oldgregg

It is indeed Black Prince I was thinking of, but ABC do the same thing. I don't know what the average fleet age is (and yes they definitely do have older stuff), but this was a smaller 4+2 berth and the guy we got chatting to at the yard mentioned that our boat and others in the fleet were 4 years old and were leaving as they'd been sold. We looked online as obviously we were curious, and several similar boats were for sale at circa £42K. But yes, I've looked at the list of boats for sale at Richardson's each year and it's typically around ten boats leaving with only three being added to the fleet each year. With the new build programme having recently ceased, I do wonder what happens next. The model used to be to do major refurbs of the older boats and that's not really happened during the newbuild programme, so perhaps they will shift back towards that? Look at boats like Barbados, Escapade, Capri and Viscount. Older boats but all had a total refit around ten years ago and feel much newer inside. Few other yards have the resources (or space and staff) to do such things. I remember being in the Ponderosa in the winter of 2008/9 and in those days all of the Acle fleet were in there, along with several boats having a total 'windows out' refit.

Yes, just as there are old Broads cruisers, there are old narrowboats. You know what I meant, though, and I was talking about hire boats which in general don't last so long and need more than a coat of paint to keep them afloat. I'd have a 1975 Aquafibre centre cockpit, but few people would want a 1975 canal hireboat. Some systems (such as the Llangollen) damage the underside of the boats considerably as there's very little depth and a rocky bottom so overplating is eventually required. In general they go to the scrap merchant in the sky as it's not worth the hassle.

In the same glass?

I have no idea what the margins are on canals, but it's a very different business model to the Broads for sure. For anyone not having done canals, the fleet ages might surprise. The big operators run boats for four years before selling them on. The spec is acceptable but relatively simple, with hulls in standard lengths to accommodate the number of modular cabins required. Each cabin's fitout is from a standard kit, so a double cabin on all boats has a standard set of factory-made parts, as does a galley, a saloon etc. For more berths you simply buy the next size hull up which is designed to fit the extra set of parts for a double cabin, bunks, washroom or whatever it might be. A 4+2 berth goes for about £42K once it has done its four years. Obviously, the interiors are very much IKEA quality and won't last forever but at that sort of price for a fairly new boat you can't really expect them to. I would imagine the shells are probably not built to the usual spec either. Canal boats have a much shorter life than Broads cruisers because obviously steel rusts and aluminium, stainless etc don't particularly suit the use. You can over-plate but it's expensive and old narrowboats don't fetch a lot of money.

It's certainly that. I can remember paying £1200 for a short break in September on the canals a couple of years ago, and paying around £400 for pretty much the same dates this year on the Broads. The canal boat was much newer (although nothing particularly posh), and the Broads boat was an AF38 out of Ricko's classic fleet - but that's still an enormous cost difference.

I think there's a fair few people on here who have tried lots of different waterways. The Broads is beautiful and it's a fairly unique system but I think trying other cruising areas broadens your horizons somewhat. People often say to me that they wouldn't want to do a waterway with locks, and yet I've spoken to canal boaters who think that the Broads sounds scary because "it's tidal". Funny, isn't it.

Many higher end boats do, but don't go bringing fan heaters etc... It's for charging laptops, cameras etc (although most of those now charge over USB, so will be fine on a cigarette lighter adapter) and perhaps a few minutes with a lower-powered hairdryer. Shore power of course gives you 3KW max, inverters usually around half that (and they will flatten the batteries in a couple of hours at max load). A generator will of course give you continuous power, but then you shouldn't run an engine between 8pm and 8am unless you want to annoy your neighbours.

So yeah, antifreeze doesn't go on the raw water side of the heat exchanger. The river water that comes in (and exits with the exhaust) is used to cool the closed loop on the engine, and it's that you'd add antifreeze to.

Hi Tony We're waiting for a third-party company to fix a bug with the component that makes the App work... Until that's been done we can't switch the app back on. Hopefully it won't be too much longer... For now, though, you can of course use the forum on your mobile device and set a bookmark on your home screen....

Sure are. It's always amusing going into Norwich Airport for an early flight, where gate 3 is 'KLM to Amsterdam' and the other destinations are ConocoPhillips, Shell Expro etc...

I'd disagree with that, having formerly worked in the insurance industry. Any insurance policy which is being 'chucked in' as a value-add with something is usually pretty worthless and will have a list of limits and conditions as long as your arm. Those 'monthly fee' bank accounts are a nice little earner for the ailing retail banking sector, and they don't achieve that by providing good quality cover, just something that looks like it is a benefit. When you consider what the bank will be paying the insurer for the policy after they've taken their commission, you can see why it just cannot stack up. Remember the PPI scandal? They had to stop selling that to anyone and everyone so needed to switch to something else... With any insurance, I'd say always do a bit of research and go to a reputable and recommended provider and then make sure you read carefully what the policy covers. It won't be as cheap (how could it), but it might actually cover you should you need to claim.

I don't think a car makes any difference?

Yeah, it does and it kind of is. Calendars should be wrapped up by July really in order to get a good sales run.

Cheers for that! Yeah. there are a number of reasons not to fit them for sure. The thought occured to me last week and it struck me that really it needs to be factored into the design of the hull so that the whole thing is relatively protected within the shape of the keel. There's always jet drives i guess but those have been tried on the Broads I think and don't particularly suit our weedy, muddy waters nor the low revs that Broads cruisers operate at.

Props are definitely dangerous and anything which can be done to improve safety there has to be a good thing. People don't necessarily appreciate the danger the prop poses and I think while logically they should be into neutral and switching off, in reality panic will set in and the opposite is likely to happen. I don't know what the answer is. A propeller guard seems like a good idea but on the Broads how practical is that? I would imagine it would get choked up with weeds in precisely no time and need the boat lifting out regularly for checking.

They'd say they didn't know.... That's the problem.

It'll still have value, have a look on eBay...

Indeed, but vessel size ties in with it. You can't have a hire boat that's too big for the corners of the system.

This is the problem with allowing hire boats outside of the 'max' dimensions. They are going to go where they're not supposed to. Partly because people don't know any better. On top of the list of things a new hirer has to remember, are they going to have the schedule of limits in front of them at all times? Not going to happen.

We're talking about why the limits are in place. You can't have hire boats that don't fit the system otherwise there'll be problems. But yes, a bigger boat has more displacement and is therefore generally more stable. The old MK1 Fair Entrepreneurs have the handling and agility of a small housing estate, though.

It does, though, because you can't moor two 14' beam boats (with fenders) in Neatishead staithe and get a third down the middle, nor can you sensibly turn a boat of more than 46' at Dilham when the moorings are in use. Equally, two Broom Explorers meeting each other on the twisty part of the Chet could be interesting...

In part 2 of the schedule of size restrictions, you'll note that the same restrictions also apply to boats which are longer than 46 feet. https://www.broads-authority.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/180633/Vessel_Dimensions_Byelaws-1.pdf

Most definitely. Especially if it's O gauge!

Actually, for some mad reason there isn't technically a maximum size for hireboats. But any boat first registered with the BA after 1992 and which exceeds 46' x 12'6" has restrictions upon where it is allowed to go. Older hire boats (and there aren't many now) which exceed those dimensions are therefore technically still allowed to go anywhere. The AF48 CC Brinks Emperors are the obvious examples. But for newer boats outside of those dimensions technically the Chet, Ant and a few other places are off limits. For that reason, hire firms don't build boats bigger than those dimensions as it limits their appeal. Broom have some fairly new boats bigger than that (which are from a cancelled order) but their cruising range is limited. They've been seen at Loddon, though....

There are definitely advantages to DCC, but I just find that it takes so much maintenance that it takes the fun out of things. I've converted various things to DCC, but almost always using the standard (ish) 8 pin socket on a loom so that the loco can easily be switched back to DC operation by unplugging the decoder and fitting a blanking plug. One of the big advantages of DCC is that if you can run several things on the same track (or in opposite directions for demos) and adjust the speed independently so that they don't run into each other. It makes double-heading work more smoothly. The only way to really achieve that with DC is to have a resistor inline on a loco that runs too fast, or to mess with the gearing, so that's definitely a plus. So I'm told