Jump to content

Coryton

Full Members
  • Posts

    397
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Everything posted by Coryton

  1. As so often with accidents it's not a single cause, it's a set of things that all line up in the wrong way. Fortunately this time without too drastic consequences.
  2. I thought I understood the situation, as you described it as above (and the exclusions to what are covered by the waiver (gross negligance, intentional damage, whatever) presumably mirror the terms in the boat yard's insurance. Although I could imagine that a yard might be large enough either to self-insure entirely or to take out insurance with a huge excess - effectively buying re-insurance. But then I got the invoice with the wording I showed above, which is either extremely badly worded or suggesting that the damage waiver is in itself insurance. I appreciate I'm not buying insurance for the boat - it looks from the wording as if I've been sold my own insurance policy to cover the excess in the boat yard's insurance. Hence my confusion.
  3. I have not (knowingly) paid for cancellation insurance. I don't follow that - if the alternative to paying the damage waiver is leaving a deposit and losing it if necessary, then unless the deposit is set at the wrong level don't the costs work out the same if everyone takes the waiver, everyone pays the deposit, or something in between?
  4. I was surprised when I first hired that fuel wasn't included. I don't know why - I wouldn't expect to have unlimited petrol included with a hire car. I suppose it's because when I rent a cottage I expect the price to include everything (though now I come to think of it, we were handed an electricity bill after a week in a cottage in Ireland as well as paying for fuel we'd used for the day boat that came with the cottage).
  5. I'm pretty sure that when we rented a cruiser in Ireland we just went to the office at the end and paid for our fuel. I don't recall a specific credit card pre-authorisation beforehand either. (No collision damage waiver either, just a hefty deposit). I wasn't aware that a collision damage waiver could be optional. I'd seriously consider taking the risk on myself. I don't consider the fact that I've paid a wavier gives me carte blanche to go around bashing the boat into things.
  6. Some years ago when working in a lab I smelt a very acrid smell. I traced it to the fuse box. It was a design where the fuse went into a carrier which then clipped into the fuse box. Somebody had managed to get a fuse in without the carrier. It had worked for years, but eventually the contact resistance must have got too high and it acted as a rather effective heater.
  7. Either in the case of my booking it's not as simple as that, or Hoseasons are being downright deceitful in referring to the damage waiver as insurance underwritten by a real insurance company (Allianz).
  8. I don't understand. It looks as if part of my booking is a payment to an insurance company to cover any damage I cause to the boat I've hired or to other boats. Is that not the case?
  9. My recent booking through Hoseasons shows the "non refundable damage waiver" as being "insurance" underwritten by what I presume is the name of an insurance company (not one I recognize).
  10. I sometimes wonder about that. Our first go at boating was a holiday in Ireland in a cottage on the Shannon that came with a day boat. On something that size you can use the boat hook to pull yourself in to a mooring (I don't know if it's good technique, but it's what we were told to do). But on a cruiser I'm not sure what to do wth one. Fish things out of the water I suppose, if there is something you can hook it onto. On the Broads the only time the boat hook left the roof was when someone knocked it off into the water when we were moored. (Fortunately a helpful person in the next boat down used their rowing boat to rescue it for us).
  11. The Boats of the Norfolk Broads web site shows 7. We made a list and (thanks to some sharp eyes in the crew) managed to see them all in two weeks on the Broads, including the one that was out of the water. Perhaps we should have been more demanding as customers but we didn't fuss over the wandering fuel gauge. If we'd paid for a top of the range boat we might have felt differently. We did bother the boat yard though when we lost steering completely leaving us mudweighted and unable to go anywhere but fortunately with mobile phone coverage (and not in anyone's way).
  12. Interesting. We had one on an Aquafibre diamond 43 and I think they go back a way. But as I said it didn't work very well. (Nor did the steering at one point, but that's another story).
  13. When we hired on the Broads (with Herbert Woods) the boat had a fuel gauge. I'm not sure what it was actually indicating though - it seemed to be all over the place. We filled up half way through our two weeks to be on the safe side and that saw us through (with money back at the end).
  14. I would highly recommend the Lough Erne system. This was our first holiday on a hire cruiser and we had a fantastic time - the scenery is absolutely beautiful, at least in good weather (and unfortunately in Ireland that's not exactly a given - as the taxi driver said, Ireland is lovely but it needs a roof). I'd agree with the comment that you actually have to navigate from the charts, but that's all part of the fun. The boat came with binoculars to read the numbers on the marker posts so you could check where you were. Some of the top end boats have GPS navigation I think, and I admit we cheated the odd time with GPS on a phone (I seem to recall there was good mobile coverage). It's good for a family trip as the children can keep occupied being useful keeping track of where you are. I'd say it's quite different from the Broads, with - of course - plusses and minuses. It was a lot quieter, which certainly has its advantages - coming in to a mooring someone almost always took the ropes for us which was quite good for us as first time hirers. There is a lot more freedom in where you go since you're mostly on one of two big loughs full of islands, rather than going up and down rivers. Very few bridges of a height to worry about (there wasn't even anything on the boat telling us the air draft). When we did the Broads a few years later we found it a bit constraining compared to Lough Erne, and missed having to actually navigate. (On the other hand there's lots we loved about the Broads and we're planning on our second visit there in a couple of weeks). No wild mooring or mud weighting/anchoring, but on the other hand there are quite a few islands to explore. A couple have tourist attractions on and a ferry service to them, but the rest can only be visited if you bring your own boat. I'd say there aren't an a awful lot of places worth visiting on land compared to the Broads, and unfortunately Ireland isn't really into public footpaths the way Great Britain is so if you like walking it's not ideal. But we really enjoyed just exploring a part of the country that you really need a boat to see. Like the Broads there's some interesting history - although it's now rather out of the way, in a time when river travel was much easier than by land it was apparently quite a thorougfare. At the southern end of Lough Erne you end up in the Irish Republic. The chart we were given didn't show the border and there weren't any signs when we crossed it). I suspect some hire boaters get a bit of a surprise when they go to buy supplies there and find all the prices in Euros. No locks (well one, but in the summer usually open) unless you head down the Shannon-Erne waterway. No speed limits for much of the system, but in a hire boat you probably won't be able to open up much once you leave the 5 knot areas. No tides to worry about, but the Lower Lough (confusingly at the top end of the map) is large and open and when it's windy it gets very choppy. If you want to get a feel for what it's like being at sea, it's the place for you! (I believe the boat we had was designed for going out to sea, albeit with beefier engines. Nevertheless we spent some time at one point heading in the wrong direction for where we wanted to go because we didn't dare take the waves broadside until we got close to the coast and they died down a bit.) Apologies if this is all a bit stream-of-consciousness. In summary, I'd highly recommend it for an enjoyable boating holiday that's quite different from the Broads. I'd love to go back, and maybe if possible hire on the Shannon then head to Lough Erne through the Shannon-Erne waterway. We hired from Manor Marine and (though this was a few years ago so maybe things have changed) I'd recommend them. One nice thing was being able to fill in a form with the groceries you wanted, and get on the boat to find them all stowed away on board - very handy when you don't come by car, though actually it wasn't far to a mooring by a large Tescos.
  15. I spent a night in Richardson's yard on a Herbert Woods boat - I found the people there very friendly and it certainly made me more disposed to think of hiring with them. (As has a lot of what I've read on here, too).
  16. Absolutely. Though as I said above on the boat I hired there were two signs physically on the boat which gave different values. I wouldn't be surprised if hire companies added a bit to the actual height they quote. Interesting that it would be that large.
  17. I'm not sure that explains a company giving different values for the same boat though. Unless they measured it more than once (I'm now wondering how they do actually measure the air draft of a boat...)
  18. When I hired on the Broads a few years ago the boat had two signs giving the air draft. Curiously they disagreed with each other. (And according to the Herbert Woods web site it wouldn't go through Wroxham, but the pilots happily took it through both ways). On Lough Erne there are very few low bridges to worry about. There was nothing on our boat giving air draft so we assumed we'd be OK but we sighted along the lower ones just to make sure.
  19. When we hired on Lough Erne a few years ago I think we were probably sent links to videos we should watch beforehand, but when we turned up at the boat yard we weren't shown a video - we just just went straight onto the boat for the handover.
  20. I had a similar experience, when the spring in the filler cap for the water cooling went sproing one morning and vanished into the bilges. We were near Reedham and our boatyard told us to pop in to Sandersons for a new one. Or rather a quite old one. The inside of the shed was quite impressive and the whole thing was one of the more memorable moments of the holiday.
  21. I think Grammerly is a bit more sophisticated than predictive texting. I've never tried it though and like to think I don't need to.
  22. Doesn't it depend when you got your license? I think that if you were entitled to drive them then you still are, but if you got your license after the rules changed then you need an extra entitlement.
  23. Ah but computers have a solution to that too...
  24. So far as I can see there's no overall shortage of food - just certain items randomly running out. As long as you're prepared to change meal plans a bit based on what's available, I don't think there is much a problem at the moment.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

For details of our Guidelines, please take a look at the Terms of Use here.