FlyingFortress

Phew That's good news. A Whole day👍😁👍

Just marvelous what you have done with that dog. 👍👍 Good luck in the future.

Splendid 😁

Yes MT but £30 odd quid is a lot of money 😳 Much better to have an engineer called out with the risk of a cooked engine and someone's holiday ruined 🤣

Who mentioned HW? Don't all Hire Fleets have people on call 24/7 during the hire season. I think that a few of us were simply pointing out that being on call is Not exclusive to Hire Boat operations. There are folk on here that are involved with Logistics, Hospitality and IT and many more that run 24/7 and have many people getting the phone call in the wee small hours. I have been both on the recieving end and the one making the call.

That's about the gist of it MT. 👍 Working 24hrs has been common for many people and IMHO becoming more so.

I think it's quite hard for people who work normal hours to comprehend that some folks have to do irregular hours as the norm. I do remember some years ago returning from a job on Christmas day at 0300 ish wondering where all the traffic was going on the A12 at that time. It was too late for people returning from a night out and too early for an early shift start. I did speculate this with my driver who was also working on call. 😳

You do realise that quite a lot of people work on a 24hr call out system don't you. In my job before retiring we were on call 24hrs for 9 days.

Can't argue with that Smoggy 👍

Just as an afterthought to the above tale. I did use my boathook to steer the guy in the water as I offered it to him and he grabbed it as he already had hold of a thrown Life ring albeit not mine and without a rope attached. I did not use my boathook like a harpoon 🤣

Good points as always 👍 As an example of how dangerous a boathook can be in the wrong hands. Moored at Ranworth last year down the side. Had been chatting to our next door neighbor on a large well equipped hire boat. He was decrying the lack of experience of some hirers as he had a yachtmasters certificate. He then did a pre departure briefing instructing the crew exactly what their roles would be. All very professional except the bit where the other male crew member was to fend off with the boathook. Thankfully not my boat. 😥 The shout "Fend off" was heard followed by a splash. Yes the boathook had slipped on the fibre glass and the fendee was in the water. A second hire boat was attempting to take the vacanted space and had a fixed boarding ladder on the stern and as they had stopped their engine I tried to manoeuvre the man towards the stern and asked if they could cast off their dingy to assist. Unfortunately the boarding ladder had been crushed and was useless so with the help of a couple of large bystanders got him to the quayside and dragged him out thankfully no worse for wear. No lifejacket of course. 😳 During the subsequent retrieval of the dinghy and stopped hire boat I spoke to the helm who said she was a first timer and didn't know what to do except switch off the engine. I assured her that she had done exactly the right thing 👍 So what do we make of that? 😐 A qualified helm putting his crew in danger, and a first timer showing remarkable common sense

🐘 In the room perhaps?

Took your recommendation tonight. Never doubted you for a minute and once again absolutely spot on. Small ish menu but food was really really good. My Lamb was soooo tender 😁 Something different and top quality. 2 courses for me but of course Mrs FF could not resist a sweet as well. No draught beer but as I drove there we just shared a bottle of wine. Bill came to £74 without a tip. Very good VFM we thought and will certainly be going there again. We did enquire about moorings and although the owner was not there tonight the Chef said that moorings were available at Ferry Marine if you told the staff there that you were visiting Flavours. If this is true then we will definitely be back when on the boat. It was pretty quiet in there tonight early on (1930 booking) so please it's not your average pub grub place so a little more expensive but use it or lose it. I would prefer to use it 👍🍺😁

Sorry to hear that. Having gone through it ourselves earlier this year we know how you are feeling.

I am also not a lover of the Crate. Having said that I have heard from people that it has been used with great success. I guess some dogs see it as their "safe space" or even a den. Have never had one for my previous dogs but the hooligan had one when we got him. We kept it until very recently when we returned from our long trip on the boat in September. We did initially put him in the crate when we left him in the house alone but we soon realised he was OK left out of it. He did I think just once go in there of his own accord very early on when we got him. We had decided to get rid of it when we came back from the boat and we have without any issues. On the boat he of course has the biggest cabin all to himself, just like our previous dogs. Edit to add we do have to lock the back door as he has found out how to open it on his own as we found out at Oulton one night when someone knocked on our door as he was running around on the pontoon.🤔

cwtch Haven't heard that expression for years. Lovely term. 👍

Think mine needs a flying helmet and goggles? 🤔

Never tastes the same in a can or a bottle 🍺

Let's try again My Hooligan

Very good question. And I am afraid I don't know the answer to that. The selection process I can have a tilt at answering. When I was 23 and got my first Labrador I was living with my first LTR Girlfriend who had wanted Black Labrador since she had been a little girl. I was fairly ambivalent but I knew I wanted a larger dog and a pure breed. So a Black Lab it was then. I can admire a lot of breeds for different traits of the breed. How can you not admire the grace of the Shepard breeds ,the intelligence of the Collie and spaniel breeds or the sheer magnificence of the Large Breeds like Newfies, Danes and St Bernards. Over the years and as I say now 4 Labradors, I think for an all round bigger dog they, and their close cousins such as Retrievers, are a good bet. You know within limits how big they are going to be, they will probably be a bit dopey but loving and your chances of getting a good natured dog is very very high. One that I was very tempted to try was the Saluki but I know very little about them and Mrs FF was not keen. So my chances of disappointment, as in the quote above could have been high.

Labradors are big dogs. I know I have my overgrown Andrex Puppy curled up next to me right now. Being a big dog if in the rare case that they do go for you they will do some damage. If you have any doubt about this just watch one chewing a bone. I agree wholeheartedly with what Vaughan posted above about how to approach a dog and how the dog is feeling regards anxiety. My big Lab is the 4th I have owned and I got my first one when I was 23. He looks like a fully grown dog but he is still a puppy albeit a big one at over 30kg and just over 14 months. Dog ownership has soared in the UK since I had my first one and the one expression I despise is "Fur Baby". They are not Babies they are dogs and should be treated like dogs. You are not their Parents you should be the Alpha of the pack. I despair when I see dogs out of control, this used to be more common with small dogs but is getting more noticeable with the larger breeds. Lockdown did not help. In fact I believe this is what my dog was a Lockdown Puppy. Very cute and manageable at 12 weeks but a different kettle of fish when 7 or 8 months old and weighing 25kgs when we got him at 9 months. There are many people who know more about dog training than me who I hope will contribute to this thread, and Griff I don't mind you telling everyone what mine did to your saw handle the other day.😥 Sorry for the thread drift again but a well trained dog is a pleasure to be around. I just hope to get mine there sooner rather than later. There are some on here who have known my last dog and even some who knew the previous one. I hope they can testify that I usually have a well trained dog . This one is work in progress 😥🤣😁

Pretty scary that as it looked like the cruiser was broken down and was taken in tow by the Police Boat. 😥 When I worked out of Yarmouth at least a couple of times a year a Cruiser would happily go cruising past us and we would use our very loud deck PA system to warn them that if they continued in the direction they were going then their next stop would be Holland 😳 In fact if Port Control got a report of a straying cruiser then they would phone us and ask us to warn them. It was sometimes quicker than deploying one of the Pilot Boats if they were somewhere else in the river. I suppose being hailed by a very loud PA system was often enough to turn them around.

buoyant Bouyage

And it reduces the need for those pesky thrusters 🤣

I think that was the question I was asking but you put it better than me. 😳 If you can't split the props then I see little point. Two engines, now that is a real safety advantage 👍