Davydine

If you were, say, moored at The free moorings on Womack water and you saw a hireboat going down river well after sunset, (sort of well after 10:00pm) and navigating by torch light?

Well, the forecast for this weekend is looking fantastic and I am massively excited as we will be afloat on Regal Light from Herbert Woods. Can't wait! Does anyone know if Lathams sell bags of ice? With 8 of us on board fridge space will be at a premium, so thinking about taking a cool box for the drinks and Ice would be very helpful! Thanks, David

Sad news. As an older child (about 14, 15) I have very happy memories of a holiday with just my dad and one of my friends. Mum was working so was perfectly happy for us to go on a boys holiday. Not a single parent myself, but had thought I might take my two for a long weekend. There must be an age at which children are old enough to be responsible crew members, I can perhaps understand it being a problem with young children, but surely older children would be ok?

Thanks Griff, it seems very poor service from the bridge operators, I saw your arrival, I had been visiting a customer nearby and, although I don't know any of you, couldn't resist going to wish Robin well in person. They really do need to explain what happened. As you were talking to them as you came through the harbour the bridge could have been raised and you could have passed straight through with minimal delay to anyone and ahead of the 16:15 deadline they had given you. Always had two way vhf communication from the dutch bridge operators (in English! ) and they were always opened as advertised. We had to stooge around occasionally for a train to cross but the service was excellent.

As a matter of interest, was there any VHF communication between Indi and the bridge or was it all done by phone? I am just wondering if they treat things differently by VHF as that is how the pilot boat communicated with them. I know you were there in time on the Monday afternoon, but had time been tight, would you have been able to transit haven bridge first and pick Robin up on the other side? On a totally different subject, if you want to see how bridge opening should be done, may I humbly suggest a trip to Holland, they have no problem lifting bridges for boats, pleasure or commercial, fabulous country for boating on inland waterways. David

Nice to see a new yard and a new builder on the southern rivers.

The sea should calm down a bit when the tidal stream changes at about 18:00, so hopefully you can open her up a bit then. Unfortunately the tide will be against you then so you will gain on one hand and lose on the other.

Safe trip chaps!

When we purchased our last boat it came with an out of date life raft as well as a newer one. For fun, we thought we would set it off in the garden. It was a sobering experience. It inflated as advertised but promptly deflated where several seams had failed. If I ever have the good fortune to own another boat, the life raft will be chosen with a great deal of care. If you buy a new one perhaps you could inflate the old one as a video for the blog? If anyone has access to a swimming pool, it might be interesting to see just how easy they are to climb in to.

Robin, this may sound silly, but it might be worth putting the keys on to the key ring and testing that it actually floats if you drop it in water (suggest you try in the sink rather than the marina!) I used to use a little foam anchor key ring and was surprised to find it would only actually float with one small key on it. Often used to see people with massive bunches of keys with one little cork ball and I suspect that had they been dropped it would have gone straight to the bottom.

Ah, now Gracie, you have hit the nail on the head, two holidays, one North and one South! It doesn't bother me to go from North to South, but at the moment, we are tied to school holidays so we can't pick a week when the tides are at a convenient time and the summer holiday period is just too expensive for me and to be honest, I also prefer it when it is a little quieter, also, with children, I think it is important to get a good balance of time cruising and time ashore. I wasn't suggesting that that one of the big yards should open up "down south" just surprised that they haven't, there seems to be such an imbalance between North and South.

I mentioned it in the thread Gracie mentioned but it is nice to have a separate thread for it. We are booked for a weekend from Herbert Woods next May and I was looking for another boat to hire some time during one of the school holidays. Whilst I have no worries about the passage from North to South, it takes a long time and is time critical so to my mind it makes sense to hire on the southern rivers if you want to visit southern "ports" Given the lack of yards hiring in the south, Pacific Cruisers looks very appealing and I would hope that their business is thriving. "Vista" is too big for 4 of us but "Star" would be perfect for us as we can have the double in the bows and the children can have a cabin each in the stern. I have often wondered why one of the big yards in the north, doesn't have a second base in the south, it would open up the possibility of offering "one way" cruises. What does everyone else think? David

I have just been looking at Pacific cruisers in Loddon and it looks like they have Alpha Vulcan renamed as Pacific Vista.

The original post was about community speed watch, but inevitably the thread has drifted towards speed cameras, policing and revenue generation. As has been said, several times, the community speedwatch volunteers are trained by the police and all that will happen if you are caught is a letter on Police headed paper. Clearly this is NOT revenue generation, is minimal cost to the police and indeed it frees up precious police resources to work on other crimes. We all know that the police are under resourced, but money is tight. I would be happy to pay a bit more tax if you could guarantee it would be spent wisely. Of course, if some idiot has bought a speed gun and is trying to trap people and causes an accident as described earlier in the thread then they deserve to be prosecuted. Several people have suggested that speed doesn't kill, and that bad driving is to blame. Well, surely exceeding the speed limit IS bad driving. You may be able to twist statistics but you canny change the laws of physics a car traveling faster is harder to stop and will do more damage if it hits you. Speed in its self may be ok but inappropriate speed is not. There may well be an argument for increasing the limits on motorways and on a relativly clear motorway in good weather you could probably argue that 100mph is relatively safe, but surely, given all of the examples of bad parking / driving then even 30mph could be too fast in a built up area. I suspect that really we all want the same thing, safety on the roads. Is that really such a bad thing?

Well congratulations!

Me too! They do have something similar in our school for the older children. I certainly wouldn't let them cycle alone and we have a cycle path almost door to door, we are very lucky really.

The danger of making assumptions. Who said I drive my kids to school? We walk, every day, unless we ride our bikes.

I believe they are trained by the neighbourhood policing team and work in conjunction with them. Completely agree, with more cars on the road parking is an absolute nightmare in both towns and villages. It's not helped when new housing is built with no garages and drives big enough for one car, forcing people to park on roads and pavements. Sometimes badly, sometimes illegally, sometimes both! If you mean The Rushcutters at Thorpe then yes, I know what you mean, which is why I always try to arrive by boat....

Yes, exactly. the stopping distance is made up of reaction time and braking distance. My reaction time is fixed (and probably deteriorating as i get older) the braking distance increases with speed somit is the speed part that causes the problem. Now don't get me started on the shocking driving I see around the school gates when I take my kids to school. I had the joy of driving up and down the A140 yesterday. There are so many times that I will follow someone that drives at about 45mph all the way along that road, regardless of the speed limit, be it 60, 50 or even 30mph. No doubt they would be convinced that they are a safe driver because thay only ever drive at 45.

But isn't education the point? In my own case, a letter from the police as a result of a speed check, has made me think about my speed when I am driving.

Well yes, but if the car is traveling slowly then we are talking cuts and bruises, the faster the car the more severe the injuries.

I had a letter from the police after being caught by just such a community speed watch group. I wasn't much over the limit, but if that had been the difference between stopping in time or running down a child then it would have been a painful thing to have to live with. Most accidents are in built up areas, so good on them for trying to make their community safer, with the obvious caveat that they should be taught to use the equipment properly.

I'd like a glass of the Spanish Burgundy please. Had geography not been invented in the early 70s?

I agree, but in truth, I think we still can use "Christmas " and celebrate "Christmas" I know lots of people who are not Christian but happily celebrate Christmas. I honestly believe that there are some people who would like us to believe that we are causing offense in order to create divisions. I have never met anyone of any religion who is offended by us celebrating Christmas. to answer the second part, it doesn't make it less seasonal, I was just trying to point out that any seasonal packaging can be a minefield

Nope, the current UK range and to be honest, apart from the word "Christmas" the packaging looks pretty Festive to me. I am not really sure the point you are trying to make. As an aside, christmas packaging is a nightmare for companies like Cadburys. On the 26th December no one wants to buy it and it has to be sold off cheap even though there is plenty of shelf life.