dom

Is the Southern Comfort moored on the Swan's quay?

Just sat down to watch a couple of episodes. Unsurprisingly, got drawn in and ended up bingeing all 4 of the episodes released so far. It's good to see more of Lisa this series. It was obvious in previous series that she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty, but the more it goes on, the more evident it becomes that she's a real grafter. Just hope we see more Gerald in the 2nd half next week. Whenever I look at TV schedules, it's usually with a sense of dismay at the lack of anything worth watching. Half the time, I think it's me, and I've just grown out of it - but then this proves otherwise. I don't know if it's Clarkson or Andy Wilman's influence, but to me it's so much better than the majority of TV these days. The shop obviously does cause some issues with traffic, but I'd suggest it's probably no worse than the shops up the North Norfolk coast at Burnham Deepdale in peak season - and obviously made a lot worse by the repeated and needless refusal of planning.

It's funny how people's views differ. Amongst the members of the farming community I know, it has been viewed as very positive, helping to convey the issues farmers face. It'll be interesting to see this series, as I suspect there may be more focus on those aspects. He's raising pigs this series - something which was common around here, but which has reduced significantly, as it became a loss-making exercise due to supermarket price pressures and foreign imports pre-covid.

For anyone who isn't already aware, Clarkson's Farm Series 3 has just been released on Amazon Prime. Episodes 1-4 now, with the rest in a week if I understand correctly. The only trouble I find with things like this on demand is resisting the urge to binge watch the whole lot in one go. If anyone has not watched series 1-2 because they don't like Clarkson, I'd urge you to give it a go. You see another side to him and it's worth watching for Kaleb and Gerald alone.

Personally, I think there's something far more sinister than just peer pressure and fashion going on with the gender issue. When you see some of these people in person, it's apparent that it's more than just a social affectation and seems more like an actual developmental issue, which has only become prevalent in recent years. Oestradiol is one of the main oestrogen hormones. At least 2.5 million women take contraceptive pills containing it. It's excreted in urine and treated waste ultimately ends up in drinking water. When a survey was conducted to measure levels in water at 50 sites, it was found in over 80% of cases. Antidepressants have also been found in the brains of wild fish. Tests elsewhere in Europe and the USA have also found all of the following in water: ACE inhibitors (heart drug), antibiotics, antidepressants, beta-blockers, blood thinners, calcium-channel blockers (heart drug), carbamazepine (anti-seizure drug), digoxin, fibrates (cholesterol drugs), naproxen (an anti-inflammatory), painkillers like paracetamol and codeine, and tranquillizers. Microplastics are also widespread and even found in bottled water. When I was a kid, we rarely drank water during the course of the day but, these days, young people are indoctrinated into the belief that they have to consume target amounts daily, so they now carry bottles around with them and drink litres daily. I suspect that, in doing so, they may well be consuming ever increasing amounts of hormones and drug residues, which could well be causing the increase in both gender and mental health issues. The sad part about it is, it barely even appears on the radar these days, so we could well be blithely bringing about widespread harm to our offspring. It also comes on top of a substantial change in diet, with large parts of the population now consuming ultra-processed foods - and large amounts of soy based products. The latter has been demonstrated to cause gynaecomastia and low testosterone in some males. It's deemed safe because the incidence of issues is low - effectively saying it's OK to damage some kids, because most will be fine. If I had kids today, without a shadow of a doubt, I'd be feeding them as much home grown produce as possible, and investing in high level water filtration. That may be viewed as paranoid by some, but ask yourself, should we really trust water companies to deliver completely safe drinking water, when it's often coming from the same companies dumping raw sewage into water courses?

I suspect that when the planning application was made to redevelop the corner opposite Barnes, the powers that be were probably so wrapped up in the details on the landward side that they overlooked the fact it included stern on mooring on the river. If you made a stand-alone application to narrow the river to 60ft or so, just after a bend, when it's used by Broads Tours trip boats, you wouldn't stand a hope in hell of getting it granted.

I read through some of the bylaws this morning and it's very evident that a lot of the rules were included to cater for real shipping, potentially operating 24 hours a day. You wouldn't have wanted to be hanging out too far in the days when coasters were commonplace. What is interesting is that a wherry moored at Irstead overnight technically needs a white light on its outer extremity. I suspect the rangers probably wouldn't know to enforce that one!

No doubt they probably measure the total length and then divide by an "average" length of 25ft or something similar. The major issue with that is obviously 4 berth boats 46ft in length - and the fact you also need a gap between boats, which is often larger than strictly necessary.

Is the combined beam of the two more than 15 foot? You can only moor alongside in this way if you're occupying less than 25% of the width, or on an approved BA mooring. I only know that because I happened to read the bylaw this morning

If you go back to page 3 on this thread, there's some discussion towards the bottom of the page with more detail.

If that's true, the price you pay for sin is obviously never ending SSAs!

I'm a fully paid up member of the Stephen Fry school of thought* when it comes to offense. Probably largely because, as a kid, if we complained about insults, the response was always "Sticks and stones...", so you learnt to just get over it. I find the current state of affairs tragically weak and whiny. I'll happily use a thumbs up emoji to acknowledge a text or similar message which doesn't really need a reply. Apparently, this is now unacceptable to Gen-Z, who find it hostile and passive aggresive. At the age of 21, my grandfather was flying a Lancaster Bomber. How we've gone from that, to being offended by a small cartoon image which conveys positivity is beyond me - although I suspect the majority of the blame lies with the educational system. I had religion drummed into me from an early age, but remain ambivalent about it all. If there is a God though, I find it hard to believe that they'd judge by words rather than actions. * Last paragraph, "I saw hate in a graveyard" -- Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005

My maternal grandparents were very religious. I can remember being in the car with my grandmother when I was in my very early teens and muttering "god, look at that" or similar thinking it was a fairly benign phrase and her doing an emergency stop in order to berate me for "taking the lord's name in vain". I think that's probably the best, most civilised approach (including the supposedly sexist bit). It's probably a largely futile exercise though. If you look at some of the statistics online about young kids accessing adult content, it's common for kids with ages in single figures to have fairly unmonitored access to smart phones, so a few rude words are probably the least of the issues.

Hi Will and welcome. There's a lot to be said for hiring for a while before buying. There's such a wide array of options available, it makes sense to get a feel for what does and doesn't matter to you. People obviously love the huge, spacious boats which are commonplace. After hiring for a while though, it may become apparent that they're impractical and smaller boats with low air draft are actually a wiser choice, allowing you to get to the quieter and less accessible areas. You could even join the dark side and try a traditional sailing cruiser

For the last month or so, I've been trying to remember the name of a large, classic motor cruiser which used to moor in a dyke near to Heronby in Wroxham. It wasn't Formby's Lady Beryl II (the Windboats one), but something which looked like a more serious seagoing boat. She had her name in large letters on dodgers at the aft end. I suspect she was another Windboat, but could have been a pre-GRP era Broom similar to The Albert of Blofield. The name Jenetty rings a slight bell. I wouldn't be surprised if that was her. We used to be up and down that bit of river all year round, so it may well be that my memory is of the off-season - or possibly a later owner? The name Billow doesn't sound familiar. There were however a lot of fairly large boats tucked away down various dykes in Wroxham back then. In the late 70s, we used to walk down Beech Road and there was a basin full of large and expensive boats, now probably under the modern Burewood property (which I notice the local conservation plan ironically refers to as "unsympathetic and out of scale in the the context of the original developments").

Something along those lines, although I suspect you'd need to use something larger and combine services on the Broads to make it commercially viable. Pumpout boats seem to be becoming more common on the canals - presumably due to more liveaboards and people not wanting the hassle of Elsans. I suspect if you did it, you'd find lots of little niche things to sell or do to make additional money.

I'm not aware of any reason why self-service pump-outs are any less reliable than staffed ones. I think the availability issues tend to be more to do with the organisation running them than actual inherent issues. I've often thought a service station type arrangement, somewhere like Acle bridge might be a viable option as a stand-alone business if you offered fuel, gas, water and pump-out. These days, you could even make it largely self-service, so staffing needs could be minimal too. It'd also be interesting to see what the uptake would be like if someone did similar with a floating version of the same thing, like the fuel and pump-out boats on the canals. Especially if run by someone living onboard. It'd reinstate two historic precedents - commercial use of the waterways, and people living on board for justifiable commercial reasons, both of which would be nice to see, as it'd confound some of BA's attitude. Round here on the Great Ouse, we also now have someone doing pump-outs on a mobile basis using a 4x4 and a towed pumpout unit.

There's at least one video on Youtube with first time hirers approaching Ludham Bridge with trepidation, referring to the fact that if they get it wrong, they'll end up being filmed and uploaded without any choice in the matter. If you talk to anyone who deals with marketing and impulse purchasing, they'll tell you that the decision whether to commit to an expensive purchase is often a very knife edge affair - and the same rules apply to holidays. We already have enough things threatening the boating industry - competition from cheap foreign holidays, BA, the green movement, high water levels, etc. We don't need to be adding another self inflicted wound to an industry which supports the economy of large parts of Broadland.

It's also a term (still in current use) for a form of antler deformity in deer. Presumably one meaning derives from the other, but no idea which came first.

The whole thing's a complete con in most cases these days. I could understand charging £30 to pump out an old style flap and tank below toilet, as it was a disgusting job, often requiring specially made hoses, regular blockages and removing random items dropped into the tank. A typical modern system bares no resemblance to that though and pumping one out is no great ordeal. I'm quite surprised that DIY pumpouts haven't become common on the Broads - especially with private boats. Seems to work fine elsewhere, with tokens typically a tenner or so.

That's a nice idea in theory, but there's not a hope in hell of BA being able to enforce it. There's at least one boat on a northern river mooring which has been in the same spot for months - and was on another one before that for a similar time. As it'd involve financial outlay, the chances of it working on an honesty basis would probably be fairly slim. I suspect a couple of people on here who aren't liveaboards also moor for more than 30 days a year. Seems unfair to penalise them when they're some of the most responsible and considerate people on the river.

It's worth correcting as you've got brand new batteries. As it stands, anything with large inrush current (particularly motorised loads or inverters) will tend to pull the top battery down more than the others. Once the load is off, the voltage will level out across the batteries, but the repeated demand on the top battery will wear it out faster than the others. When one battery dies, it pulls the overall voltage down, killing the others by excess sulphation. I can't see how much slack there is on the earth lead, but if you're really lucky, there might be enough to flip the lead assembly 180 degrees without the need to modify.

I may be wrong, but it looks to me like your battery connections are not completely optimal (which might result in one battery failing sooner). Annv's post a while back had a diagram showing the best way to connect. Judging by the image, it looks like the earth take-off wants to move to the opposite end of the bank.

The Broads Authority are completely hostile to any idea of liveaboards, opposing all planning applications made for residential moorings. As a result, you generally have to either continually cruise (not an especially attractive option on the Broads due to lack of moorings) or try and live under the radar on an unapproved mooring. Boatyards are well aware of the issue and tend to avoid letting moorings to liveaboards not already known to them. As a general rule, if you're going to do it, you're far better off on the canal network where you can moor anywhere and only have to move every 2 weeks.

There's now a petition running to try and persuade Royal Mail of the need to keep services in the village. https://www.change.org/p/help-us-to-keep-the-valued-post-office-in-our-village