oldgregg

Going under the bridge may not be an option, depending on what the boat is.

If you've put everyone who will be aboard on the list with Ricko's then it shouldn't be a big deal. This won't be the first time that someone has hired a boat and more people have joined the party later, and there will be three of you collecting (must be at least two adults, though, with Ricko's) the boat. I have done this and I'm sure many others here have. It's only really a problem when people aren't honest about the number of people and the boat has more people aboard than it's licensed for. Good pickup points would be Acle Bridge (you can even arrange with them to leave cars there), Wroxham, Horning, Coltishall (depending on the boat) and quite a few other places.

I'm not convinced that it does, but I think it's attempt at making the orange bathtubs a bit less garish. I have an orange bathtub booked in September so will be curious to see if it has been wrapped.

They do, but they need to know what to Google. I think there needs to be a bit more branding on them, personally.

Perfect place for storing a handy biscuit should he get hungry

Many times. Mrs OG loves it.

It's not quite as good as it was.... I think their main restaurant on Colegate is still better. My office used to be a couple of hundred yards round the corner. For an Indian, you'll probably want to try them or the Ali Tandoori. There are many very good restuarants in Norwich. Have you tried Trattoria Rustica, Bishop's Dining Rooms, Benedicts or Roger Hickman's? None of those are particularly cheap but they are popular. There's also Haggle, Shiki and others.... And there are of course the chains such as Cosy Club, Giggling Squid etc. I think the main thing is that because it's a very Tudor city and has lots of buildings tucked away then some of the trendier places to eat aren't always immediately obvious.

That I didn't know. Sounds promising and I wish them all the best with it, but they need to sort those opening hours. The site is very different to what Tingdene do and it seemed an odd acquisition for them, but I get why the Funnell clan moved on. Personally, when I hire with Mrs O G we very rarely use the cooker other than to heat the kettle and will happily stay in a pub for the evening. But having to go back to the boat at 8? Seems a bit odd.

It's what has always kept the price low, in reality. Some people just realistically couldn't consider hiring her. If she had the rear end of Skyway or Ranworth Breeze then it'd be quite a different matter. Here she is at Pye's Mill in 2021 being just the right height....

No. It sounds like "oh, there's a pub thing on the site we've bought... I suppose we'd better sort of run that sometimes then".

Lovely! How are you finding the boat? I'd never really 'got' the Diamond 35 until (ironically) being an owner on Thunder and finding myself using the interior helm a lot of the time. Suddenly the sit/stand helm position made a lot more sense and I realised what a clever boat the 35 is, a nice layout with quite a lot of space and it can go anywhere on the system.

Sounds like the perfect opportunity to book Contessa......

Yeah the manual wiper was a bit of an eye-opener last time we hired her. I'd never noticed that before (mostly having driven up top) but I guess it's very "1980's hireboat" and low-maintenance. Also if I'm being critical, the Bees Boats fitout isn't bad but it's not quite as nice as some of the other builds. It's a sort of good mid-range finish, but not quite up there with Broom or Brister hire fitouts. I do like the deeper windows though. They maybe don't look quite as slick as the Eastwood fitout (pictured), but it does mean you have a really nice and airy saloon even if the weather is a bit rubbish. Haines must have agreed as most of the Haines 37LS models have the deeper windows too (last picture).

Haha! I knew it. Such a clever design. The way John Bennett packaged that boat is just genius. So much space and yet only 37ft long, and because it's a cut-down Broom Crown hull they handle like almost nothing else. People always compliment me on my mooring when I'm on Contessa, I point out that it's the boat but I think if they've only ever hired Alpha bathtubs then it's hard to explain. No other boat I hire has that effect though. Have you ever noticed how the sofa cushions are exactly the right size to use on the 'sunbed' area of the flybridge? I don't know if the Harvey Eastwood ones were like that as I haven't hired one in decades, but Bees clearly had it sussed. I've hired her several times and did have her booked for this September but I'm going with the boys and need more beds.

I'm curious which boat.... But yes, I also have noticed much the same and I have a particular favourite in the classic fleet too. My wife had similar thoughts to yours when looking at this year's hire charge.

This is the thing.... Some hire fitouts are very nice and have aged really well. Broom were very good in the 80's and 90's, but then of course they were also a huge producer of 'private' boats so their standard was higher than the average hire yard.

All of it is based on code that people - very clever people, but people nonetheless - have written, and the engine has been trained on content from the web. That's the bit that joe public don't get. It has taken decades to get AI to where it is now and it will become more self aware but basically it's learning how to ingest information, apply it to a particular scenario and learn from that to build its knowledge. Which is what we do really...

And still wearing her Broads reg number, as often seems to be the case....

Indeed. I was talking to our marketing team about it the other day and they think it's great for getting a first draft sorted. It needs the human touch to polish, but saves a lot of time getting to that stage.

No, indeed, and that kind of knowledge isn't going to be ready anytime soon. The media are massively overstating the impact of it for now, but it will get better. All it's really doing is scouring a snapshot of the internet and making sense of different articles about a topic and coming up with a view based on those disparate sources. Where it's at currently is a public beta - They've spent years training the AI and now they're getting feedback from real-world users which will help refine the tech. I don't think it'll steal anyone's job just yet, but it's being plugged into the internet and it will get smarter.

Yeah I think a single 55hp BMC in one of those would not be great.

That would be a salesman answer, certainly. But it's standard on the new Honda Civic (which has almost identical power/performance specs to a 320i). It's standard on an Octavia VRS, Toyota Corolla and various other cars.... Why the justification to charge extra? It's not like their system is any different - All manufacturers are just buying the same system from Bosch etc. I ran a Honda CR-V for three months over the winter and that had adaptive cruise and it's brilliant.

It was an expensive option. But then isn't everything on a BMW. I was amused recently when Inchcape told me that adaptive cruise control is a £2000 option on the G20/G21 and that their demonstrators don't even have it. The salesman didn't really know what to say when I mentioned that even a Toyota Yaris has it as standard kit.

Pre-LCI G20 / G21 3 series..... Could also be a 4 series I guess.