oldgregg

Vectra?

Yeah I think there's a reason they consistently come top of reliability and owner satisfaction surveys.

I do like a Volvo but worry how much influence Ford had during their ownership - I know the previous two V40's were basically a Focus. Ford are decent compared to the shonky brands like Fiat, Renault/Nissan, VW etc, but they're not 'old Volvo' or Toyota / Honda levels of build quality. How much Ford is in the bigger Volvos I'm not sure...

You know the only sensible replacement begins with an 'H' and ends with 'onda'.....

If you're storing video files, it might be worth at looking at how they are encoded as you can make HUGE gains in storage utilisation by re-encoding them into H264 or even H265 using Handbrake or something similar. You will need decent hardware to play back H265, but sometimes it can make your files ten times smaller with no perceptible loss in quality. I've been going through my old videos recently and while you'd expect 4K stuff to be the real culprit, it's surprising how poor the compression often is on 1080p video simply because older hardware lacked the computing power to compress the files efficiently.

You may find that there is a build for your device of AOSP (the Android Open Source Project), which is the base 'stock' Android direct from Google. The best place to look is the XDA Developers forum, which has little to do with development for XDA's these days. In practice, these builds tend to have things missing or not working quite right and of course there will be no support so honestly I wouldn't really recommend it. One of my Samsung devices had a lovely new OS build available, but with a warning that the drivers for the sound didn't work properly. Cheers guys, that's useful. Unfortunately this is the issue with Android - Google were desperate for market share in the early days and let manufacturers put their own junk on top of Android. What this means is that it's now a bit of a monster which they are trying to fix but with considerable resistance from manufacturers who need to differentiate their offering from other Android hardware vendors. If you want a 'clean' Android device, either one of the first-party Google Pixel devices or something from OnePlus are probably the best bet given that they are actually properly tested and supported rather than having been chucked together by someone in their spare time.

You can fit them to anything, but sometimes they are external and would not last long on a hirefleet. Yes, people really do fit those unfortunately..... Obviously, this is going to last a lot longer.

They'll be more durable in terms of the motor not burning out, and it removes the problem of the heavy battery discharge. I suspect the control system and the (motorised) valves for the hydraulics will be the bits that go wrong, though. But in terms of a Broads cruiser you're taking the power from the hydraulics, so when in use they're giving you less propulsion power (which in a tight spot you may need lots of) and you need decent engine revs on to get decent thrust. I've seen lots of people using them and not understanding how they work (admittedly, why should they). With low engine revs they're crap, and you do have to plan in advance how you're going to use them.

Yeah that's true.

Yeah, that would be pretty horrendous (and dangerous) Slack is at around 6 so perhaps there is an expectation the river will reopen later and give time for crews to reach Stracey?

A sad incident. Unfortunately at 2pm I think the Bure will have had quite a flow on it.

Stracey arms seems like a good place to head for. That's my preferred stop on an evening crossing.

@C.Ricko I think I know who will know.....

Yeah I'm with you on that. You don't get the centre cockpit draughts in the edged of the season, but in the summer there's nothing like cruising along with the roof off.

Yeah they're mostly late seventies to early eighties. It's a fantastic design when you look at it, space well used and nicely proportioned between accommodation, living space and that protected cockpit.

Actually she's a Bounty Traveller, technically....

The yacht station is more secure than it used to be, but yeah I'd avoid Friday and Saturday nights for sure. Norwich is a beautiful city and always worth a visit, but I wouldn't overnight at the yacht station personally. As for chucking the mudweight in, I'd do that almost anywhere nowadays. Sure, people don't get untied that often but do you really want the hassle given how little effort it is to lob the Broadland handbrake at the drink?

You'll be thinking of Andrew Wolstenholme? I think the newer stuff was designed by John Moxham, who also did the recent Richardson's boats and has worked with Ferry Marina (and many more of course).

I think they're popular with stag / hen parties so might be in hire a while yet. https://www.barnesbrinkcraft.co.uk/our-boats/detail/brinks-emperor-class/ I actually really like the old Aquafibre centre cockpits, they handle really well, are shaft drive and are spacious inside so I'd love one of the 48-footers refitted to lose a couple of cabins and have a nice open plan saloon / galley like on Carousel.

Yeah, they have some stretched Aquafibre 42's. Because of grandfather rights (they were registered before 1992) they are I think now the largest Broads boats in hire that do not have a restricted cruising area.

Yeah, they do. The Highliner 44 has been around for quite a while now but when fitted out well there is quite a lot of space in them because of the high sheer line and bathtub hull. I've always thought the 35ft version looked better-proportioned but internally always seemed to be missing a couple of feet of space in the saloon so hopefully that also gets a stretch to around 37ft.

Sold, sadly. One of the Gardenias was in better condition than the other - The cheaper one had discolouration to the laminates from moisture etc and would have needed more work.

I think that's to be expected at this time of year. When everything is out, the engineers will be out, for a variety of reasons. One of the most common reasons for a callout is still flat batteries because people don't run the engine for long enough each day.

It's a common opinion I think. Ferry tried to sell a private version of Garnet for years and didn't manage it. Haines took the mould, stuck a conventional canopy on and called it the Haines 26. They've sold a fair few.

If you're getting DNS lookup issues, that's not the forum....