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dom
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Posts posted by dom
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9 hours ago, batrabill said:
Have you seen Lake Windermere????
You mean the one teeming with phosphorus from raw human effluent? Not exactly a glowing example of how to manage a waterway. If National Park status is such a huge benefit for conservation, how come water quality in Windermere is the worst it has ever been, and biodiversity has been decimated, putting rare species at risk?
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EA have a dedicated flood team who deal with these things. They obviously have a reasonable grasp on things, to be able to get the levels down so quickly. It was staggering to see how quickly it fell. Earith fell by a foot or so in 24 hours, so thankfully we now have a road again.
Just a shame that in the meantime, at least one boat went down and several went adrift. There was a cruiser loose up on the Old West, which I suspect may still be drifting around on its own.
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6 hours ago, Bikertov said:
Mine has a automatic pump with a float switch, like a bilge pump.
It's a typical arrangement, but always strikes me as particularly inelegant. You'd think by now someone could have come up with a quiet pump which'll run in free air without damage, which could be connected directly to the tray outlet. Or even a pump which only operates when there's water in its incoming line.
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Herbert Woods picnic boats have a fridge - "Also there is a small fridge, sink and toilet."
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Has anyone tried one of the new generation infrared panel heaters? They're really cheap now, really low wattage and seem like a good option in a small area like a boat cabin.
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Just as long as the "safe" place isn't in an anchor locker which you can't open with the mudweight down
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2 hours ago, Broads01 said:
I think an electric mudweight is a great benefit.
The only concern I have is that one of the engineers from Barnes has commented to a family member on several occasions that it's their number one cause of callouts these days when motors fail or similar. I've often wondered how easy it'd be to self rescue if one fails on you on a privately owned boat. I don't particularly fancy the idea of hauling a decent sized mudweight up on a chain by hand.
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54 minutes ago, mikeyboy1966 said:
at least with Jones you know that should conditions become poor they will do their utmost to look after your boat.
To be fair, Westview seem to be really going out of their way to safeguard people's boats there too. The chap who owns the place also has a driveway full of cars presumably belonging to marina residents which have been moved to escape the flood waters. It's just the fact they're so prone to flooding in the first place which is becoming a concern.
I think if I was living further afield, I'd swallow the cost and go with Jones, but I'm only a couple of miles up the road, so can always head over easily to check mooring lines, etc if things get bad. The Old West is less vulnerable, but there's been a cruiser adrift there, a narrowboat loose on the Little Ouse and several issues with lines pulling boats down at Tiptree, so it's not entirely trouble free there either. Denver would be quite an attractive option, but everyone's been sat on mud for the last week or so again.
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My work situation is a bit fluid at the moment, so not committing to anything at the moment, but I'd been thinking I might buy a smaller boat and moor it at either Westview or Pike & Eel. The situation at the moment has really put me off though. The Old West isn't completely unaffected, but seems much less prone to extreme conditions. I think I might look more seriously at Fish & Duck, Tiptree or Upware as possible options if I do look at keeping something on the RGO. Being local, I don't want to spend a lot of money on a boat I can't use for half the year.
The basin by the shop was quite empty and I was a bit distracted by a nice looking aft cockpit Fairline Mirage, so I didn't notice Sweep. If I'm around again, I'll make a point of looking out for her. I'm not sure if Jones' might have moved some boats from the main basin into either the sales area or the new basin for more shelter?
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8 minutes ago, Broads01 said:
I have no problem with the trial run being requested because there's no reason why a hire operator should take a hirer's claims of prior experience at face value.
Fair comment, but if you hired from the same yard year in, year out, should they still have to insist on a trial run every time? Even when they know and recognise you and recall how often you've hired? BA's own survey results show that 72% of hirers are returning for the second or more time, so this will be a fairly common scenario.
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1 hour ago, grendel said:
unless the broads authority made the hire companies responsible for issuing the surveys.
That was really what I was thinking. Most yards probably have a modern email marketing platform of some description anyway. Most of these can be set to send an email automatically a certain amount of time after a particular date or event - so the yard would just need to create a rule to send an email invite to complete the survey a week after hire date or similar.
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41 minutes ago, CeePee1952 said:
When approached by a ranger to do their survey, I always reply to the question regarding handover/trial run with a positive yes - HW have every faith in me helming one of their boats so I won't give the BA/ rangers any reason to judge them!
The trouble is, they seem to be stating that the trial run should be mandatory, which really leaves the yard vulnerable if they choose to let you go on your way without one.
I think someone ought to be challenging why the BA are using tollpayer funded resources to carry out these surveys, taking rangers away from other duties (ironically, including looking out for safety hazards or risk to life).
Every principal hirer will have an email address these days. It's trivial to set up a web survey form. Even with branding, and hosting on a subdomain off BA's site, it'd be less than a day's work for a developer to set up, so probably less than £1k or so cost. A form could be set up once and principal hirers could be emailed a few days or weeks after taking a boat out. Rather than surveying a few random hirers who the rangers happen to collar, you'd be requesting feedback from 100% of hirers. Done properly, it's a set up and forget system and would remove all burden from the rangers. This could increase ranger time spent working productively, and possibly even allow for a reduction in ranger numbers. It also means hirers could respond in their free time at home, rather than disturbing them when they're on holiday.
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16 hours ago, Bikertov said:
Wow, that video is mad. I reckon the St.Ives lock can't be much different
I passed through St.Ives earlier, so had a bit of look around. St.Ives lock is currently completely immersed. It's just a big expanse of water with a few bits of hardware poking up. I did grab a picture whilst traffic slowed on the bridge, but you can't see much through the mesh on the bridge sides and I didn't fancy the trek back from the nearest parking to get a better shot.
Low Road is flooded from halfway through Jones Boatyard's entrance. You can't even get to the entrance to the road to the lock. It looks like Jones' shop has probably escaped flooding so far, but an earlier EA alert mentioned a possible further surge, so not in the clear just yet. I pulled into the car park for a quick look and reckon they've probably got 4 inches or so margin at the moment.
There's currrently around 6" or so off the quay heading in front of A Frayed Knot, so she's pretty safe. The same can't be said for other marinas. Westview, Pike & Eel, Wyton and Buckden marinas are all inaccesible, which has given me food for thought, as I've been toying with the idea of keeping a boat on the RGO.
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2 hours ago, Vaughan said:
By the way, it seems 59% of hirers had some sort of run and 10% didn't. So what happened to the other 31%?
I'm assuming that the majority of the 31% probably had a handover trial run of less than 20 minutes - but there seems to be a major omission from either the questions or the BA presentation of the results. It could be that some had 45+ minutes?
The interpretation of the results also seems completely fatuous. If anything, I'd ignore the 10% obviously experienced hirers not getting a trial, and focus more on why there are 28% new hirers, but only 16% of trials taking 30+ minutes. It's stupid trying to teach the experienced to suck eggs, but new hirers are obviously going to be the highest risk group.
Do all hirers now get a handover sheet with a start/end time for the handover, or are all these figures based on hirer estimates? I'd expect new hirers to underestimate the length of the handover if it's based on recollection.
As a marketer, I find the 28% first time hirer figure disconcerting. Given that a substantial percentage of customers won't be retained, I'd have expected that figure to be a lot higher. Suggests to me that maybe yards need to be doing more to reach new target markets - which probably means decent investment in digital marketing these days.
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1 hour ago, mikeyboy1966 said:
St ives ,yesterday.
At least it looks like the Dolphin car park is empty this time. I can remember one occasion in the late 90s when it came up suddenly and a lot of vehicles were parked there and got stranded in deep water for weeks.
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1 hour ago, Bikertov said:
I see what you mean about record levels !
Yeah, beating 20 year records by multiple inches is pretty serious. There's just a hint that St.Ives might be levelling out now, but downstream at Earith is still climbing steadily. It's good that you're out of the water. There have been quite a lot of incidents with boats adrift and lots of others where they've reached the end of the slack in mooring lines and are heeling over heavily. I suspect there may well be quite a lot of quay heading damage from boats moored too tightly.
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Low Road from Jones' through to Fenstanton is well and truly underwater, but I think St.Ives end is OK. I think Jones' shop is above road level, so hopefully OK.
I may go out for a drive and take a look at a few places tomorrow. Photos of Huntingdon Boathaven look more like a new broad. Westview marina at Earith is completely inaccessible. There are record levels showing on sensors all over the place upstream of Earith now.
Not sure if the link'll work, but Little Paxton lock is currently more like a set of rapids!
https://www.facebook.com/borochris/videos/755394609945047
I'm assuming that Jones' staff and the webcam probably give you peace of mind - but if you do ever need a welfare check on anything, just let me know.
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On 23/11/2023 at 10:27, Bikertov said:
Either the river levels in St. Ives have seriously dropped, or my boat is now pretending to be a car for the next 4 months ...
Have you been down lately @Bikertov?
The river level has just set a new record today at St.Ives. Just curious how high above water level the bit where you're dry stored is, but can't see on the webcam at the moment.
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I notice they're raising an issue with the 10% of experienced hirers not getting a trial run. Seems they're going to force yards to send someone out on a trial with hirers who've been boating for years - even those more experienced than the staff member doing the trial run. And they wonder why hire fleet operators don't like them
Quotethree locations on the Broads where “Bridge Pilotage” is provided to leisure vessels (hire craft).
I'm probably being really stupid, but where's location 3? Wroxham, PH, ?
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Best of luck and hope things go well for you.
Is Lady Christina still one of yours? Coincidentally, I was looking to see where she'd gone within the last few days.
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One thing which has only just occurred to me is that a lot of non-essential infrastructure probably wasn't replaced because of the fact it was only two years later when WW1 started. I guess apart from anything else, it'd have meant labour was in very short supply and limited to food production. Then they had Spanish flu. If you look at the mess we've just been through, it must have been a pretty rough 10 or so years they had to contend with.
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Yeah, I've worked out where it was now. I could remember walking down the road in the late 70s/early 80s and it just being houses all along the roadside, but there is actually a small gap through onto the waterfront. Funnily enough, just after "Boatyard Maltings".
I've started a Google map of current and former boatyards, so have added that to it. I think it may be quite a lengthy exercise though. Even just getting Wroxham yards right is proving a nightmare!
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My sister used to have a boyfriend who was heavily involved in the creation of the North Walsham Live Aid events. We lived in Catfield at the time, so I suspect the Le Grice name is etched into my brain from driving back and forth dropping her off at her boyfriend's. I'd always assumed it was just a slightly exotic sounding name they'd created. I didn't realise it was actually a local family name.
Lubbocks in North Walsham seems to go back centuries. I should image you've got hundreds of cousins all around!
I can't picture where Clifford Allen's yard would have been. Was it off the bottom of Anchor Street? With so many yards disappearing, I'm tempted to create a Google map and try and pin them all whilst we still collectively remember them.
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Growing up, me and my mates all had quite strong Norfolk accents. The old boy I lived next to though was on a whole other level. Even being accustomed to the accent, I still only managed to catch about 20% of what he said. Judging by the way he spoke, I doubt they named the storm and probably just said "cor blast me bor, that were a rum 'un" or words to that effect, quite possibly with a good few expletives chucked in.
5 hours ago, marshman said:My apologies to you all and Dom - the restrictions by the lock sizes I gave were for the NWDC canal, not the Aylsham Navigation!!
Something you said gave me a slight suspicion that was the case. There was always quite a lot of chat locally about NWDC and we were fairly familiar with it as kids. I think when I was at school in Stalham, we even did a field trip out to study it. We also played and explored at Ebrige and Briggate mills and Honing Bridge.
The Aylsham navigation though seems to have virtually lapsed from people's thoughts. I can remember being in Buxton mill in the 70s when it was a slightly hippyish craft centre and looking out on the mill pond wth my dad explaining how it used to be navigable. I seem to remember back then before the fire, there was a big glass window high up which always gave me vertigo.
We also used to fish and swim at Horstead mill. The tale of what happened to the lock seems to have been largely lost amongst the locals though, I guess probably due to the fire. We always tended to be more interested in jumping off the arches. I still always visualise it in my head with the ground floor and arches still intact.
I also used to fish at Mayton Bridge (on the road from Little Hautbois to Mayton Wood tip) and there's barely 18" of water up there, but on a hard bottom rather than silt, which suggests it's probably not dramatically changed. I really struggle to picture what that stretch must have been like with boats on it.
It's a shame, and actually quite surprising that they didn't rebuild Coltishall lock. Would be great to be able to head up to Buxton under power, even if it was only in the smallest vessels. I loved canoeing as a kid. I keep promising myself one day I'll try and get back to doing it again. If I ever do, I'll have to head up above Horstead.
The Broads Is Not A National Park!
in Norfolk Broads News
Posted
Was that aimed at me?
If so, it's a forum. People dip in and out and take discussion in whatever way their thoughts happen to meander. That's how forums work. It's a recreational pastime, not a dictatorship.
Besides, it's not really changing the topic - just pointing out that the National Park system is far from perfect.