oldgregg

Yeah it was, and the car was used for towing a Caravan for a couple of years. I remember just how slow it was up Hawkshead Hill (before the engine rebuild and in reality probably after though we didn't try it again) with the 'van on the back. To be fair, anything other than second gear is overrated anyway, right? It was changed a couple of years later for the gold Cavalier CD, though. Now that was a car!

I've split the rest off this thread off into Car Talk.... Was my fault it went off track!

We had one. I think it was 7 years old when bought and while it wasn't a low-miler it wasn't crazy either. It needed a head-off rebuild of the engine, with one of the inlet valves being bent and having to be replaced. Of course these were pushrod engines (yes really) like on boats, so it was relatively easy. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Indeed. Spot the tiny boat.... And that's a 34ft Aquafibre Sedan.

I think there were some people a few years back who took some narrowboats on the Caledonian Canal. All sounds good until you realise that includes Loch Ness, which is 24 miles long and a mile and a half wide in places and can either be as calm as crossing Barton Broad or like being at sea depending on the weather. When the wind gets up it's not pleasant in an offshore boat so I wouldn't like to try it an a flat-bottomed narrowboat!

Yeah that's been there a few days. It was a LONG way into the roundabout.

I saw this channel pop up on YouTube the other day. Nicely produced and their boat (which is a month old) looks great! Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Don't forget the Austin Ambassador! We really did build some crap in this country. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Also sadly the steering wheel is not square.....

Looks that way!

Yeah I think Ibiza would make a very nice private boat. She's got a fairly large toilet / shower room aft I seem to recall, which is always a plus on a Broads boat.

I was puzzled by that. A D reg puts it as being first registered here in 1997ish (obviously not new), and a mid W as circa 2014. It's possible she came and went, then came back and has gone again, of course. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Is Coryton not on a Beam of Light? Aquafibre Diamond 43 as per the other thread...

The latter, unfortunately. We didn't do anything deliberately to remove pictures, but I do remember there being a problem with one of the scripts when we first started to move things to AWS. Although we spoke to the software vendor about their bug and they ran some processes to clean some things up, unfortunately it had still managed to lose a fair few older images.

Okay - Just being very cautious then I think! Anyway, I seem to remember the Wroxham Bridge Pilot telling me last year that we (Thunder) were the tallest of the ex-Broom Diamond 43's because of our light mast.

That's odd then. Surely even Woods aren't stupid enough to have put a fixed helm chair on the Beams? Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

A Jewel of Light has less curvature to the roof than a Diamond 43, too. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Yeah, it would. We need nearer 8ft 6 with the screens up, though I don't know the exact figure. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Beam of Light are exactly the same basic height as Thunder and Lightning as they were built for the Broom hirefleet back in the 90's. My guess would be that 7ft 2ins is the height to the top of the upstairs helm seat when it isn't folded down as that's the highest point on the boat and easy to forget to fold and damage on a Bridge as one of our owners did that last season. Either that or the helm seat doesn't fold, but that would be a mad thing to fit. Yes Noble Captain is basically a Broom Ocean 38, fitted out by Haines as are most of Manor House's boats. A very nice spacious boat, one of my favourite of the Broom designs. Incidentally, we were held up on our handover because all the engineers had to rush off in a RIB to stop one of the Noble Captains sinking as the hirer had holed it on rocks at the top end of the Lough. It came back strung alongside the RIB with big pumps running and they craned it out straight away to start repairs. We hired Noble Chief 3, a Haines Charter 360. Very spacious inside, but I think a Captain would have handled a lot better. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Fundamentally it depends whose engine is in it.... Mercedes buy their smaller diesels from Renault, and many manufacturers will buy something for a particular size or application from another company you'd never expect because the cost of developing engines is so high. They'll use terms like "developed in partnership with XX", but fundamentally that just means that one is writing cheques to the other to cover any additional development costs.

The BT mobile product does use EE, but you likely won't get all of the channels and thus coverage is not as good. Most of the MVNO's work like that - It is too costly to spin up a mobile network now so if starting up you buy airtime with an existing one and resell that. But you'll never get the premium product which they sell to their own customers at a higher rate. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

There's some detail here http://www.nelsonboatownersclub.co.uk/nelsonstory.html I think it's conceptually similar to the Aquafibre model of one company designing the mouldings and moulding them (or contracting another outfit to do that) and then supplying the mouldings to other yards to fit out and market as their own products. Mould development is very costly, so not that many yards do the whole end-to-end process of first sketch to finished boat. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

A Diamond 43! Speedtriple and I are very familiar with those. Ours needs 6' 10" at Wroxham with the light mast folded down and obviously a hireboat won't have that so you can shave a couple of inches off. Beam of Ligh probably isn't allowed under Potter Heigham, but Beccles will be no problem as long as you keep an eye on the tides. I was down there two weeks ago on one.... Yes I remember not knowing the air draft with the Manor House boat and a particular bridge I wasn't sure if I'd get under. Which boat did you hire? Ours had the turbocharged 5-cylinder Nanni and did a lot more than 6 knots. Lough Erne is indeed massive and gets quite lumpy! Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Hi Simon Yeah you've pretty much said it yourself... The height gauges are generous and the boats are marked up similarly, so provided the tides aren't crazy then you'll get through. Obviously, always check the height gauge on the bridge just to be sure.

Very much so. I was on Lough Erne exactly ten years ago this week with Manor House Marine, and it was MUCH quieter than the broads at the same time. The navigation is also a lot less complicated than Lough Erne, where as you'll remember there was a need to have the charts and binoculars at hand all the time and look out for marker posts to avoid rocks and shallow areas. On the Broads you'll want a map to work out where you're going and roughly how long it will take and unless you're going onto the Southern rivers then that's about as complicated as it gets. Speed limits are also very much a thing on the Broads whereas on the Shannon / Erne system they really didn't care. I remember trying to be a good boy on the handover in order to get it done quickly, and the guy just told me to give it some beans so my handover was a quick ten-minute run flat out. It's not like that here!