Cal

In all the years we have boated on the Broads in hire boats and our own little boat we have never managed to get on the public moorings at Horning

I love that stretch of river and the stretch from the Berney Arms up to Reedham.

There will be a tourist boom everywhere in the UK this summer. Those who would normally go abroad are going to be holidaying in the UK instead (for the most part) We have picked what will possibly be the busiest year in the UK for buying our motorhome

We had to slow right down through Horning and the other villages with the Sealine. Even if we were within the speed limit it was often making unacceptable wash for passing moored boats. We normally just slowed right down to tickover which created very little wash.

They will probably have been looking at your wash and wake rather than judging your speed.

It very much depends on the boat and the set up. The cruiser we had with duo props reversed very well, so well in fact that you had to watch for water coming over the bathing platform at times! Broads hire boats with their flat sterns and single props just don't reverse so well and will also suffer from prop walk which pulls the stern to one side.

Wouldn't fancy being towed over Wells Bar

Just to finish off this topic we picked our van up last week. We managed to get away for four nights, three off grid and one on a site to give it a good shake down and once over to make sure everything was working. We are so far very impressed with it. We had been slightly concerned about the amount of storage, but actually with our gear on there is still loads of spare storage. We do need to put some shelves in the wardrobe and an outside locker to make the best use of the space though. That is a job we will tackle in the next few weeks. We had also been concerned about only having one domestic battery but that also seems to work well. With the heating, fridge and cooking being gas there is very little running off the battery. The solar panel has been getting the battery fully charge again by the time we have been getting up, so no worries there. We are now starting to make plans for our holidays this year. Our July holiday will be a one week run up the East coast, across to the Lake District and then back through the Yorkshire Dales. Our main holiday will be a two week break at the end of September when the kids have gone back to school and will be a two week tour around Scotland.

You don't have to have heating to claim domestic use on your fuel. Your engine is also generating your electricity and providing hot water. These are also domestic use. Our new van will certainly have a bigger tank than Water Rail At 90 litres it feels like filling the boat up at the petrol station

With our own boat we always declined offers of help after a couple of well intentioned people pulled on the bowrope and smashed it into the bank damaging the boat. After that we never accepted help. Even with hire boats!

Our Hyundai I30 will do about 70mpg on a long steady run. Not quite as good as our previous Mini One D which topped 80mpg on a run to Brittany. Mind you we are evening that out now with the motorhome which will do 25-30mpg if we are lucky

Our cruiser drew 3ft and we never had a problem with water depth anywhere on the Broads. In fact it made for a nice change whenever we visited to not be clouting the bottom all the time

Oh dear. Sorry to hear that. Not a great start to the season!

Yes they can and do.

I would put my money on dirty fuel.

Oh dear. I doubt you will be the only one to break down though. Lots of boats that have been sat around for a long time and won't take too kindly to being asked to wake up again. Fingers crossed it is nothing too serious.

Le Boat Consul?

As an aside that trawler style boat opposite has to be the most unsuitable boat possible for the Northern Broads 🤣🤣🤣

Well you can't acuse him of using up all the mooring space 🤣🤣🤣

Thats slow! Our last house went in the market Friday afternoon. We had six viewings that weekend and five offers on the table Monday morning 🤔

Blimey. That got high!! Hope everyone's boats are alright?

A motorhome can take you many more places though once you are fed up of mud weighting in Salhouse Broad again and again and again.

I'd I'm brutally honest we have found the costs of boat ownership have become prohibitive. Moorings, licence, insurance, BSC, nothing ever got cheaper. The costs have escalated massively in the 13 years we had it. We are looking for and to massively decreased running costs.

We have a friend who has both a caravan and tow car and a camper van conversion. They take whichever is going to suit the type of holiday they are having. The camper for touring and the caravan for being sited. It works for them.

We unexpectedly had a lead about a 68 plate Benimar Mileo 202 that had been traded in yesterday. We got straight onto the dealers to enquire about it and managed to strike a good deal on. They wanted to know how on earth we knew about it. It had literally just been traded in and they won't own it until the 16th April 🤣🤣🤣. We are very impressed with the service from the brokers though who worked until 8pm over Easter weekend to broker the deal. We have left them a holding deposit and as soon as they own it it will be transported to our local branch just down the road for servicing, valeting and preparation. We can then inspect it thoroughly to check we are happy with it. It does need down rating from 3650kg to 3500kg before we pick it up but that is just a paperwork exercise. The current owners have sent us loads of pictures and it looks like a nice tidy van that has been well looked after. It is 2.5 years old and has come at a substantial cost saving from new.