dom

Another easy angle to exploit in advertising. Target young families on the basis that you can drive up and step straight onto a boat, rather than having to drag young kids through check in, wait around, amuse them on a flight, etc. The TV ad virtually writes itself - A/B comparison of two families. Family A relaxed and cruising down the river pointing out wildlife to the kids, dad driving, mum with prosecco in hand - whilst family B's kid chucks a tantrum on the plane and other passengers look on disapprovingly. Has a double benefit - winning the initial booking, plus the kids will probably love it and use pester power to come back again in following years.

I've still got the broker's details with some other images. There's no build panel on the lower right helm, but it's possible it might have been relocated on the left in the companionway down from the cockpit - possibly to allow fitting of the bow thruster control. I think your spotting skills may be on point again oldgregg. Does look remarkably like a Cadet. It has the same Broom branded engine panel as Cadet 1, which sold at Summercraft a couple of years ago.

I think I'd have to break out the air rifle. Lights shouldn't be up before December. If you can't wait that long, at least get Halloween and Bonfire Night out of the way! I just had to Google Halloween to check the spelling. I do like Google's animation which comes up for the result! https://g.co/kgs/Tw1z8A

Sorry, but that's an outdated perspective. India still has a lot of manufacturing like that, but most of China's manufacturing is extremely advanced. That's exactly why their economy is gaining so much ground at the expense of us, the USA, etc.

No, but I think the point people miss are these are fitted in their thousands to trucks in China. They were cloned because there was a demand there and they were perfectly safe in that application. The only safety issue coming to light that I'm aware of is the exhausts leaking because they're spot welded. This didn't matter in the original truck applications. I'm a massive product snob and loathe what the chinese have done to the market in our country - but I'd actually consider fitting one of these, as it's fairly self evident that the historic Webasto/Eberspacher monopoly has kept prices artificially high.

I would think that passing a BSS with it installed would probably negate that argument. By definition, a Boat Safety Scheme inspection should highlight if the item was in any way dangerous. If a claim is rejected and it was installed by someone charging in a professional capacity, claim off their public liability insurance. It seems as though legal costs are so high in 3rd party liability cases these days that most things are just paid out for economic reasons.

Curious to know where that is. Chatteris seems to have had some of the best decorations in recent years.

Good spot. I took the beam off an original Boatshed listing, so not particularly surprised to learn it's wrong. Looks like it's actually 12ft, but obviously still well within the unrestricted range, so the point remains valid. I'm not a huge fan of forward helm designs, but the air draft is a massive advantage when it comes to getting to the best bits of the broads. I've spent huge amounts of time looking for something similar sized and a bit sportier looking which can get above Wroxham, but aft cockpits generally top out around 27ft, sedans are too tall and centre cockpits are often v.poor for winter cruising. My planned boat purchase fell through after survey, so I've got my eye on an old neglected Sancerre on the Great Ouse, but struggling to track the owner down thanks to modern data protection.

I do think limiting the size of the hire fleet in some way would be sensible. I just don't get the need for these massive boats, particularly when people spend half their time on shore exploring and don't cook much on board. 40ft+ boats have always been around, but they were taking 6 or 8 people, not 4. One of my family member's boats has two doubles side-by-side to the aft in just 10ft 6in, including hanging storage between the two. It's 33ft long, will take 4 people in relative comfort and passes under Wroxham and Wayford bridges. Only has a single head, but a pretty luxurious seperate shower compartment. It's a 40 year old boat, but in my eyes far more suited to the broads than the current generation of boats and it'd be really interesting to see a modern take on the design.

Good excuse for a trip out once the levels calm down a bit. I get the impression that Westview at Earith is probably one of the nicest marinas around the area, but probably high demand as a result. It seems to have a really nice community feel. The guy who owns it has a boat on the broads, or at least did when I spoke to him a while back.

Are you sticking at Jones' at the moment? I went to the Pike and Eel the other day and noticed it looks like there might be quite a lot of space free there. Not a huge amount of facilities, but I did wonder how cheap they are.

At that age, I was obsessed with the junior class which was tiny boats crewed by kids around the same age. I can still remember one being called something like Shelley's Welly. I used to hound my dad to fund me having a go, but he was not long divorced and had just bought a Broom 30, so in no position to do so financially. The nearest I ever got was a old rowing dinghy with a seagull outboard, which I used to use to shuttle us back and forth between a swinging mooring and the yacht club during Oulton Week, when we raced cruiser class - actually quite successfully, other than the occasion when my dad tried pushing the boom out to catch the wind, only to be pushed backwards overboard. I think it's fairly safe to say whoever was on safety boat duty that day saved my dad's life.

I did both, with a couple of years at Stalham High in between - but left 10 years before you.

My memory may be deceiving me, but I think I saw him at an Oulton Broad meeting not long before his accident. We always used to take two boats from Wroxham to Ranworth on a Saturday evening after turnaround and I can remember waving to one or the other of the family whenever we passed their house on sunny summer evenings. I think I probably went to school with his daughter Katie, but suspect she moved on to a better school later on. I'm quite surprised he still holds the Oulton lap record and that it didn't eventually go to Peter(?) Sabberton. I can remember the sound of a huge V8 being tuned coming from Sabena Marine when I was working or on our boat around Summercraft. I seem to remember Sabberton's boats were always incredibly loud, terrible cornering, but then blew everything away on the straights.

Did you go to St.John's or Broadland High schools? Wondering if I might know you! @Vaughan just noticed your old post and had to Google to confirm whether you meant Tom the racer, or if his father or another of his family had the same first name. Assuming it's the former I'm a bit thrown thinking how old he'd now be. Can still remember the shock at hearing of his accident.

I wouldn't mind betting that one gets breached fairly regularly. Especially Fleet Dyke, Womack Dyke and Womack Water. I wonder what, if anything, BA rangers do in terms of checking that oversize vessels aren't in prohibited areas.

CE marking on these things is a joke. It doesn't stand for anything in my experience. It's there to deliberately decieve, as there are no quality control standards on this sort of international trade. I went to CES in Vegas one year and there was an entire hall full of Far Eastern manufacturers displaying blatant clones of top selling products. They'd quite happily take orders for any product from their catalogues and add any branding or quality marking you like. I've ordered product from China in the past and stipulated that it should comply with, and be marked to EU standards (actually TUV in that case). The manufacturer duly complied, but there was nothing whatsoever in terms of checks or controls to ensure that the goods actually complied. The onus for safety in the UK really falls on the UK seller. eBay and Amazon, etc facilitate direct selling by Far Eastern manufacturers, effectively bypassing all UK standard enforcement. It'd be great to think we could somehow suddenly reverse the last 30 or 40 years of trade and make these things ourselves, to known standards in the UK, but the horse has really bolted and it'll take a massive change of course for government to make anything change. The Chinese also have a totally different attitude and culture, to win export business at all costs, even subsidising postage to win more business. Whether you buy a Webasto, a Planar or an eBay special, it's best to just view all these things as likely to kill you and to put precautions in place to warn of an adverse event, with either CO or fire. Chances are, some or all of their components are all being produced in the Far East these days.

Absolutely mirror that sentiment but, buying a branded unit is no guarantee of safety. The most recent heater related CO fatality was an Eberspacher unit. Chinese and branded units are virtually indistinguishable internally. It's the exhausts on chinese units which are absolutely lethal. CO poisoning is generally a fairly slow process. The key to stopping it is making sure you have a working CO alarm, which will highlight the rising CO level before it becomes critical. It's now mandatory for BSS, but I'd urge people to add more than the standard level of detection, to set an alarm on a phone or similar to remind yourself to test detectors regularly and to replace batteries at the start of a season irrespective of whether they're still working. If you look back through MAIB reports for the last 10 or 15 years, there have been something like a dozen CO deaths, mostly from petrol engine or generator fumes. In every case, it was judged that proper CO detection could have prevented the deaths.

I view it like the boating equivalent of an Audi Q7 or Range Rover Sport. Technically excellent, but invariably used in the wrong context by people who choose it thinking it's superior, but actually have an inferior experience as a result. Boats like that, Fair Regal, etc which push the limits of length, yet only manage to accomodate 4 people would really be better off on more commodious waterways. I've never experienced the Scottish or Irish waterways in person, but suspect they'd be more fitting there. It's also just putting more pressure on moorings. Two of these take up the best part of 90ft, but only house 8. 3 more traditional 30ft boats fit the same space and house up to 18. I can't remember if it's that exact boat and video, but can recall the 2 Men having issues finding a mooring on at least one occasion.

You can buy refurbished Webasto Thermo Top hydronic heaters on eBay for fairly sensible money. There are also a few cheap chinese clones around, ie. https://ebay.us/YvrzY3

Congrats on the purchase. Nice boat. I saw her a few times at Jones Boatyard, as I'm just up the road.

I think the chinese ones are all pretty similar in quality. A lot are probably coming from the same source anyway. A common chinese tactic is for one source to flood the market with a number of seemingly different brands, so the market is saturated and difficult for competitors to enter. Whatever brand you go for, be aware that the major issues are: Exhausts leak and are lethal. If you can't re-use your Eberspacher exhaust, don't fit one from a chinese kit. The pipes tend to be weak and silencers are generally spot welded, so leak from the seams. They're designed for external fitting on trucks, where CO build up isn't a problem. Stick with branded pipe, and fully seam welded silencers from trusted sources. A common failure with all diesel heaters is carbon build up. Running at low level for extended periods is the worst culprit. Run the heater flat out for a while on a regular basis to burn off deposits. I've heard some suggestion that running on paraffin reduces the issue and might potentially be cheaper. Add an extra CO alarm or two. Everyone who's done a BSS recently should have one per cabin with a potential source, but CO alarms fail like everything else. Add a bit of redundancy and check batteries regularly. At least two major fatality incidents investigated by MAIB in recent times have been CO related, one from diesel heating. As long as you're mindful of the above, you should be fine with a chinese unit, and the cost savings are vast - so much so that you can afford to replace several times before the cost equals a branded unit.

It's interesting to see that Richardsons actually quote review ratings across a number of sites as key performance indicators in their financial accounts.

I've fixed escalating poor review issues for several businesses in the last year or so. You'd be surprised what an impact it can have. When you have poor overall ratings, people often just see the total and don't read the detail. It works both ways though - bring the total back to a more decent number and it can be used as a positive marketing tool. I've been cynical about the whole thing in the past but, at this point in time, it's an important issue. NBD obviously recognise its importance.

Bridge Broad even. Weird you can only edit posts on here for a limited period of time.