John617

Many thanks for taking the time to add the useful comments on crossing Breydon outside low water. I have been on the broads before 12 times, but 11 times were before I was 12 and I am 54. I can drive a boat though. My question relates to if you want to go to the south and its impossible to make the tide due to daylight late in season. I still wonder whether the advice is a little strong and is based around my first 11 visits when reliability would not be the same. You shouldn’t do it if you have no experience or if there is bad weather. Although the bad weather would probable cause discomfort (fear) as a 12 foot wide board might feel like its going to tip over, but it wont with the size of waves and the fact that for the waves to be big you would have to be travelling into them or with them. The main issue is loss of power. So with a 35 foot boat with a hullspeed of just short of 8 miles an hour that is (I presume) limited to 6 mph what would particularly increase the likelihood of failure, it cannot be operating at full actual revs can it? Very big waves or blocked intake would be probable causes of overheating. I guess this does not happen often on a 2017 boat unlike a 1967 boat. Surely if you are sensible on weather and drive in a straight line its readily doable even though all advice says its not. It will of course be very slow and inefficient for a while.

Doing my research having recently booked for October half term, so a couple of weeks after this thread is referring to. Passage North South more of an issue due to daylight particularly getting back later in week. However with a boat with 6’10” height, what is the issue with going nearer to high water. OK its going to be slow for a bit, might feel a bit scary (Although I don’t know how fast the stream runs) and if the weather was bad the wind against tide might be an issue. What am I missing, if you read anything it is like you will die if you get the times wrong. Although it doesn’t help me, why not aim for high water slack to get through Yarmouth if you are less than 7 feet.