oldgregg

We tend to take them, along with tinned hotdogs, soup and yes baked beans etc. Maybe even a pasta bake.... Mrs OG is quite adept at making sure we don't often need to use them, but they're always very handy if we need to spend the night somewhere without a pub or even just have lunch on the mudweight somewhere when it is rammed. Takes up very little space, doesn't need to go in the fridge, has an expiry date some time in the next millennium and makes sure you don't go hungry. I remember a boating trip where we'd planned a barbecue for the first night and had lots of goodies aboard for that but not much else as we were going to go shopping the next day. We had biblical rain that evening and didn't want to just cook them up aboard as it wasn't the same. Only trouble was there was nothing else in the cupboard apart from a pasta bake and a Fray Bentos.... I suspect@Dan still recalls that delicious evening meal combo that I served up

This is the thing, that engine is also around double the displacement of most Broads boat engines and has a lot more torque. It'll swing a huge prop much more easily and so you don't need a lot of revs.

I had to look that up, and yeah there's one right there. Yes, she does look quite chunky in her construction. https://www.morgangilesarchive.org.uk/index.php/the-vessels/motor/narrow-boat

Yeah the problem with a narrowboat is that it needs to maximise interior space because of how limited the external dimensions are. To get the torsional rigidity that can be achieved with steel, you would need a really thick fibreglass layup and lots of strengthening.... Or you just use steel which apart from the base plate is usually just 6 or 8mm thick and can take being hit against the side of a lock on a daily basis.

The spec will vary depending on who fitted them out - Aquafibre only ever built the mouldings apart from a few models. A lot will have had a BMC and Borg Warner, but equally they could have had a Perkins depending on the particular yard's preference. Quite a few of these boats were fitted out by the Thames yards such as Cheeseman Rollo, and many of the Broads yards were building them too including Aquafibre's sister company Broom. Also, I don't think any of the 38 were built after around 1983. The 42' moulding was updated to the MK2 (like Brinks Symphony), but I don't think the 38 was. This is probably because the Pearl 38 was launched in around 1987, and that was seen as the replacement.

The camera does her no favours as the perspective is a bit out. She is a bit longer and lower in reality (you can see the same issue on the Sapphire 32 behind her). I'm not a big bathtub fan, but they're quite a good one in reality.

I generally find the Commodore quite decent, but when we went in June we were a bit underwhelmed. Mrs OG had somehow not been before and there I was bigging the place up as I'd been there several times with the boys and really enjoyed the food, and what we ended up with was nothing special and took ages to arrive. Staffing is definitely an issue across the board, and the limited menu will have been related to that, but the service could have been better...

There are definitely some Alphacraft builds about which have had issues either with osmosis or even delamination of the layup. Some of the major brokers are aware of particular boats and will refuse to list them, but others may exist. Having said that, there can of course be decent examples from Alpha which will give no problems.

David I think you may be crediting the team at Hoseasons with more intelligence than actually exists.

If you've never hired from Caley before, the main thing that will strike you is how much power the boats have. It depends what you've hired, but they have big torquey engines with up to 150hp and a big prop. You'll be glad of that when crossing Loch Ness, which can take 4 hours and get really rough. The boats can turn at really low revs, much more so than a 50hp Broads boat. You'll always think Broads boats are underpowered after having been on one of Caley's. Anyway my point is that they do handle a bit differently to Broads cruisers simply because of the amount of power (and the control that goes with it) they've got.

I think you might be thinking of these? http://www.broads.org.uk/wiki2018/index.php?title=Boat_Details&BoatId=5460&BoatHistory=8650

Talking to Paul Clarke a few years back, they basically have to buy the boats from the Broads because there aren't any suitable boatbuilders in that area. And adding a new boat every few years as they do, they just don't have the scale to justify employing their own boatbuilders. If you look at some of the older boats like the Pearls they could do with updating internally, but the fleet is very well-kept and the boats do gleam. It's odd to think that there were so many fleets and such prolific boatbuilders in that area. I guess the rise of affordable foreign travel must have a lot to do with the decline.

I think Le Boat are not for most people. Shame, as they could have a very good business. Kris' fleet is good, and although the choice of carpets / upholstery is odd the Caversham boats always look well cared for.

They're all japanese anyway....

And if the customer got it wrong on their form or the crew has changed since the boat was booked but the customer has forgotten to tell them? If a yard 'gets that right first time' but the requirements have changed then you've still got the wrong bedding. I suspect from Andy's post that this happens. A lot. That is why they ask you to check. It takes two minutes and it avoids disappointment.

That's a shame. It's a nice pub in a decent location. It had been a Colchester Inns (same people as the Recruiting Sergeant at Horstead) pub but I think never really attracted the kind of footfall they wanted. It is quite a long walk from either South Walsham or Ranworth Staithes so will only have attracted more seasoned holidaymakers, I suspect.

I was going to say.... It may not be common in the hospitality industry but what hotel, holiday park etc would need to potentially drive for the best part of an hour and then have a long walk to deliver bedding? Think of a boat hired in June which was picked up at 1pm from Ricko's and has moored for the first night at Herringfleet. I can see why they'd say sorry but you'll have to come back to base for more bedding.

I think that's the biggest issue people have with the warm air systems, they can make a lot of noise. When I was in syndicate, I could never understand why people had such a problem with running the 5KW diesel system. This had got to the extent where people had tried to use oil rads etc on the inverter (no, I have no idea what thought process led to that being a good idea, either) and it kind of dawned on me that people must not like the fan noise of the diesel system. The fuel pump is usually fairly quiet in comparison. We'll forget the fact that it was much more powerful and using relatively little battery power, as the person plugging an oil rad in to an inverter clearly has no technical knowledge anyway. I do wonder why hydronic systems aren't more common on boats, either with an LPG or Diesel boiler and then a mixture of fin and matrix radiators. They don't make much noise and would prevent engines being run early/late for hot water. And I know they are hated on the Broads (but not the canals, where they're seen as a luxury) but a diesel-fired stove is quiet and kicks out loads of heat. Decent heating (and a lack of insulation) is the real enemy of winter boating.

This is the thing. They may have replaced the engine but the hydraulic drive (I'm assuming she's not on a shaft, most Bounty 40's aren't) etc has probably not had a major overhaul. Some yards will replace the gearbox, shaft, prop, bearing etc and some of the electrics (ie charging systems etc) when doing a re-engine and others will just do the minimum required to swap the lump out. It depends on the way they manage their fleet.

It's almost as if you have a thing for Lowliners, James But yeah, if looking for an older / value boat that has actually had some maintenance then I think Richardson's would be a better bet. Woods do not seem to replace engines until they've chucked a rod through the block, but a lot of the older boats at Richardson's are running a Nanni. The Classic Fleet boats don't always gleam on the outside, but they do inside.

I'm not sure the words 'refit' and 'Herbert Woods' are often used in the same sentence?

Edgebound looks great, and makes it easy to remove for cleaning without things getting scruffy. I believe Ludham Carpets can do it, and are also decent value.

The type of toilet definitely makes a huge difference. Macerator toilets which use freshwater flush just end up filling the tank with clean water. That was very noticeable on the RC45 / RF45, where we were needing a pumpout mid-week with three of us aboard. Personally, I much prefer Mansfield toilets. I know they're unpopular because they can smell, but you just have to keep a tiny amount of water in them after use to stop that. Also, if you keep your foot on the pedal 'during use' then you only need a brief flush afterwards. They're also by far the simplest type of toilet, there really is very little to go wrong. They tend to be river water flush, too, so even if the water tank is empty you can still flush away. As for canal boat tanks being bigger, yes they very much are but I think that's more to do with the boats and the waterways. Flat-bottomed canal boats have tons of room to hide big tanks under beds (the fuel and water tanks are in either end), and they need it because there are very few places to pump out on the canal network. Broads boat hulls are shaped for decent handling on our tidal rivers, and so you end up having to stuff washrooms into the space that is left after the bedrooms have been added. The tanks often end up in places where there is considerable hull angle and even in the keel sometimes, so there isn't always space for enormous ones.

I tend to adopt that approach these days. We had a week on Contessa in mid-June (the one where the weather was scorching). With the Ricko's loyalty bonus it cost us about £495 after the fuel refund, and we spent most of our time on the South. She wasn't a new boat by any means but Ricko's stuff is always really clean and there was tons of space for two (and we've hired her before with six of us, when she also felt plenty big enough). Handling is excellent and she has a recent Nanni engine. A newer boat would have cost us four times as much, and we saw all the same sights we would have on a different boat. I don't think we used the cooker apart from one lunchtime, but we'll still have spent way less.

57hp would do fine in a broads hire boat... I think they can manage more power without a turbo because the injection is much more precise (hence the fuel efficiency).