they are cold. You could try retarding the injector pump slightly, but this may make it difficult to start, if you go too far!

I doubt it! The water outside in the dyke is not freezing, even if it has ice on the surface. So until it freezes, it is unlikely to freeze anything inside the boat down in the keel. I have known very hard winters where the valves on skin fittings have frozen but, whatever you think about climate change, we don't seem to get those long hard freezing winters anymore, like there were in the 60s. A boat is much more vulnerable to ice damage when it is stored outside on shore. They do indeed and where they are fitted outside on a P or A bracket, they lubricate themselves. By no means all Broads boats have forced lubrication but I have seen several that do, as they will also have a cutless bearing at the back of the keel. Here we are clearly talking about different things and yours is obviously a type where the inboard bearing itself needs water lubrication. I am talking about the conventional bronze stuffing box with gland packing, which does not. If that gets too warm to the touch, then you have packed the gland too tight! I have seen your type of bearing before and there is one made by Vetus. But you don't see them very often on a river hire boat.

I have always heard this referred to as "forced water lubrication" and it is meant to ensure that there is always a flow through the grooves in the outboard bearing - or cutless bearing - which is neoprene, and water lubricated. It has nothing to do with the inboard bearing - known as the "stern gland". If the boat is on the water I doubt that frost would have much effect on this and it is possible that while winterising the raw water system with antifreeze, a certain amount will have been pumped through the shaft tube by the raw water pump. If the boat is stored shore it would be vulnerable to freezing and as Marshman says, if you then disconnect the feed tube, this means that the shaft tube will drain out through the cutless bearing. If you take it off with the boat in the water, then the boat will leak!

I don't think I have posted these before but they show a Grand Classique in the early stages of fitting out. Members who store their boats in the sheds at Somerleyton today, will be able to realise just how big these boats are! Here you can see how the contra-moulded parts, such as toilet and shower compartments and the full width fascia under the windscreen were fitted first and the rest of the boat was built round them. This meant each boat was genuinely handbuilt and the distance between main bulkheads could differ by 3 inches or more. So Jeckells had to measure each boat for the saloon seating, and they were not interchangeable between boats! The contra-mould that you see in the foreground will be the toilet and shower compartment for the front cabin. Notice the fascia for the windscreen, which has to be fitted first or it might not fit later! This one is a 42ft Royal Classique in a later stage of the building. Notice the wooden framework for the headlining, which was then measured individually by Jeckells. This boat was a luxury 6 berth with 3 ensuite double cabins, all air conditioned. This shows part of the machine shop, where a lot of the furniture was pre-built before the moulds were delivered to the yard. There were three building bays, each with its own machine shop and its own separate team of builders. They were mostly self employed and were payed a price per boat. So the faster they built them, the more they earned. When you have a fleet of 400 boats, you have to build at least 20 new ones every year, if you don't want each one to have to last more than 20 years. At the peak (when these photos were taken 20 years ago) we were building about 35 each year. They had separate suppliers for wood, upholstery and headlining, windows, handrails and tanks. Apart from that almost everything came from Coopers and Peachments. All Brian Gardner had to do was ring up Kevin Peachment and tell him they were building another Classique, or a Crusader. About a couple of days later Peachment's van would turn up on the yard, with the full "spec" on board! When the boats were launched the engines were fitted and John Spruce finished off the wiring looms and the plumbing. They were run up for several days on the quay and then driven by river to Brundall where they were loaded onto trucks by Broom's gantry. So by the time they got to France they were literally "keys in hand". All we had to do was unwrap all the bedding, crockery and other loose equipment, fill the tanks and put them out on hire. On a couple of occasions, this was done on the same day that the truck arrived!

You can buy 12V chargers for telephones, with a cigar lighter or USB socket, so why not?

When we bought our boat, she came with a set of winter curtains! So you can take the best ones home and wash and iron them. But there's only one word above all others : VENTILATION.