LondonRascal

If you are thinking bout hiring a centre cockpit boat then perhaps Western Light (or similar) from the range of former Connoisseur Cruisers from Herbert Woods will be idea. They are very spacious internally, with an open, fresh and dare I say modern feel to their accommodation. They also are low enough that they can go under all Broadland bridges (even Potter if you are really lucky) but yet with a raised wheelhouse affording decent views going along. This Boat Review dates back to April, so just a little behind but it has finally made it to the upload queue.

Just caching up with the goings on here... I find it interesting that some see Facebook as for the younger crowd - lets take my Mum (73) and Step Dad (61) - both post on Facebook but not here, age has very little to do with it, but convenience is what this and other Forum's are up against. You carry Facebook around with you in your pocket, that is a another key difference - I hardly ever use Facebook (the website) always the App as most do, again out of convenience. Just as larger numbers of people these days have a phone and a tablet but not a laptop or desktop computer. On Facebook, you are told who has posted what in real time and you can join in immediately as I often do in discussions when I am in the queue in a shop, or on a bus, etc. Here on the Forum, you need to kind of sit down and ready yourself. You have to be the type of person to be really keen on things to have signed up to begin, and then be the type of person to want to get into the meat of the matter - have things to say, be a bit more deep and interested in a topic shall we say. Sure you can use the Forum App, you can use the mobile site as well - but since Facebook has thrown so many millions of dollars at their tools to make it as easy as possible to use people will always use that more and that's before we get to the face scrolling through time and older posts and comments and likes for self esteem building come into account. Why do you think so many people are members of so many Groups on Facebook about the Broads posting their photos and content to all of them? They want to be seen and get those likes and comments and feel good for it. While it might cause a number of people unease to see what people say and post on Facebook, much of it is exactly what people really think and feel - the difference is the 'social filter' that most would apply around people they may not know in person is removed since when tapping at a phone screen a comment does not 'seem as real' and because that person may be doing this in a few spare seconds waiting for their Costa coffee to get handed over, little thought is given to what others may take and feel from those comments. It is why I take all of it with a pinch of salt, what is said today is gone tomorrow type thing. I also am very well aware there is a very high likelihood that when you are moored amongst people or cruising along the river, if you see someone with their phone out it could well be they are a Facebook Groupie taken a snap and it will pop up on one of the Groups. As an individual I monitor them for this, as and it is also why now I feel its essential local businesses do too - and why increasingly Pubs, like the New Inn or Bridge Inn at Acle have beefed up their own Social Media presence and interaction on Facebook. As a community, the NBN Facebook Group often has more active discussions going on over a day and with more active members than here on the Forum. The moderation tools are pretty powerful too, because they are so simple. You can remove a comment, mute someone, delete them or delete and block them from joining again. That to me is pretty robust, since there are no warnings, and no messing about - total control is there so perhaps more use of these is needed? But then, if you do that there is the other risk - you then cleanse the Group, effectively you shape it to become what you wish it to be with only the type of people you like - which is then not very inclusive and you are on a slippery slope. To my mind the choice is stark, you either accept people these days in the main are not as nice as you might like them to be, or you do not accept it and have a group filled with lovely people which becomes far less used - of all the Norfolk Broads Groups, trying to have your cake and eat it (nice friendly bunch and no bad comments) seems impossible as there are often issues on all of them from time to time.

I am hopeful of attending, but also plans are afoot to have Indy out the water and working on here around the time the show is on so if I can make it I will

When I got Trixie I just just went to Wilko online and bought up everything from utensils to pots and pans. I work on the basis to have four of everything other than glasses and mugs, as you may have guests for drinks or coffee. Medium and small saucepan with lids and a large fry pan (non-stick) and since there so cheap (£5.00 each) it can just be seen as a disposable item the moment it begins to wear - however, it is actually pretty good and well laid up non-stick. A decent capacity kettle is handy too. I can't have things like a Microwave because there just is not the room, even a Toaster would take very valuable space in the only cupboard the boat has so small boating = going back to basics so far as that goes and actually, I've been okay with that and have also found using tinned things is not so bad after all and can be used to mix and match fresh produce and meats and requires little care since no cooling is needed.

Good to see that these cute boats have not only entered service but have a great location to go from and can be taken through Norwich not just to the Yacht Station :) Wish you every success.

It could well be since this model of engine has no expansion tank - you have two points to fill coolant - A and B. Once A is full B should also be full, but A should never need touching. A so far as not B on the other hand has, but if it is being lost through expansion it just will come out i think the best way to resolve this will be to put some hose on the cap where there is the little fitting for expansion, and see if it is coming out of there and collect it in a bottle. If it is good that is expansion, if it is not bad it is going somewhere else. I have been trying to find details on this, and cannot. I guess I am searching for the wrong things, as all i can see is charts and information on conduit fill. E.g. how many wires or what gauge can safely be put in conduit of a certain size and not what cable when inside a conduit has to be to be able to cope with the full rated current. This is getting complicated so I am not going to go down that road and I think the easy route is use a thicker cable to the sockets, run it in the open but well away from the bilge area and properly secure it with the appropriate hardware so it can not slip or sag. I would also like to hard wire my battery charger to the consumer unit so it has its own dedicated breaker and not just be on the end of a plug. I mean even a consumer unit on a boat, while ok it is hardly 'marine' and all nice and built in as you can have Brian Wards supply complete with polarity check and protection.

Now that is a pair of doors!

I really am far more comfy on a dull damp day than a hot sunny day - but will take the heat to a point. In London the difference between Norfolk is stark especially at night. In the countryside the sun sets and as the evening wears on the temperature falls right back - if it was say 29c in the day, overnight may be 15c. As I write this at 11:34pm, the outside temperature her in greater London is still 23.4c. When you go out the pavements and buildings are still warm to the touch, now radiating their stored heat back out like enormous storage heaters. The buses are bad enough but my god the Underground especially the Victoria Line is almsot unbearable. Now for some years at home we have invested in air conditioning, but if you are going down that route either get a split system or one that can have two pipes - one to draw in outside air to cool the condenser and then feed that hot air back out in loop. Single pipe 'portable' air conditioners are more like personal coolers, cos every cubic metre of air they exhaust has to be replaced with another cubic metre of warm moist air coming into the room from somewhere - either outside or somewhere else in the house. As a result they never can really cool a room. My bedroom faces south and in the shade today was 31.8 in my garden, in my room a cool 21.5 with 41% humidity. The issue really is the sheer power consumption so I ma not too keen on the next electric bill but for the cool evenings and shelter from the heat in the day I say for now it is worth it.

I don't see an oil cooler - I have them on Independence, massive things for the gearboxes and hydraulics but on Trixie, seems pretty basic. She has a 43HP Nanni engine with a Herth gearbox that is unusual for such a large engine on a small boat and leaves little room especially at the front of the engine to work on. I think the fact is she has just not been de-scaled ever or if was a long time ago. I am going to use something similar to Dynamic Descaler. It's impressive stuff:

This is how you test batteries..Surely?

No - which is a big shortfall compared to some large Marina's on the Coast. That is, not unless I turn up and ask for a quote to have such supplied.

Good points being made here - l;et me go over some. First of all when you inherit something (in this case bought a boat) which has had shore power fitted, it should make you wonder how well it has been put in - in the absence of any documentation or invoices showing this was done by a professional, it would appear this was done on a 'DIY' basis. I understand that especially in smaller older boats a lot of owners will go down that route, simply on the basis of cost. It certainly adds up, to date about £7,500 has been spent on Trixie since purchase and that does not include the new batteries and associated works that have been done recently or the next phases of works that are forthcoming and new seating to go in. The good news is being small there are only three double sockets to worry about and not a lot of wiring. I have to say on the point of mains wiring, come on Independence if you want to see some bad practice. She breaks all the regulations because so much of the wiring has been done in Taiwan and the colour of said wire might change depending on where you are in the boat and there was liberal use of 'twist cable' connectors - so popular in the US and Asia but not here in the UK. A lot of this has been dealt with when we removed the old sockets, but it took Pete some head scratching when a white wire turned pink the other side of the galley and back to white again as it looped round behind the fridge. Despite this, the wiring is all run in big cable trays or large conduit and DC wires are run so negative and positive are kept apart and I like the robust nature and ease to which it all makes sense - especially as it is all labelled and each conduit says where it has headed from and where it is heading to. This will make pulling cable easier. I am not saying this sort of thing is needed on a small 24ft river boat, but I'd like to keep my AC mains wire separate completely from my DC wire. I see no reason why with the correct gauge wire, a modest load on the AC side would cause it too hot especially when you see in so many commercial applications mains wiring within conduit serving several wall sockets around a room. So forgive my naivety but why would the same be a no no on a boat? And why should cable ever chaff if it is correctly put in and free from moment. Trixie's DC wiring is not 'marine spec' - none of it is tinned unlike all the wiring on Independence (DC or AC) it is just standard automotive stuff but I doubt the builders back in the day worried too much about the type of cable they were using which is a shame, since where it connects to various things like the water pump the green corrosion has started to show - luckily there is plenty to cut back to fresh stuff and then correctly terminate. My bilges are dirty and damp because like many boat owners those who owned her before never had the floorboards up and had a good scrub and clean out. They are not too bad as some boats I have seen, but in an ideal world would have a through clean. Trixie has a centre keel that runs from near the bow to the stern gland and anything that can gets in it and it has a fair amount of water down there from a stern gland that was dripping a little too often than should before it was nipped up. I also have bilge keels and while they look very sound externally, I think it might be a good thing I got down and deconstructed some of the harder to reach areas to check the bolts that will hold there on and go through the hull. For good measure I am having a new bilge pump and float switch put in. What else..Hmm yeah my engine drinks coolant. Not much, and seems not to worry how long or hard the engine has been worked - a few hours at 1,400 RPM or all day at 2,200RPM it is about 150ml of coolant that needs putting back in the header tank. Now I have looked into causes of this and would expect there to me more being lost and steam present if it was a head gasket that was going, but none the less it is going somewhere and that needs looking at. My heat exchanger needs taking apart and de-scaling because at anything over 2,100RPM she gets to 90c and if you push on will get close to 100c - she should run tops at 85c regardless of RPM's. Despite having a service in April she is having another in August along with a replacement Alternator belt and Impeller.

Lets just get things nice and simple here. Flex, Cable - call it what you want - I want to have more capacity than I may currently need or use to 'future proof' things and also am going on what is on Independence and taking big boat ways to smaller boats. I have a 16Amp shore connector like most do, but I have got it wired into some far heavier 4mm gauge cable capable of carrying 32Amps. This comes into the Consumer Unit on the boat. From here it goes down to 1.5mm cable which heads off to all the boats sockets. That is the same as you might have on some extension cable, it certainly is not what I consider ok to form part of the mains ring main and while 'safe' I'd not like to be running 3Kw off it for extended periods. Furthermore, none of the cable it is in conduit which I think is a better way of doing things when running through damp mucky bilges. The sockets to which it runs to are floor mounted - but standard plastic boxes. If they are to be mounted on the floor where you can whack them, I'd rather they be metal boxes capable of taking such and not cracking. Even better would be to move them up to a more useful height of the floor. The cable I have bought for the Inverter is also 4mm and I plan to replace all the wiring on the mains side to match this and therefore future proof the boat should I wish to upgrade to a 32Amp shore power system and run higher load appliances. On Independence I am finding myself very limited when dealing with only 16Amps coming into the boat and needing to keep a watchful eye on my smart electricity monitor e.g turn off the immersion heater if I am going to put the oven on since I cannot have both on without tripping a breaker. I don't know all the regulations and ins and outs since I just tend to go to those who have such knowledge and say 'this is what I want to happen'. With Independence that all seems okay, with Trixie I have to get over the first question "why do you want to do that?" but once we are over that all is pretty smooth sailing.

I've pledged - and the reason is simple. Nothing has been done for too long through the 'usual channels' . To me the usual channels are the likes of the Broads Authority or indeed any organsation that may represent boaters. They may do a very good job in some areas, but at the end of the day have not got the financial muscle to act. They can lobby, meet, talk, understand and put pressure - but that is easy to ignore. Now the NYA have a vested interest that is true, they also run their Cruising Clubs which have been increasingly frustrated with 'the bridge problem' which in turn delays other important factors such as catching the right state of tide or their arrival in another country. I think it is very fair thing to ask people to pledge money and they (NYA) underwrite the shortfall to get something started - this mind you will just be the beginning but by doing so it is far more than already has been done so far. You are not going to get the Broads Authority pledge £5,000 of their Toll income to get some legal advice - because for everyone here who has said that is their remit, there will be hundreds more saying they never used their boats on the southern rivers and anyway, they can get under the swing bridges even if closed at the right state of tide so why spend their Toll money on this fight with Network Rail. A group representing boaters just won't have enough members to raise all the funds required either - so what does that leave? Sure, NYA probably won't get enough support alone from this request to cover all the costs, but at least they do have the financial reserves to make up the shortfall and go to the trouble of getting Barristers instructed. So in my mind this is the best chance we have, and until someone else or another body or authority comes up with a robust action plan to tackle this issue I see what the NYA have come up as our only shot.

Just an update as to things - we are almost there but just been on the phone to Shaun and been given some news that I am pleased he had found out. We are not too sure if the battery charger and shore power system was installed by a professional or the last owner of the boat on a DIY basis, but suffice to say some of the wiring is not the best - 13Amp sockets fed with standard 13Amp flex tied up on hoses to keep it out the bilge with string suggests it was not a professional install. When I bought my new Inverter (yet to be installed) I went for 32Amp (4mm) flex to take the 240v output from the Inverter to the consumer unit. This all seems a bit silly now, as once it leaves the consumer unit it is down to 13Amp (1.5mm) flex to the sockets. Also the battery charger rather than being hard wired with its own breaker is wired to a 13Amp plug. I will re-wire this down the road and upgrade the wiring and maybe place the sockets in more desirable locations. For the time being mental note has been made not It has also been found the charger, a Sterling model that outputs up to 20Amps, has had some tinkering done and the incorrect fuses used resulting in some connectors down the line melting the plastic surrounds. It beggars belief sometimes what happens over the life a of a boat and 'tinkering types' - fuses are there for a reason and their value also is very important! At this point I am thinking to myself, how is it that so much focus is put on to gas and fuel lines as part of the Boat Safety Scheme but so little focus on electrical wiring which, can be just as prone to setting light to things in fault conditions. It might not be practical for a BSS Examiner to be up to date with all the writing regulations, but perhaps something is needed where if you have any electrical works down ( especially for mains voltages/installs) it has to come with a certificate of compliance. Tomorrow a Victron smart battery combiner is going in along with an additional battery. This will mean I have 3x domestic and 1x cranking battery - the smart system will fool the the Alternator to see a single battery bank and the Victron unit will then decide which bank gets the amps to re-charge. There was I wanting to keep Trixie relativity simple with her batteries but at least this will put the issues to bed for once and for all and I have an extra bit of capacity too.

You can get all sorts of fancy testers - I was looking at some for a few hundred pounds that run all types of tests and can test each cell and provide a print out after. Thing is, despite this a lot will not work with deep cycle marine leisure batteries because they are not measured in the same cold cranking amps as urm cranking batteries are. Sometimes an good old fashion big load on a battery is the best way to test its performance.

Interesting reading this. I have always wondered about mechanical engineering, but growing up was more into electrical stuff and later computers and so on but it did not stop me always wanting to look at the boats engines. It was often the case that on the first night moored up I would be down there looking about, inspecting, wondering what did what and the like. Way back then I had a preference, I preferred the BMC over the Perkins they ran smoother and did not seem so 'smelly'. What is really rather amazing is while relativity few vehicles exist with these engines now, there are many many boats not just on the Broads who have these engines still going strong, some have been completed restored to as original condition by specialists and will probably outlive the boats they are installed in rather than die. One thing I have noticed is the sounds of engines have changed so much. Modern hire boats have modern engines, they run smoother and quieter and often also have more complex waterlocks to further reduce the noise coming out the exhaust. Since a great deal of new boats are run with hydraulic motors run off the engine you get a gentle whine as they pass, but every so often an older boat will come alone with an old Perkins or BMC with their distinct note - they may have passed you by any minutes ago but you will still hear the engine note change as they increase revs - that to me represents the sound of the Broads and boating and I while I may be all for modernity, frankly it would not be the same without those old exhaust notes out on the water.

She is a lovely little boat - she looks super small in the expanse of Barton Broad. She now even has a big screen entertainment - well, a cheap 24" telly from Tesco on offer haha but it fills the width of a bulkhead so looks far bigger than actually is. Just need the new Inverter to power it when away from shore hook up. She also has unusually wide v berths so despite her dinky size sleeping is comfy. I'd like something a bit larger with some more room to put things, but at the same time there is this cuteness I can't see myself letting go of very easily. They are cracking boats these Sheerlines.

Clive, I had no idea the Horning Marina sold diesel so that is nice to know a) you do and b) the price :)

This is indeed what is being done.

Poor little boat Trixie.. 3rd July: I will have to word some things carefully, but things are not going well as I have cruised into a line of bad luck. It began with the fresh water pump giving up. It worked one week and then stopped the next. I had the thing apart and got it turning but it sounded dreadful, it was able to keep going just long enough to drain half the water tank which was needed because the pump is plumbed directly to the base of the tank and the pump and tank are in the bow. Should the inlet hose be removed without the tank being at least half empty the height of the tank and pressure of water would then flood under the V Berth and eventually find its way to the middle of the boat where it can get into the bilge and be pumped out by the bilge pump. Sadly, to get there would cause a lot of sodden carpet, floorboards and mess. I called up Simpson's Boatyard (formally Moonfleet) as they were the closest yard I could get to pick the phone up on a weekday at midday. They were willing to come to the Wet Shed, but I took the boat around to them and after a while they were on the case to procure a new pump. They told me such would have to come the following day, but I was okay to spend the night on their moorings and this meant I was very close to Stalham where I went for wander and ended up finding the small carpet shop does boat templating and binding of carpet edges, new carpet is now on the cards for the interior and cockpit. Back to Trixie to find soaking wet carpets - how on earth has this happened? The pump is off, and the system is not pressurised. I now find the pump is leaking from the impeller housing, and water coming out is a rust tinted colour. Clearly this pump really is in a sorry state, yet was only put in 8 years ago - I guess that may seem a short time to some, a long time to others. The leak was an issue because I could not stop it and so every couple of hours through the night I set a timer up on my phone to wake me and empty the damn I had created with Duct tape, paper towel and clothes. It worked well but was a real pain. The following morning the pump duly arrived, £79.00 odd and a different brand (Jabsco) and not the same flow rate or pressure - I had 13Lpm @ 41Psi and now was 11Lpm @ 26Psi. It sounds much louder than the Johnson pump it replaced, but the pressure difference is not too much of an issue actually and am sticking with it for the time being. The main thing was I had fresh water once more and could get underway. 5th July: Shower drain pump fails. This time I cruise to Wroxham, moor at Barnes Brinkcraft and pay to moor for the afternoon. I then wander into Norfolk Marine and procure a new pump £165.00 later I come out with the same unit the boat had (Jabsco Water Puppy 2000) which is available for a lot lot less online but needs must so I had to pay the high street price. Back on the boat and off from the busy moorings and river Bure for the peace of Barton Broad where I would set to and fit the new pump myself. Having removed the old pump I found the new pump had a new style base, with rubber dampening bushes. Great, but in order for the screws to secure pump to the pad on the boat, I needed washers and different fasteners. I had none. I therefore used the two plastic inserts to the inlet and outlet ports of the pump to act as a temporary washer. It worked, and the following day popped into Stalham Hardware to get the new washers and screws. All is now secure and working well. In order to prevent debris going through the pump impeller (which had failed on the old pump) I have gone for a very simple and cost effective drain hole filter cover, obtained from Lathams for £1.50. On March 31st I had called into Boulters and bought two new domestic batteries, 110Ah and at a cost of £69.00 if memory serves me correctly. All was well and during the works on Trixie over the forthcoming months I had a new NASA BM1 battery monitor installed so I could keep tabs on how much Amp Hours I was taking out the batteries, their voltage and charge rates. Sadly this was not only wrongly wired in but it was never set up to reflect the capacity of my batteries, therefore it could not display anything other than rouge voltages and amps. I had no idea of this at the time, but did wonder why it seemed my Alternator was putting in such low amperages (8 or 11 Amps) even after a time of discharge. 16th July: I am having all types of electrical issues, the gauges on my instruments are doing odd things, and having metered my batteries I find they are pretty low on voltage 12.3V after many hours of cruising. My BM1 display however is showing different voltages and then I find masses of battery acid in my battery box - i open up the ports on the batteries and find to my horror they are half dry. These, new batteries at the end of March remember. I had some distilled water on the boat, and could top them up but this was not a fix, what was causing these issues? I called the man who has now become my 'on call Engineer', Shaun at Norfolk Yacht Agency. I was moored at Coldham Hall having accompanied Broad Ambition down south. He asked me to pop the boat over to them which I duly did and also arranged a temporary mooring for B.A and our friends on River Song I had the Marina find a visitor berth for. I was due to take Independence out as well, but since Brooms closed for fuel at 3:30pm that was all called off. It became a day of waiting - but ended up being a good day of fixes and an evening out in Norwich. Back to the point at hand, Shaun found my domestic batteries were dead - my cranking battery too - its electrolyte black and voltage low. A deep sigh was had and the result was I had to fork out for new batteries again. This time Vetus branded with an impressive 5 year warranty, far better built and with thicker plates than the ones I had previously bought. What had been the cause of the issues? Well for a start the batteries were all wired wrongly. I was under the impression the Bow Thruster ran off my cranking battery, it was in fact wired positive to domestic bank and negative to cranking battery. My battery charger was programmed for the wrong type of batteries and by-passed the BM1 battery monitor shunt entirely which meant i had no idea it was putting in over 15v at 20Amps every time I was connected to shore power. This boiled the batteries and ruined them. It did not help the temp sensor that the charger has was fitted to the last battery in line, not the first so it would not have recorded the high temperatures until after my two domestic batteries were merrily already streaming. Meantime the BM1 battery monitor was wired wrongly too - it should be the case that everything runs through the negative shunt so you are able to see what amps are being drawn or given - be it from the Alternator, shore based charger or what you taking from the batteries, but alas since only some of the negative returns passed through the shunt so I had no accurate idea of voltages or amperages rendering it pretty useless as a monitoring device. Certainly I would have been made aware of the issues with my batteries far sooner. Shaun re-wired the lot, also programmed the BM1 to reflect the capacity of batteries I had and pre-programmed the Sterling charger so it was set to charge lead acid batteries which meant a far calmer 13.2v float charge and a high charge rate of 14.3v. I ma not out of the woods yet mind you, as now it seems my cranking battery is fully charged but my domestics are not - this is the split charge diode system may be faulty but I won't know until Monday when it is once again looked at. So overall, a costly time once again. Trixie is due to go into Sutton Staithe boatyard at the beginning of August and have some cosmetic work done, I will also ask them to look into why my antifouling at various locations along the waterline has begun to flake having only been on since the end of April. She will have new lighting fitted then, a new accent stripe to better match the deeper red colour of the canopy, removal of the TV aerial and fitting of extra batteries to increase my domestic capacity - an inverter and new wiring to the mast lights and windscreen wipers which have packed up recently too due to corroded deck connectors - which I recently bought new replacements for from Brian Wards and then promptly left in the back of a Taxi never to be seen again. At last things are getting changed, improved, updated and made to work right on Trixie - even if some have not been planned for.

I have just caught up with all the work, videos, and stories - really great to see her in the Wet Shed, but what tense times and another amazing 'all in' effort from various Forum members. Great to see all the hard work pay off and a boat doing what a boat should - go along the river and not be on dry land.

Say it like that seems very reasonable, tapping the pin in on card machine for £425 feels very different. By the way the water at Brooms I found out goes through a filter prior to going in your tank.

It has been a good while since I last wrote here to update on matters with Indy. But there have been a number of things that have taken place in the past weeks so I thought I would talk about them. If you were to see her externally, very little has changed - but the real changes have been going on in her engine rooms - which currently also do not look too different, but the invoices that have been coming through tell a different story. Part of my wish before we left Plymouth was to have Indy in as good a conditioned mechanically as possible - for both safety and confidence. Alas, having arrived here in Norfolk it has been found a number of areas had not been taken care of as had previously been thought or that jobs that I had wanted to be done just had not been. I am so pleased that I decided to use Norfolk Yacht Agency - not because of any recommendation or previous dealings with them, but just how very professional, honest and thorougher they are. I have made a good friendship with Shaun, who heads up their service team and having being working in boat engineering since he was 16 there is very little he does not know, and very few people he cannot call upon to supply something or clarify something at a moments notice. They went over the engines with a fine tooth comb with me wanting them to come up with anything that needed doing - even if it could be left, I wanted it changed and renewed now. The per-service survey took a couple of days and resulted in quite the outcome a number of hoses were going need replacing, some wiring needed to be replaced too, a combined total of 44 engine Anodes may be required and that was before we got to the service of the engines with the cooling system being drained and flushed before all new coolant, oil, primary and secondary oil filters, belts, fuel filters you name it was changed. All new impellers were to go in and new gaskets, a number of new fasteners were on the list as was 150Lites of hydraulic oil for the powering of the thrusters. It would take two men a couple of days labour to complete the overall task. This has now been done and the engines run like they never have - super silky smooth, very much more responsive and virtually no smoke even on start up. I am pleased to say they still have their lovely deep down growl though. I had been put off by the Caterpillar parts costs, and of course people may complain about Volvo Penta parts costing a fair bit too. I can however now report that they have nothing on Yanmar, especially when you are dealing with a commercial grade engine. I had wondered why most Yanmar engines are a metallic grey, but mine are white -- this is because white engines are high performance commercial heavy duty types - able to withstand more continuous duty operation and are usually put in applications where such over engineering is require - e.g. not a leisure boat. This also means that the parts on these engines cost far more than their lighter weight counterparts. Just an example - the lagging over the turbo's was past its best, this just corers the turbo charger - so is not that large, yet each of the lagging units comes in at £355.00 . Those anodes - 22 per engine - are £16.00 each and 6 high pressure braided fuel and oil hoses come in at almost £90.00 each. But I want to raise Indy from an ok example of her type to outstanding, and that means everything however small it may be being changed if required. Now the major mechanical works are over, it is time to move on to the cosmetic element. The engines will be treated to a professional re-spray using several layers of a high gloss, brilliant white enamel paint that is able to withstand high temperatures. The bilges will be cleaned and re-painted too and it would be nice to have the dull aluminum cat walks polished to a deep shine. Meanwhile, externally I will have the boat restored to her original shine, new seating, new canopies and work to the Teak decking too. Then I can begin on the work of the electrics - all new batteries weighing in at 55kg each and having a capacity of 230ah each and then work to be done on changing her auto-helm and chart plotter to updated versions - oh and I am still waiting to hear from Goodchild's as to if they want to work on lifting her, dressing and balancing her props, supplying and fitting the new anodes to the hull and having the hull compounded and waxed. After an initial positive response things have now gone a little quiet so it may need to be Brooms who have the capacity to lift her. I'll share more in time and get some videos up too :)

What Herbert Woods do very well is run a slick marketing side - selling holidays, and getting the initial welcome spot on when you arrive. You are made to feel as an individual and valued customer. However, the bottom line is the product and that is the boat. While I cannot say they are not clean etc inside, they are let go externally unless you are perhaps on one of their Elite Fleet boats. They use cheap polyester style rope, and the attention given to the exterior upkeep is lacking. If a boat has a high hours BMC or Perkins engine, despite the noise, smoke and oil they use - they will be kept going. Other yards of equal size to Herbert Woods would just take it out and re-engine. It means less work for them for a number of years apart from the usual servicing. They also get the benefit of new engine warranties and work on a basis of if the engine begins giving them grief a decade later, remove and replace than worry about re-builds. It is a testament to the Japanese base engines though that these units go on and on year in and out in hire fleets clocking up the hours. Now a great number of customers really would not care twice about such things, and all should be perfectly fine over the course of their holiday but take my experience with Western Light 1, the integrated bin chain just needed a screw putting in to make that work - but they had not and instead put a plastic bin in the galley. The batteries had not been seated correctly in the battery box perhaps after a change or shore based re-charge, meaning the lid (that you stand on) at the helm was in contact with the negative terminal on the top of one of the batteries and 'wonked about'. After a period of time the pressure on the terminal this caused made the terminal clamp to become loose and intermittent battery connectivity resulted. I sorted this one too. The heater, it worked - reasonably well, but took several attempts to get going (and one always had to have the engine running initially) and once it was running, after about 3 or 4 hours it would turn itself off anyway as the batteries had run out of enough juice to keep it going. You add this up to the other smaller issues, like needing to top the oil up daily and water in the header tank - and you stop and think 'hold on a second this is meant to be a holiday - this is 2018 not 1960'. I took it in my stride and did not fuss, but someone else paying a good whack of money might see all this as a real issue and frustration. It may put them off, or just lead to an unhappy customer. I bring this up because if this was a smaller yard or a yard that did not have the big brand image, it may be a little more forgivable - but when you splash so much in to image, a slick website and customer experience the product has to match the expectation and if it does not, for whatever reason the fall is greater for the customer, and their patience perhaps less. I think instead of a really fancy website with live chat and so on, branded cushions and giving away free pens the back to basics approach might be better. Make things work smoothly and the mechanical and electrical items brought up to date rather than just being kept running as they are with a make do approach.