dom

All sailing at NBYC has been cancelled today. Rumours suggesting it's a swimmer gone missing.

One option, which might prove to be good for the industry as a whole, could be to offer some of the cheapest boats at Brundall. Price sensitive hirers are less likely to be fussy about location and it could get some much needed traffic onto the southern end. I love the northern rivers, but there are some very nice areas in the south. A budget fleet with some models below 6'6" could also get above Beccles bridge. The need to hire from the north has been massively overplayed. Worst case, it's only 5 hours from Brundall to the Bure anyway.

Apparently, the Post Office have now confirmed transfer of PO services across to Tidings Newsagents. Tidings owners now just have to make changes to the store to accommodate and hope to be up and running before too long.

I'm not sure if it was every fully navigable, but Norton's Broad was accessible in small, shallow draft boats in the 70s. A tree then fell across the entrance one winter, rendering it inaccessible. I've wanted to get up to that area (and several others) in a kayak to find out the situation now, but have never got around to it. I suspect it's probably too silted to get in now. Belaugh Broad was navigable in 1887. From what I've been told in the past, after buying the estate in the early 19th century, the Traffords closed off access when the boating industry started to develop, so that they could use it for wildfowling without disturbance. A decade or so ago, BA made a load of grand statements about how they intended to press landowners to open up access to places like this for small craft. Tom Blofeld agreed in principle to allow access to Hoveton Great Broad. The whole thing then went very quiet. I suspect EA probably blocked it on environmental grounds. I think Hoveton is now leased to Natural England. The Traffords probably won't be overly concerned about Belaugh, as they also have Wroxham Broad on their estate and it's out of the way anyway. The situation with Hudson's Bay is similar - I believe the Blofelds still own both this and Hoveton Great Broad. It's been a very long time since I've been to Hoveton House but, from what I can recall, none of the surrounding water is visible from the house, so probably "out of sight, out of mind". It does really annoy me that whilst the Broads are part of the National Park family, the powers that be are very selective about what they make an effort to preserve. Things which are out of sight and don't generate revenue seem to be all too readily forgotten about. Try and put up a yurt in the wrong place and BA will go to huge lengths to stop you - but large landowners can leave rare and unique landscape to slowly silt up and no-one does a thing.

Judging by the change from when we used to sneak into places we weren't meant to go when I was a kid and now, I don't think it'll be many years before it starts to be lost completely. I suspect the situation is probably similar with Norton's and Belaugh Broads too.

...and people you know in close proximity to rescue you if things go wrong. Average water temperatures in the UK are 11 degrees. Even in hot conditions, the water can be surprisingly cold. If you enter cold water rapidly, it's not unusual to suffer cold water shock. Quite often, the immediate physical reaction is to take a sharp intake of breath. If you've just jumped in, and have your head underwater, the result of this doesn't take a lot of working out. It can also cause the vocal chords to clamp shut, preventing you calling for help. If you want to go swimming, either go somewhere like Caen Meadow, where there's a nice gradual beach to enter from, use a boarding ladder to lower yourself in slowly, or drop in from a dinghy. Jumping in is plain dumb, not least because you've no idea what might be hidden below the surface. Also, don't rely on members of the public to rescue you. Paul is obviously one of the good samaritans who will help, but in another case recently, members of the public were more interested in taking selfies than helping, despite there being several life buoys close by.

Not many Broads yards, at least. I get the impression their "fleet" on other waterways outnumbers the Broads quite significantly these days. The bigger concern for Hoseasons would probably be the loss of premium boats. I think if I'd just bought Brooms, I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to change anything, in case it creates an opportunity for NYA.

I'd say it's Everitt Marine Services from Yarmouth. The bigger vessel with the Hiab crane is from Lowestoft, so may be hired or another company also involved.

I think availability around that time is starting to become tricky, as people have got wise to warmer weather later in the year and the chance to grab a bargain. There's a place called Parsley at How Hill with a hot tub. I've just gone to see how pricey it is, but it seems like it might be booked up until the last few days of September. The other place I was going to look was an Airbnb on the road down to Womack Staithe belonging to Rupert Latham. I can't even find a listing for it now. I wonder if it's the same place you booked originally?

I'm quite surprised there isn't one there already. The cost for an ultrasonic sensor can be negligible these days and it's probably the easiest location on the Broads to install something. I suspect the biggest issue would be having someone to check it periodically. EA seem to check critical ones around here fairly often.

Good quality MPPT controller setups - probably not. Basic portable units, or older/cheaper PWM controllers - quite possibly.

From experience, batteries exploding is a reasonably common occurence. We predominantly sold batteries for cars, but explosions occurred disproportionately in boats. The main reason tends to be people leaving inappropriate chargers on for extended periods. If you leave a traditonal trickle charger indefinitely, they can start to overcharge, which causes off-gassing and can lead to explosions. It's not difficult to imagine a scenario with a boat on a mooring with mains hookup leading to this and ultimately a fire.

"Building Broom Boats at Brundall again is a real possibility.” Fingers crossed. Would be good to see.

Glass hull, wooden topsides I think. Topsides are varnished wood. You can see it in a lot of Youtube videos, ie. (RHS at 1:20)

Where it's moored is upstream of the public staithe and I'm sure BA manage the mooring there, even if it's EA owned/leased.

It's an odd one that one. It was at Sutton Staithe for ages at the end of last year and looked like it had extensive recent work done on it. It then moved to Ludham and has now been there for months. It'd be interesting to ask a ranger why they haven't moved it on. I thought maybe it was on the market and BA were giving a bit of leeway, but I've not seen it advertised anywhere and I spend a lot of time looking at ads.

Typically, it's something like £1500 and upwards for a mid sized cruiser - but you'd need to add £300 or so for lifting onto transport, then you could end up paying another £500-1k to move it to wherever it's being broken up. If you go to a specialist, they may pay you for some parts, but they tend to be on the south coast. There is a big issue looming on the horizon with GRP boats. The lifespan is generally quoted as being 50+ years, but there are a lot of boats out there approaching or exceeding that age. It's probably a major factor in the Ant situation, with people offloading end of life boats dirt cheap, which are sold (or even gifted) to those facing homelessness and who can't afford upkeep.

The flip side of that is people tend to put, or accidentally drop stuff into them which blocks the pump-out side. We used to find all sorts of random stuff in tanks. I once suffered a blockage, removed the pump-out pipe from the deck fitting and had a bread knife drop out of the end. You can just imagine how that got there We used to have a tap on the end of a hose, with a long bit of copper pipe brazed on, bent to a 90 degree angle with the open end flattened into a nozzle. After the initial pump out, we'd use it to jet wash around the upper inside of the tank before pumping out a second time, which helped keep smells to a minimum. Not sure if yards have anything similar these days?

Horning Sailing Club has always been one of the best for encouraging kids into trying sailing (see 3:00 onwards in the above!) but they're another channel with hardly any subscribers, so will struggle to get views. Maybe give them a like and subscribe to help and to encourage them to provide more content if you can?

Fairly safe on that score. She was on the Broads from 1953 to 68ish, moving to France then Spain.

A couple of marinised Mercedes OM606s would be one option, easily tuned from anywhere between 130 and 700hp each, whilst not being too thirsty. 46ft is the length limit for most restricted areas, but I believe she's exempt due to age. I wouldn't want to take her down the Chet though!

You won't find Wroxham Staithe or Salhouse Little Broad on historic maps either, but I can assure you they're also valid place names. I don't buy the sign theory. I grew up in the area, had a girlfriend in Barton Turf at one time, and spent my youth around people who had roots in the area going back centuries. Everyone called it Pennygate Staithe. The sign only originates from the coronation in '53. If you look at old maps, what's now known as Barton Turf was historically Barton Common, so it's illogical to think it'd be called Barton Turf Staithe then. Barton Turf proper used to be where St.Michael and All Angels is on Church Road. Pennygate was larger than it is now, so it's not unreasonable to think that the staithe was originally used predominantly by people from Pennygate. 10 or 15 years ago, all the signage stated Pennygate, but it's been slowly replaced. I suspect there's probably an easement on the staithe for residents of Pennygate or similar and someone is trying to slowly make it disappear.

The weed (and the river in general) really varies a lot. I was up on St.Ives bridge earlier and from there you can see lots of streamer type weed common in faster flowing waterways. Elsewhere, on the Old West in particular, you tend to get denser weed. The EA have also put a lot of effort into getting rid of Pennywort, which formed huge rafts in places. Whilst it's quite canal like, having locks and weirs, there's no real towpath as such. There are some quite nice long stretches of bankside path though. I quite often cycle along the bank from Holywell or the Pike and Eel to Needingworth.

I'll send it to you in a PM.

It always was, and continues to be Pennygate to me and anyone I know with historic connections to the local area. The move to call it Barton Turf seems to be relatively recent - possibly as recent as post millenium. I presume there's politics at play and Barton Turf & Irstead parish council probably want to establish a full claim to it. It may be why BT&IPC don't allow overnight mooring with an honesty box, which I've commented a few times on here would seem to be a better situation than the current one.