kfurbank

Hi Strowager, Again though, as you say Wroxham and Salhouse have no marked channel, yet on Barton where there is a marked channel, so many are seen to ignore it, including the BA RA when it used to run from Gay's staithe. It obviously isn't that important even though you should stay within the markers. Then you treat Breydon with the same disrespect and have a different outcome. The channel markers should donate areas of shallow water as they do on Hickling. Chains or curtain barriers should donate areas where wildlife should not be disturbed as they do up the Thurne and other areas.

My understanding of Barton Broad is that the marker posts are redundant since the clearwater suction dredging project back in 2000. There is good depth for most vessels across the whole broad apart from where the shallow water marker cones are. A few people have lobbied for their removal and I don't know why they haven't been removed. My personal opinion is that they are responsible for the majority of hire boats you see stranded on Breydon. You hire a boat most probably on the North. You visit Barton Broad and you see many boats mud weighted outside the marked channel. Clearly the markers appear to mark a channel rather than low depth. Then you go South and see all the posts on Breydon where they REALLY do mark low depth. As a novice hirer how do you know the difference until you venture outside that is.

when I was on The Ant week before last, there were clear signs below the bridge stating yacht demasting point, so all appear to have been sorted and clear signs erected. As for the rest, my views stand as per the other thread, which for the sake of boredom I won't repeat here other than to say I hope I never need the services of The Nancy Oldfield Trust, but should I, its good to know its there and they deserve supporting.

I suspect more than a few also don't know how much diesel they are likely to use, or what effect the tides and speed have on that usage. Being ever so slightly cynical, there is probably more than a little benefit to not stressing about speed too much, becuase the more they use, the more they pay. I heard a story of one hirer who took the boat turned the heating on, set the temp and left it on for the week!!!!! I note that some of the newer 44ft craft have two heaters. I know on my boat that I can expect to get around 2.6 miles to the litre in Summer and as little as 1.8 miles to the litre in Winter. I also constantly use the tides on the South to help me and rarely go above 1200rpm, except on Breydon

Most car journeys are driven by neccessity, therefore at some point you need to fill up or run out and you do it as you pass a garage on route. Being in a hurry or on the way to work will often lead you to the closest garage. With a boat where the tank will happily last for 2 or 3 weeks cruising (talking diesel river use) you can plan your route at leisure and then decide to fill up at the cheapest point along that route. No danger of running out and no major disruption to your plans. Now if your hiring you have a set return point and need to make it with a full tank or pay the hireyard prices, hence captive audience. I have to say in my days of hiring I always refilled at the hireyard, now I have more choice and have occasionly filled up at hireyards when the differantial hasn't been that great.

If the bigger yards have a captive audience they can get away with selling it too at the higher price why wouldn't they?

As I said interesting times ahead. I've still to be convinced that the BA won't or don't have the power to close that part of the navigation on the grounds of safety. They do and can on the rest of the Yare, as well as the rest of the network. To be honest I see Breydon as a hot potato that the GYPA were only to glad to pass across to the BA without wanting to be seen to be too keen. Although Norwich is a port, the main focus for the GYPA has for some time been south of Haven bridge. Anything above was just a financial and maintenance headache, and then along came the BA looking to expand it's patch. I think the GYPA might be doing a little dance after the 1st June I know it's been discussed many times before, but if you come into the port from the sea, the first sign you see is a 7 knot speed restriction. The next ones you see are the 5mph ones on the Bure, Waveney or Yare, so I believe there is already technically a speed limit on Breydon. Going the other way you see 5mph signs until you enter the port and see 7 knot signs. Why would the GYPA be bothered to patrol or police it for little gain. Could that be about to change? I honestly believe that the behaviour of the faster boats on Breydon will have a lot of sway in this. Providing no one rocks the boat (literally) the BA will probably let sleeping dogs lie, but a few ignorant people refusing to slow down for slower boats could spoil it for everyone. Don't forget one of the BAs remits is promoting tourism. Give a few hire boaters a high speed scare on Breydon and the BA are likely to try and protect them, through speed limits if required. Perhaps more importantly of all, how much is this all going to add to the overall cost of the tolls? All year round patrol, new launch, dredging, desparately needed new markers. I personally think the "motorway style" new signage is a bit over the top though. A height guage at the top end of Breydon makes sense though. I've always been surprised that The Berney Arms and The Fishermans Rest haven't installed some. Might presuade a few more people to stop and wait for the clearence in the pub, rather than go across just to find the clearence is too tight.

I understand about Norwich being a port, but I thought under the new BA act the BA could issue special directions to close parts of the navigation on the grounds of safety? The recent oil spill excercise that took place near Postwick closed the Yare with notice for a period of time. http://www.broads-authority.gov.uk/news ... ccess.html In addition is there not another route into Norwich via the Cut if Breydon was closed on the grounds of safety? The 1st June takeover date came from a reliable source, and not from another forum. I don't have any documentation and I won't name the source, so I guess time will tell and I don't mind being proved wrong. Will be interesting to see how things pan out though.

I thought this was perhaps the more appropriate forum to discuss this one. As I understand it the BA are to take over from Marina Keys through to Goodchild from the 1st June. The BA have ordered a new upgraded design of launch more suited to all year round patrolling on Breydon and with a bigger engine to cope better with the tides. The plan is to patrol all year rather than just the tourist season. Any thoughts on how this is going to devlop? Currently the BA have the powers to advise and turn back boats when the conditions are rough, but can not shut Breydon becasue it is under the rules and regs of GYPA. In practice this seems to mean that hireboats do get turned back, but private boaters can heed the advice or make their own decision based upon their experience and design of boat. From the 1st June will the BA have the powers under the recent act to close Breydon to all boats in adverse conditions? How will it affect boat traffic into and out of Goodchild and the lower Bure that perhaps didn't need a toll as they didn't previousely enter the BA area? I understand that a few boat owners in the region have been sent letters regarding BSS, third party insurance and tolls etc. Finally will the status quo remain regarding speed limits or will we evetually see one applied? I understand the BA stated aim at the moment is to allow boaters to continue to test their engines, as long as regard to safety of other boaters is maintained, but could the odd few end up spoiling it for everyone, or could a limit never be applied anyway. interesting that the new launch will have a bigger engine, don't suppose it will catch some of the big boys though

Quote "you have to look at the overall cost and weigh it up against how far you have been and if the boat is good value etc." Which is possibly fair comment if you are hiring, although I'm still not convinced. What happened to transparent pricing? By this I mean if you are suggesting that a lower initial boat hire price is being subsidised by a higher fuel charge, it makes it harder for people to compare like for like. As has already been suggested it would make sense in this case to shop around for the cheapest hire, and then shop around for the cheapest fuel and get the best of both worlds. I suspect most won't want the hassle and won't. What is the price per litre for privateers? If your fuel price subsidises lower hire charges, then what do you charge private boaters who obviousely are not benefitting from your lower hire charges I do know of at least one marina on the South which has different rates for its berth holders and a different one for everyone else, be they hire or private visitors. Personally I would have thought that fuel prices would be very much driven by volume of sales as it is on the road, and therefore never understand why some of those with the highest turnover of fuel aren't the cheapest around. I use somewhere in the region of 500 litres per year and given the extremes quoted on here £1.15 vs £1.60 I can save myself £225 per year or an extra 450 miles cruising per year, which is a no brainer When buying fuel I tend to look for somewhere that 1. has a high turnover of fuel, hopefully leading to a better quality of fuel, and 2. As close as possible to the lower end of the pricing. I tend to use 3 or 4 different places depending on when I need to fill up and who is closest, all of which meet both of my criteria, and two of those places also have the shiney new fuel pumps too although I would be surprised if they sell more, or much more than the bigger hire yards. Finally and I am not pointing the finger at anyone here, but The Broads are not immune to the weights and measures act. Anyone selling fuel can be reported to trading standards and they have a responsibility to ensure their equipment, however antiquated is calibrated.

Boulters were £1.15 on Sunday the 8th April. John, was that Friday G I saw receiving some treatment in the paint shed?

Some progress, it would appear that the UK government is not to make it unlawful to use Red bought in the UK, outside of the UK. Other countries can and will still apply their own laws though. http://www.rya.org.uk/newsevents/news/P ... 12-inbrief Keith

It has been confirmed in another place who it was and he will be missed greatly. One of Broadlands great characters. Everytime my boat has been through Potter bridge it was with Graham at the helm. Always cheerful, always helpful, always made it look so easy. Sincere Condolences to His Family & Friends

Hi Jonny, The plug is used to make the mould. It is the mould that the finished boats are produced from, as many as you want. The plug is often only used once to produce the mould, before being cut and shut to produce a new modified plug from which a new mould and boat model is produced. If the plug gets destroyed when releasing it from the mould, or has been modified too many times to be useful, another plug can be produced in fibreglass from the mould, and this fibre glass plug can then be modified to produce a new mould. This is exactly what Alphacraft have just done for their 35ft centre cockpit sliding canopy model. They used their 45ft centre cockpit mould to produce a 45ft fibre glass plug. This has since been cut and shut down to 35ft and used to produce the 35ft centre cockpit sliding canopy mould. If your interested, the cut and shut 35ft fibre glass plug can be seen from the river as you go past Alphacrafts St Olaves base. The moulding process is essentially this, Produce the plug, this looks like the finished article, Produce the mould from the plug, this looks like the reverse of the finished article, Produce as many finished articles as you want from the mould, Destroy, store or modify the plug to produce new moulds.

Another person soundbiting one of my posts. Later on in the post, I said that along with freedom of speech comes responsibility for that freedom. Strange choice to pick up on this thread before actually researching the background to this situation. To put this all back into context, Neil was not modded, therefore he used his freedom of speech to say what he wanted to. Other members of the forum chose to use their freedom of speech to comment on what Neil had posted leading to him throwing his toys out of the pram and leaving the forum of his own accord. To the best of my knowledge he is still free at any stage to continue posting. Off course to a small degree we are all bound by what we can say on this forum, because we are all invited guests of the owner of the forum, who has published their own terms of service. By joining this forum you accept those terms, or you have the free option not to accept those terms and not join. Simples really.

Neil may well be a decent person, I have never personally met him, and therefore can only form my impressions of him, by his posts and the word of those who have met him. He also has the right to freedom of speech the same as the rest of us. However when he made that post he knew he was being provacative. Look at the post before and the one that actually caused offence and it is obvious that he knew he was lighting the blue touchpaper, because he predicted it would be modded. He also must have thought that in some way he was about to contravene the TOS, and yet he still posted it. Why? Not only did he light the touchpaper, but he has now stood back and let the forum descend into tit for tat reprisals. If you play with fire, expect to get burnt. Neil may not be a racist or homophobic, but if you make comments that appear to be racist or homophobic or phrase them in such a way that they can be easily interpretated that way, then you need to be able to robustly defend your comments, or maybe consider an apology. It has often been quoted that along with the right to freedom of speech, comes the responsibilty for that right. The responsibility to use that right correctly and not to alienate or cause offence to others.

It is truely a mark of the tolerence of this forum that Neil has not been banned, but has sadly chosen to leave. Neil has made some very provocative comments recently, designed to provoke a reaction. We all do from time to time. I know I have. Sometimes we go over the top, and in those cases it is better to reflect, consider if we were over the top, perhaps consider an apology, maybe even take a little time out to collect our thoughts, and then go back to posting. I hope that as it is Neils choice to leave that his account remains open, should he reconsider.

N.O.R.W.I.C.H What ever the rights and wrongs of that shooting, ask yourself one question, was it likely to have happened if he had not been carrying a gun? The guy was a criminal from a criminal family with a gun in his hand. Are the police supposed to wait for him to show intent to use it by waiting for him to make the first shot? Unfortunetly his death is a graphic example of what happens if you play with guns and it is no excuse for a riot. The initial protests were peaceful, until they were hijacked by chancers, extremists and those whose greed got the better of them and it was those same people making or repeating comments similar to that you just posted, which only tells a fraction of the whole story, that whipped up the frenzy. Mark Duggan's family are on record as saying they do not support the riots and did not want it in his memory, as has the very dignified Tariq Jahan, father of one of the three men run down in Birmingham. N..O.R.W.I.C.H It is also not very clever to soundbite peoples comments out of context and present it as something else. The true sign of a troublemaker. Neil was talking about the rioters, I was responding in that context. We were not talking about the death of Mark Duggan, and my comment was in no way related to the death of Mark Duggan.

Graeme, I am British, but I wasn't aware that there is any particuler way in which I am meant to act to prove it. There is a set of laws which should be abided by, as is true for most other countries. The laws of this country are there to be followed by the citizens of this country and any visitors to this country. Breaking the law makes you a criminal, whether you were born here, or are visiting here. The predominately white British people that go to Ibiza, Greece and the East European baltic countries that get bladdered, urinate in the street, get into punch ups and generally give all the British people a bad name because of the way they behave, are they British, or not British because of the way they have acted? or are they hooligans? or even criminals depending on the severity of their misbehaviour? The answer is they are British hooligans, or criminals depending on what they have done.

Quote "Seriously though, Beat the S..T out of the B.....DS and send them ALL back to where they came from, because in their own country, they would all be shot on site." Neil what you seem to have forgotten is that we don't shoot people on sight in this country. The other thing you seem to have missed is that a vast majority of the whites, blacks, asians, muslims etc that were involved in the riots were born here, and are British. So were would you send them? The correct answer is to jail or at least serving a punishment suitable to their crime. Finally it was people jumping on the race bandwagon that started the problems in Tottenham. What followed afterwards had nothing to do with race, politics, social disadvantage etc. It was pure short term greed, with the short sightedness that they thought they could get away with it. For many this is now proving not to have been the case, and the complete diversity of backgrounds shows it was based upon greed. Many of those now being sentenced had good jobs, were from good backgrounds or at least were not on the poverty breadline. They have bought shame on their famalies and this country.

A shame to hear of this starting to happen again. My mooring ropes have a loop at both ends, allowing me to thread the rope through the eye on the mooring post and then back onto the boat where the loop on the free end is then padlocked to one of the grab rails in full view. To date the worst I have had at Norwich is the remains of some ones bag of chips over the roof. I have also used the padlocks in other notorious places such as Grot Yarmouth and Loddon. Even if there are no eyes on the mooring post, you can normally find a chain to thread the rope around, or place enough very tight knots over and under the rope round the post to make it extremely difficult to slide the rope off. If doing this, make sure you leave plenty of slack for rise and fall. Then leaving the padlocks in full view seems to put anyone off.

http://www.broads-authority.gov.uk/boat ... -news.html You would have thought sorting out signalling problems was bread and butter to Network Rail / River Blockage Ltd.

Just to add for comparision, the pilots at Potter want the guage to be showing 6ft9in - 6ft10in, before they will take her through. The Potter bridge pilot guage is the most accurate, and whilst I don't know at which point on the arch it is measured from, they still require 3-4ins more than the boat needs under a flat bridge. Thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if the Potter guage is measured to the top of the arch.

For reference my centre cockpit Alpha 35ft will go under a flat bridge at 6ft6in with about an inch to spare. Last September I took it through Wroxham bridge when the downstream guage was showing 6ft6in and I had just under an inch spare on the shoulders of the sliding roof. I am guessing that the downstream guage is not that accurate and will always take it very easy when the clearence is that low, in case they reset the guage

Hi Mark, Whilst it's true that age was not specifically bought up, I can't help but think that the two are intrinsically linked. I don't remember having to overtake, or get stuck behind many drivers under, and I'm going to be careful here, 50ish. There is another category of driver who will drive slowly in the outside lane of motorways, or dual carridgeways, who I have even seen move over for faster drivers and then pull straight back out into the fast lane behind them, who more than likely passed their test in a different country. The A13 in Essex is becoming a joke for that style of driving, but that's an entirely different subject.