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Meantime
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Posts posted by Meantime
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23 minutes ago, Oddfellow said:
I think Hoseasons is playing a dodgy game in the extreme here. The damage waiver is NOT an extra as there's no mechanism for not paying it.
The last Broads hire company I was aware of that actively offered an option of deposit or waiver was Le Boat and they left the area almost a decade ago now.The current terms of hire on the Richardsons website actually has three types of deposit!
1. The good old fashioned Damage Waiver Scheme. It does say there will be an additional fuel deposit as well to pay. The waiver is non returnable.
2. Fuel and Security Deposit Scheme where you will loose some or all of your deposit based upon any damage caused, but limited to the cost of the deposit which is £300. Slightly confusing because it says if you cause damage in excess of £300 you will not be asked to pay anymore, but you will be charged for any fuel used. So although you have paid a fuel deposit, effectively if you cause damage there may be nothing in the pot to actually pay for fuel used and you may still receive the bill for fuel.
3. Additional Deposit Group and Party Booking All male, female or young crews will be asked for a security deposit of £50pp on arrival at the boatyard. Presumably declaring yourself as binary or gender neutral should exempt you from that one?
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17 hours ago, Vaughan said:
I have to say that this is a good example of how a high resistance in a circuit, such as a faulty pump, can cause a fire in a circuit without blowing a fuse.
Fuses blow on a surge in amps, but a voltage trip will cut out when it senses the volt drop from a high resistance.
I assume by voltage trip you mean the resettable circuit breakers? These do not sense voltage but like fuses are rated to trip once a certain current is exceeded, unlike fuses they can be reset. The main difference is that the way in which they operate to break the circuit does not generate much if any heat.
A trip is wired in series with the circuit which means it has no concept of voltage. To measure voltage or to sense a voltage drop or gain you need a neutral or earth to read the potential difference against. Therefore if a trip only has two wires, one in and one out it is only measuring current.
The main difference apart from the fact that a trip is resettable and a fuse blows and then needs to be replaced is their method of operation. A fuse is basically just a thin piece of wire sized to melt when too much current flows through it. Fuses will allow slightly more current through than their rating for a period of time and they will gradually get hotter which in turn increase their resistance leading to the eventual failure or blowing of the fuse. However the heat in the meantime can be a problem as demonstrated in the pictures above. Fuses really work at their best when a sudden short circuit occurs and they blow immediately. They are not so good when running consistently at slightly above their rating. Correct sizing of the fuse is important here.
On the other hand a trip generally works in one of two ways. Either a bimetallic strip that will bend as it gets warm and eventually will bend and break or trip the circuit. The actual contacts are rated far higher than the trip and therefore do not get hot and the bimetallic strip will bend at relatively low rises in temperature, certainly before it gets anywhere near hot enough to do the sort of damage you see above. The other method is a small electromagnet which is sized that once enough current is being drawn through the device the magnet becomes strong enough to pull the contact open and thus break the circuit. Again the whole process is relatively heat free.
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19 hours ago, grendel said:
Currently jewel 2 and broad ambition moored at lodden, BA had a slight electrical wiring issue this morning, so has had the fuseboard replaced and the shower pump rewired. jewel 3 had issues crossing breydon and was limped into reedham with an escort, she is currently still at reedham as the HW engineers replace the gearbox, engine mounts and universal joint. We have heard the gearbox has been replaced, and the rest of the work is ongoing, several of her crew continued with us to lodden, and are happily fishing or visiting the pub.
Jewel 2 and I am anticipating the skippers orders, eg I heard him asking for the fenders to be deployed and the dinghy brought up front when I was 2/3 of the way around the boat deploying the fenders and heading towards the dinghy.
I would say that was a close shave there. Two lessons to be learnt there.
1. Always keep at least a couple of spares of each rating of fuse. It is so tempting when a fuse blows and you don't have the correct size replacement to put in a slightly higher or lower rated one. Things work and you remind yourself that you will purchase the correct size and replace it at the next opportunity and then a few months pass and it is still in situ and not properly protecting the circuit.
2. When ever replacing a component of the circuit such as a new pump, or light etc. Always treat it as a complete new installation. Check the power requirements of the new part. Check whether the current wiring is still sufficient. Check whether the fuse needs to be downrated or uprated to cope.
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To be fair I do my best to keep it clean and apart from the dipstick the only other thing stored in there is a spare temporary mooring rope which is used as an extra spring in some mooring situations. The gas locker has a couple of aluminium braces near the top which keep the two gas bottles in situ and the dipstick and rope just sit across the top of those so they are handy to get too and kept out of the water.
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59 minutes ago, Oddfellow said:
And are they not frowned upon?
I deployed the subtle art of keeping on the right side of moderation, I hope! I kept it as a light hearted jovial dig, but I'm sure most knew what I was thinking!
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11 hours ago, Smoggy said:
I believe it's down to repeatedly being dropped into the tank and eventually wearing a hole in the bottom as they always hit the same spot.
I still have one on my boat from the days when it was a hire boat. It has a cross piece a bit like a sword to ensure it can only go in so far, thus it never touches the bottom. It has four marks on it effectively dividing it into 5 sections, so 20% per section. I'm not sure just how far of the bottom of the tank it reaches, but I never run the tank too low anyway.
I always track the mileage since the last fill and very rarely use the dipstick.
I thought it was more for environmental reasons they were removed from boats. If I use mine which is rarely, I have some rag handy and wipe as much diesel as possible of the stick, then leave it in the sun to dry before it goes back in the gas locker. The rag then goes into a plastic bag and disposed of properly. I can imagine some being returned to the locker without being wiped, or drips being left to drip over board, or worse washed in the river water etc etc. If they are wiped what sort of cloth has been used? was it dirty? did it have grit or fluff on it etc.
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15 minutes ago, vanessan said:
We were told a while ago that the use of dipsticks is frowned upon these days. I’m sure there will be someone who can verify that.
I'm not so sure about that, our toll money seems to pay for a fair few at Yare House
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4 minutes ago, Bikertov said:
My maths is a bit rusty these days, but I think there is an error in your second formula ... surely it should divide, not multiply ?
Otherwise the resistance to leave increases when the outside temperature increases, whereas the resistance to leave should decrease when it gets warmer ?
So I think the correct formula should be:
distance from fire / outside temp = resistance to leave pub.
I must confess I just made it up on the spur of the moment, it could do with some refining. I'll look into improving when next sheltering in the pub from a cold boat.
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43 minutes ago, Smoggy said:
Nah, I phone the heating from the pub as I get the last* round in and it runs for an hour with extra ducts running under the duvet, when we get back the boat is toasty and the bed is roasted, get in a warm bed and you stay that way all night without heating on.
As for the open fire/pub theory, we've been known to take a bag of logs along with us in winter.
* last may not really mean last.
I don't have the ability to phone my heater, but do have a timer on the thermostat, so normally set it to come on at 20:30 for a couple of hours to warm the boat up before we return to the boat. However I must confess there have been occasions when that plan doesn't work too well, like when you return after last orders or after a lock in to find the heater turned off an hour or two ago.
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I must confess the best way I've found of improving the heater fuel economy is to stay in the pub longer. I've even found that the closer you sit to an open fire in a pub, the longer you stay and therefore the less diesel you burn on heating.
I've tried to demonstrate it with the following formula
distance from fire * outside temp = resistance to leave pub.
number of pints / hours spent in pub = hourly pint rate
price of a pint * hourly pint rate - cost of running boat heater = £s per hour
£s per hour * resistance to leave pub = a figure which if high means its time to return to the boat, if low its time to get a round in.
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My Mikuni heater is rated at 5kW and uses between 0.19 - 0.60 l/h. That's the official stats but what does it mean in practice? Well as the diesel all comes from the same tank and there is no hour counter on the heater it's hard to say definitively. What I can say is that in the Summer I get about 2.6 - 2.7 miles to the litre and n the Winter this drop to about 1.9 - 2.1 miles to the litre. The difference being the fuel used by the heater.
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I'm not convinced on the use of Winter tyres we get too much of a varience in temperature in this country during the Winter. Winter tyres have a cross over point of around 7 degrees C at which point they become worse for stopping than Summer tyres. Looking at my home weather station for last year we regularly had temperatures above 7 degrees during Nov / Dec 2020 and Jan / Feb 2021.
Taken from the Dunlop website
"In the UK, it is recommended to put winter tyres on your car when temperatures drop below 7°C. On average, temperatures usually fall to these levels between November and April. But there’s no specific date, and temperatures can be vastly different in urban areas compared with rural areas. So you need to keep an eye on the temperature where you are and when it drops below 7°C, that’s when you should consider changing to winter tyres.
Once temperatures start to rise above 7°C in spring, it’s time to change back to summer tyres."
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Morrisons at Pakefield has petrol and diesel. Petrol was £1.34.7p
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2 hours ago, Hylander said:
Morrisons in Beccles - no fuel sign, but I dont think the only problem was fuel, the whole of the garage was under water since this morning. May be it has dried out a bit now. A lady was telling us in the store that she got there at 7 when it opened and realised how deep the water was when she opened her car door and the water poured in. She had to drive out as could not get petrol because of the water.
It amazes me why people drive through water that deep> For one thing a man hole may have been dislodged by rain water, that's apart from the damage that can be done to the engine.
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9 minutes ago, vanessan said:
I believe the Radio Norfolk piece stated that the boat had too many on board. I wonder if this is an incident the MAIB will become involved with.
What Darren from Hemsby lifeboat actually said was "we think there was probably too many people on the boat" he didn't say there was or it had too many on board.
I'm sure there will be an investigation and then we may get to know the fuller facts. Darren actually said they didn't get to the bottom of why it sunk.
6 minutes ago, annv said:That's what i suspected it ran into bank front went up and stern dipped below water. John
Again what Darren actually said was
"Lucky enough the womans son diverted the boat towards the bank, which actually saved them"
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10 minutes ago, floydraser said:
Well from a bloke who was there and involved: about 4 foot of the bow above the water.. .75% under the water...maybe too many on the boat (8). Just takes a bit of maths really.
If it was a private day boat, then there is no limit. Still yet to see or read anything which gives any definitive facts.
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You're not missing out. It's like a Facebook, but just for your local neighbourhood. The local area is divided up into areas similar to an area that your local councilor would represent and then people join their local group and post about things that are happening locally. A bit like Facebook meets Neighbourhood Watch, with a bit of Gumtree thrown in for good measure.
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50 minutes ago, andyg said:
I would imagine it's Already been refloated Andrew. Probably sitting on the hard by now. You'd be surprised how quickly the yards repair the boats.
I must have missed it, but I cannot for the life of me see anywhere that has described the boat that sunk. So it still could be a large boat, a day boat, a picnic boat, hire or private, unless someone knows better. There's been no new updates on Faceache or the EDP website, so why assume!
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You've forgotten about Nextdoor!!! They're still posting the locations of petrol stations with fuel on there.
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Things are getting serious, due to panic usage there is now a shortage of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram!!! Unlike petrol and diesel though, they won't be missed.
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1 minute ago, TheQ said:
broads hire boat above the waterline, and the roof of an 8 berth Hire boat is huge..
That's off course assuming it was a hire boat! Was it a picnic day boat? Was it a private boat. The EDP describes them as passengers and doesn't mention a hire boat.
The main thing is they are safe, I'm sure the facts will come out in the fullness of time.
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17 minutes ago, annv said:
If we hadn't joined the common market we would still have 100% red diesel at 0% tax. John
I would think that's highly unlikely. The Government had the choice of removing duty for the propulsion element after Brexit. It didn't and it won't because now it has carbon emission targets to hit, which would have led to increased duty on Red even if we hadn't entered the Common market.
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Broad Ambition - Underway on the H2O
in Holiday Tales & Blogs
Posted
But that is not strictly true. A resistive load will cause heat at the point of resistance for instance a light bulb is a resistive load and glows from the heat produced at the point of resistance i.e. the lightbulb.
As Griff has already acknowledged the problem wasn't using a fuse, it was using the incorrect fuse rating for the circuit it was protecting.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but fuses are inherently safe if used correctly. Trips are generally more expensive and convenient because they can be reset. If Griff had used a trip rather than a fuse, then the inconvenience of keep resetting the trip would have led him to replace the trip for an uprated one of the correct rating for the new pump. However simply replacing the fuse for one of the correct rating would also have removed the fire hazard.
To expand further on what I'm trying to say, it makes no difference if you use a 10A fuse or a 10A trip, if you have a bad connection in for instance a spade terminal onto a pump that is providing resistance and therefore getting hot when you try and draw more than 4 to 6 amps, then the terminal will get hot, and possibly present a fire hazard, and neither the trip or fuse will blow.
It is equally imperative that all aspects of your electrical system are properly installed, maintained and regularly checked, especially in such a hostile environment as a marine one.