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YnysMon
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Posts posted by YnysMon
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One of the things I like about Moonlight Shadow is how the gunnels (or whatever they are called, I mean the outer ‘walkways’) slope down from bow to stern, which does help when the river is particularly low or high.
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I must put in a word about the ‘New Name, Same Me’ lady. She started out videoing rather sensational videos at Ludham Bridge, which turned me off. However, I notice her more recent videos are a lot more varied, many exploring other areas of the Broads.
Last weekend’s video did feature some boats having difficulty at Ludham Bridge with the wind, but no ‘incidents’, and sympathetic commentary which just served to remind people that the tide and wind combined can make things difficult. Actually, I found it quite instructive to watch. I also liked that she said that nasty comments would be deleted.
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4 hours ago, dom said:
I'm currently about 5 books into the S&A series again. Hate to think how many times I've read it. I slipped up when my grandparents passed away, forgetting to go through their book collection before my mum offloaded them all. They had Ransome and C.S.Lewis copies which I suspect were quite early editions. I now have the whole lot on Kindle on my iPad instead. With anyone else, you'd feel a bit foolish admitting to reading kid's books, but Ransome's combination of proper sailing, adventure and passion for the countryside still seems unparalleled.
It's a shame he didn't write any more mature fiction. Racundra's First Cruise being based on real life experience was so dry I've still not made it all the way through.
You can’t beat reading ‘The Coot Club’ whilst on a sailing holiday on a Hunter’s boat.
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5 hours ago, Mouldy said:
We did think about using MS over the weekend, returning home on Monday morning, but it seems an awful lot of grief for a couple of days, when all our stuff is on NL.
Looking at the weather forecast, I’d say the river levels aren’t going to drop anytime soon. Strong northwesterlies forecast for tomorrow and brisk winds from the same direction for the rest of the week aren’t good. The BBC forecast shows northwesterly winds to last until next Monday. Just hope the winds change direction before the next spring tides.
It very rainy and gusty here in Milton Keynes today. I hope it calms down before next week. Apparently the Met Office are promising high pressure over the weekend, so that should improve things. (Cross fingers).
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12 hours ago, catcouk said:
Wish I'd seen this before we went. Explains why the tides were about an hour out this year. Woops.
I usually print off my own tide table with the BST adjusted. Even so, I often find that the local conditions at the time means that the latest prediction from the Aweigh App is more accurate.
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5 hours ago, C.Ricko said:
easier than standing on the cabin roof trying to get the screens down in the wind!
We got the idea from a 1960s Broads Cruiser but just updated it about 60 years!
Reminds me of the way the (1930s?) Water Rail screen drops down.
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2 hours ago, catcouk said:
I hope I waved back! I wave to everybody (yep, I'm one of those).
I usually try to wave too. The trouble with a lot of latest boats is the tinted windows. They may help with the glare, but they are definitely antisocial. Until a few trips back I used to wave anyway, though I had no idea whether the occupants waved back. I must admit I don’t tend to bother nowadays.
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3 hours ago, Broads01 said:
I think one of the best benefits of syndicate ownership is being able to have extra time aboard just for the cost of fuel and pump out. I'd love that but I don't think Mrs Broads01 would love it quite so much alas.
It depends on your circumstances. I get the impression that most of the current members of our syndicate can’t just take an extra week on a whim. If you are working and only have four weeks leave per year (and we have four weeks allocation) that does restrict you. Graham and I have stayed at or near to the bottom of our ‘priority ladder’ for the last year or so as we have hoovered up several spare weeks. If you claim a spare week you go down to the bottom of the ladder. If anyone else had been interested in this week they would have taken priority.
Anyway, even if you can’t take advantage of ‘spare’ weeks, the four weeks we get for our annual fees is very good value, probably cheaper than one week’s hire in the height of summer.
It’s also very unusual to have a spare week in April. Mostly the ‘spare’ weeks fall in the winter months. I love being on the boat in winter. It’s very different to the warmer months but no less enjoyable. Short days. When the sun is out, some magical days when you have the rivers almost to yourselves. A focus on getting moorings with electric. More days on our home mooring, with days out exploring Norfolk and Suffolk. A different holiday experience overall.
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2 hours ago, MargeandParge said:
Consider a flex account at Nationwide BS they have a no closure policy until 2028
They are always good to deal with either on line in branch post or phone
There is one in Beccles just the same service as the banks that ran away, only better.
They have branches all over the place their website will show your nearest
Kindest Regards Marge and Parge
We’ve been ‘banking’ with Nationwide since the 1980’s. We were previously with Lloyds but I took umbrage at them charging us a whole 3 months charges for being overdrawn when our account went into the red on a Saturday. I was paid on the day before (Friday) but they didn’t credit our account until the following day. Lloyds certainly didn’t have a working day on a Saturday in those days, so it felt like they had deliberately messed up so they could charge us.
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Whoopee! We (at least son Harry and I) will be back on Moonlight Shadow a lot earlier than expected.
We already knew that MS would be unoccupied the week beginning Friday 19th April, but had set that week aside for work on the boat. Firstly the push pit rail would need to be re-attached to the boat with associated gel coat repairs and secondly, some work was needed in the aft heads. When I was cleaning the boat at the end of our March trip I noticed that the silicone seal one side of our aft heads shower tray was no longer forming a seal. Malcolm (Mouldy), our syndicate chair, had visited the week after and resealed it, but in doing so had noticed that the panel below the loo was needing to be replaced as it was pretty rotten. The team at HPC have worked their usual magic though, and have already completed both pieces of work. Thanks guys!
Luckily, no one else in the syndicate wanted the week, so I have been able to claim it. It will be just be a few days though, rather than a full week, as Harry's band is playing a concert at The Stables (the concert venue that John and Cleo Dankworth established in Milton Keynes) Sunday evening. So, we'll just do a Monday to Friday trip, leaving the dogs to keep Graham and Alec company. Graham can't make it unfortunately. I'm planning to take a lot less 'stuff' than we usually do. Just the number of blankets and rugs that we take for the dogs take up 2-3 bin bags.
Hope the weather will be kind to us. I have a hankering to do the things that we can't do when the dogs are with us - like mud-weighting.
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Great write up. Thanks!
Have you considered hiring something that is low enough to get up to Coltishall, Dilham and Geldeston? I love those stretches of the rivers above the low bridges.
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4 hours ago, catcouk said:
Every time I looked at it (as we were moored opposite) I swear another three inch marker disappeared. Probably a whole foot in less than 45 minutes!
I recall coming down the Bure on one occasion and we seemed to be losing 1/4 foot of clearance between each marker gauge at Great Yarmouth. Thankfully we had taken our canopy down, so there was no panic.
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5 hours ago, olibird said:
I’ve only sailed one of the Wood class. I agree it is a wonderful boat to sail in most conditions, but in strong gusty winds we found it unsatisfactory. Because the jib is so much smaller than the mainsail (and smaller than on Hustlers or the Lullaby class), it becomes very difficult to control in strong gusts as you can’t use the jib to start the turn as you normally wood, it’s just not big enough. We weren’t far off capsizing at Barton in strong winds (I got very wet bedding instead lol), so they may have experienced a similar problem. If we hire Hunters again, it won’t be a Wood class.
We got into the habit in such conditions of having one of us stand on the bow and manipulate the boom (?) of the jib in the best position the catch the wind. You had to hop about a bit from side to side, and had to watch you knees (don’t want bashed knees!). We were also meticulous about reefing, two if necessary, but I don’t think we went out in winds that would have necessitated three.
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The early 80s weren’t great for getting a job were they, especially if you lived in the town that had been badged the most depressed place in the UK (Holyhead). It was official. Cilla Black organised a parade through the town to cheer us all up and it was on the telly! I didn’t go, and didn’t watch it on telly…I was probably nurturing a female version of Victor Meldrew even then, or perhaps it was because I am not a big fan of bells and whistles that don’t actually make any ha’porth of difference.
Guess why we moved to Milton Keynes.
Actually, it was like a breath of fresh air. I had always vowed that I would hate to live in a city. I love Milton Keynes though.
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Photos have been posted on othe threads, I can’t remember which though.
There is a brilliant old film on YouTube which features a coaster going along the Yare.
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Just now, catcouk said:
Sadly, I agree. It's been reported elsewhere that all are okay but I hope to confirm exactly that!
By the way, I have a soft spot for Hunter’s boats. Our first ever experience of the Broads was on Wood Violet. Subsequent years we hired a couple of Husters (our two sons on one and Graham and I on the other) and then Lullaby and Lucent. They are all wonderful boats to sail.
I have a hankering to do more sailing, but we are wary of trying to to do that now that we have two dogs, one of which is rather large.
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15 minutes ago, catcouk said:
Oh crikey! That does sound like my colleague's group! I'll have too see what I can get out of him when I see him on Monday. Maybe it was a different Christian group that has an annual boating trip?
I hope you can reassure us that they are okay. It seems unlikely that two such groups would be hiring Hunter’s boats at the same time. The fleet isn’t that extensive.
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4 minutes ago, Mouldy said:
Here is a link to the Project Troll website. According to their aspirations, they are installing electronic measuring at all Broadland bridges, but at the moment, only a few are covered, including the ones at Yarmouth.
We made use that that on our last trip, and very useful it was too.
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I’ve been reflecting. (Probably a bad idea.) I was mulling over why there was relatively little homelessness in the 70s, even though as a country generally we were far less affluent. I have an idea that a lot more people who ‘couldn’t cope’, i.e. who had poor mental health, were institutionalised. Then in the 1980s there was a ‘care in the community’ initiative. (Was that under Maggie, or later?) Whilst it was in theory commendable (who wants to be institutionalised), in practice it turned out to be very little care or none.
If the mods think this is too political please delete. It isn’t intended to be, as I have no idea which government instigated the policy and no successive government has overturned it. Also, the policy was intended as a step forward.
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I completely agree with Dom’s post, not least in that we shouldn’t forget that there are a lot of legitimate liveaboards who choose the boating life as an alternative lifestyle and who plan it out and finance it properly.
I’ve often thought, when passing liveaboards boats that are particularly small and run down, that it must be a miserable life, and those that have two or three boats with a lot of clutter (some of it on the river bank) can’t be faring much better. I can’t imagine living in such surroundings. Quite often such people have had a tough life, are not good with planning ahead and have poor mental health. However much I sympathise though, it’s not doing the Broads economy any good to have tatty boats hogging mooring spaces.
It’s definitely a conundrum.
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By the way, I was having a chat with other members of the Moonlight Shadow syndicate, and we are fairly certain that it wasn’t Moonlight Shadow that you saw at Hardley Mill.
Not surprising, as there are several boats that look very similar, not least her ‘sister ship’ Evening Shadow and a few hires (such as Horning Pleasurecraft’s ‘Tideway’). I’ve almost mistaken Tideway for Evening Shadow before now. Someone once posted that they had seen me take Moonlight Shadow under Ludham Bridge on a particular day, when I hadn’t been anywhere near the Ant.
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10 minutes ago, kpnut said:
I’ve found a very good use of those weird mirrored windows at Hunsett Mill. I was able to look through the dead reed and leafless trees to the house and saw a boat coming towards me,
That’s a good tip Kate.
We had a beautifully sunny morning here, but it turned nasty again (rain and wind…will it never let up!) by lunchtime. Typical ‘fine before 7, rain by 11’ weather.
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The article I read put the blame on the high river levels, causing boats to catch on the quay heading and then tip sideways as the tide went out. I think something similar happened to a boat moored at Reedham a few months ago.
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5 hours ago, grendel said:
having tried getting out forward only on a few occasions (usually if I am at the end of the quay heading that allows that), i dont find it that effective,
That threw me for a while when we had our first trip on Water Rail. If we are taking off into the tide on Moonlight Shadow I don’t have any problem, but then we do have a bow thruster, not that I always use it.I suppose it’s just a case of getting to know how your boat handles, they all have their quirks.
Carried Away By A Moonlight Shadow...
in Holiday Tales & Blogs
Posted
I got slightly worried yesterday evening. The owners who were on board MS this week, but who could only use part of their week, reported that the batteries didn’t appear to be charging properly and lights were flickering when not on shore power.
Luckily for the syndicate, the guys at Horning Pleasurecraft have already checked things out and discovered it was due to a loose wire on one of the batteries. That’s a good outcome. Much better than having to shell out for new batteries!