dom

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

Which is exactly the point. It's reasonable to assume those filmed smashing into, or stuck under the bridge would rather not appear. Why should they be forced to appear on camera, when the person filming doesn't?

If you're referring to the one I've seen, I think it could be a very positive outcome. The fact that the info is in the public domain is something I find a bit disconcerting though. The info I saw was announcing that Heads of Terms had been agreed. I wouldn't expect it to be made public at that stage, as it could weaken the hand of either party. It sounds more like someone has leaked info to me.

I've changed plenty of brushes in the past, but I can't recall ever having replaced a set of bearings - probably largely because anything I saw was already dead/dying and it was far simpler to just fit a new unit. I suspect it'd be uneconomical to do commercially, unless you're running a dedicated operation. £150/6 hours = £25/hr, which isn't generally anything like a viable labour rate for a business taking costs and parts into consideration. That's assuming you're charging £150 - in reality, it'd need to be significantly less. I've spent quite a lot of time trying to explain this type of thing to customers in the past, especially with things like CD players, with a high cost, but where repairs are very demanding. Good way to save several £100s doing it DIY though, if you've got the time and patience.

Panks Auto Electrical on Heigham Street in Norwich always used to be a good place to try for parts. It's been a lot of years since I last used them though, so not sure whether that still applies. I suspect the number of people outside professional remanufacturers doing this type of work is probably tiny these days.

The only time I've ever paid money to someone is just before Christmas, when a couple I've already mentioned were having their first full winter on a narrowboat. Their domestic batteries died, the one of them who works was struggling to get shifts and it was leading up to Christmas. I made a small donation - partly because of their circumstances, and partly as a "buy yourselves something nice to eat or drink over Christmas" to say thanks for a lot of enjoyable content over the previous year. Donating to conspicuously well off people is just slightly unhinged. Apart from anything else, there are far worthier channels actually doing positive things with the money they generate instead.