oldgregg

I think it might be a 46-footer...

Some of the boats were from a cancelled order for an operator in France and they were built to a certain spec.

This has come up a few times recently. You can have a 50ft boat on the broads, but the list of places it can't go is fairly significant unless it's a boat first registered before 1992. Is the new boat definitely 50ft?

This sunday is the Tri-Icicle, so there’s likely to be around 40 rag and stick types going up the Bure from Horning to Oby Dyke and Womack Dyke on Sunday 10:30am to 3:30pm. Given the year we’ve had this’ll probably be the biggest event of the season. And it’s going to be windy by the sounds of it! https://www.sfsc.co.uk/pages/tri-icicle/

I'm not a fan of gas on boats, but I can see how things were simpler from an engineering perspective when we had gas fridges and radiant gas heaters (apart from the condensation!). The batteries needed to run a lot less and so needed less charging, and battery state wouldn't affect whether the heating would run.

They're a very spacious boat, it is quite amazing how much they have managed to fit inside 38ft. Definitely not the best-handling boat you will ever come across but you can't expect that from the hull shape.

Forklift batteries are still pretty old tech - The energy density of something like a Tesla battery pack is several times that of a traction pack. A 100ah Tesla pack and a fuel cell would be a game changer. But the cost would be VERY high. Those 'whisper quiet' generators are generally very loud.

Yeah, actually I have seen some Brinks stuff with a 24V system and an enormous inverter tucked away behind the sofa (I mean I had to look, right?).

I can't think of a hireboat with a 24V system. They'll be 12V, often with just three 120Ah domestic and one engine battery charged through an argofet to handle demand. A lot of boats have a single alternator, but if they have an inverter there may be another and another couple of batteries on a separate bank. I tend to look under the hatches on everything I hire, but I know most don't.

I think Len owns them all now. The 35ft Entrepeneurs were at WRC and yes they're lovely boats. They came North and were being sold as seen above.

I do think that given the amount of running people do, fitting a bigger engine with two monstrous alternators is mostly going to be the answer? You can fit a million different battery monitors, tell people to do lots of running, always use shore power when they can etc etc but they ultimately think it's not all that important and just do what they want to do. You've seen it in hire and I've seen it in syndicate. I remember discussing this same problem with the electrician who rewired Thunder and he was convinced a single alternator was sufficient. It wasn't, as I said at the time. I think the solution is to remove the problem from the end user - Make sure the boat is as power efficient as possible (all LED lighting etc), have decent batteries and ensure there is more than enough charging capacity so that even three hours running will give them a reasonable charge, but still insist on 4 hours minimum in handovers. Then ensure people cannot plug in electric heaters, kettles and toasters on the inverter etc by using non-standard plugs and sockets on the TV, microwave and whatever else requires it. Give them USB ports for charging phones and laptops, and fit shore power with a ring and tell them they need to plug in if they want 240V (which also just happens to run the mains battery charger). The boat will use more fuel in a week, but the yards sell fuel so that's not going to be a biggie for them and people will get used to the extra (we're probably only talking 30%?) cost. Not having to replace batteries at the quayside so frequently will also bring down the operating cost anyway. We've all seen the boatyard vans in the summer with an engineer wheeling a sackbarrow loaded up with lead-acid lumps along the rhond.

Yeah, that's my understanding of it. There are quite a lot of places on the Broads where some pontoons would solve issues with a lack of moorings. That, and an appetite to create a northern WRC-style facility at Thurne Mouth / Bureside Holiday Park.

Warm air heating will always be diesel on a hire boat, but obviously it does require electrical power to run the fuel pump and fan. On full chat, you're looking at up to 80 watts for a 5KW Eberspacher. It'll also use quite a bit more at startup to power the glowplug, but once running it drops considerably. A healthy and well-charged battery will run a diesel heater for many hours. A flat one will not even get it started. Where the issues with temperature can arise is when the boat is large and there is a single heater which is not located particularly centrally. A 40ft run of ducting is brilliant at cooling the air down....

I think location doesn't help. WRC is a great place to stop at on a boat, and is pretty much my defacto destination on a North to South run. You have a pub, showers, swimming pool etc and a decent number of moorings with electric etc. But there is just something about the Southern Rivers that people don't like, I really can't figure it out myself as I love it down there but I accept that your average boater does not want to do the sort of cruising hours that I generally do. Having been on a syndicate recently and observed the engine hours that the boat was doing over a season, it was only around 600. That's a 48 week boat, so in theory just 12.5 hours a week. If you assume that in reality perhaps just 35 weeks are being used, that's still only 17.14 hours a week - Just 2 and three quarter engine hours per day. You average boater does seem happier cruising sedately around from one location to the next, and is not bothered about how much ground they cover. The southern rivers don't really fit with that model so perhaps explains why they're more popular with seasoned boaters who are more interested in doing six or more hours at the helm. It also explains why we have such problems with batteries on boats...

Absolutely. If the product is free then you are the product, as the old adage goes.

Google Drive is great and cheap, and yeah having stuff across several devices and in the cloud means you're unlikely to lose photos.

Yeah I don't think it is terribly surprising, they will let much better from Wroxham. It's a shame but the draw of the North is indisputable.

I think there's been a fair bit of that. Plenty of people that would normally have gone abroad and not considered the Broads have ended up coming here. Long term, that's got to be a good thing as in normal times the Broads would just not attract those people as first-timers.

If there's enough genuine demand the yards are going to do it, and who can blame them.

The numbers are on here. https://www.richardsonsboatingholidays.co.uk/first-timers/norfolk-broads-bridges/ With the weather we've been having, it might be worth giving him a bell before you set off to make sure your boat will go through. Tides are all over the place so clearance hasn't been all that much.

Yeah in the summer you'll do well to get on one. Ranworth Staithe has quite a few posts, but most other places on the North don't have that many and the spaces near them are often occupied by boats without shore power.... Unless you have a very long lead it can be problematic. The last time I was at Coltishall I had to turn the boat round so that I was close enough to the one post in order to get plugged in.

Most definitely. I've never hired number 1, I hear she's a bit more original inside? I've had Major 2 at least three times, and yeah I think for the money you just can't go wrong. My wife is a bit fussy about what she likes and when we were on Major 2 last month she did comment that the heads could have been a bit bigger and maybe a few things could have been better (tiny TV, only 12V electrics etc). Thinking that here was my chance to book something a bit swankier next time I showed her some of the boats we could have and how much they cost (Fair Prince, Swan Renown etc). When I pointed out they were two to three times the price and that we could just have the cheaper boat and eat out every night for less than half the cost she fairly quickly changed her mind and I reckon we'll be on a Major Gem again next time...

Fingers crossed. Because of the seasonal peaks and troughs in demand I think a lot of Broadland pubs would work better as a community-led affair. It does require a few people to have a bit of business sense though, and that's not always the case with such setups.

One of these bad boys https://www.richardsonsboatingholidays.co.uk/boats/major-gem/ Built from the early seventies to early eighties...

It can be a problem, but a lot of the boats with issues have shockingly bad layup anyway. There are plenty of 70's boats about that are doing just fine.