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Coronavirus And The Broads


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Interesting isn't it, that we as individuals are all counselled to 'keep something aside for a rainy day'. Currently it is suggested that it should be around  three to six months' worth of your regular expenses. Yes I know many are unable to meet that target.

Why is it not the same for business ?

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Perhaps it is time for making and taking provisional bookings. Probably already happening but if I had a yard then I would actively market such a service. When restrictions are lifted I suspect that there will be something of a rush to book stay-cations. Now's the time to jump the queue! 

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It would be nice to think that was the case. I can certainly see air line travel being more difficult for a lot longer and the cheap flights going for quite some time after that. However a lot of companies are asking, if not insisting that anyone who has holiday time booked doesn't cancel it. In addition the government are introducing measures to allow employees to carry unused holiday over for up to two years. These measures are to ensure that once restrictions are eased and the work force can get back to work, that is what happens in order to help rebuild the economy, rather than loads of people going on deferred or hastily rebooked holidays.

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I still have a few bookings on our social / work / 'B.A' diaries (Nearly said 'Dairies' then - Needs milking)

21 – 25th May  -  I very much doubt this one will happen

01 – 15th Aug  -   Fair chance of this one happening

25 – 28th Sept  -  Hopefully, good chance  this one will happen

09 – 17th Oct   - Lads Week with 3 x Jewels of Lights - If this one doesn't happen, I will have no other choice than to write a strongly worded letter to my MP

Griff

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59 minutes ago, EastCoastIPA said:

However there are times, now being one of them, when they may need to contract their business in order to survive. They may need to stop building new craft and sell some older boats

Do you think you are saying something new?  This is exactly what happened on the Broads in the mid 60s and I remember it well.  Big boatyards in Wroxham all decided to sell their hire fleets and were very glad when David Millbank of Jenners bought the boats, and left the yards themselves to diversify into other things, such as sea-going yachts, or holiday cottages. 

The point of my last post, in reply to you, was that cash flow is what puts a business into administration and not the value of its paper assets in the accounts.  This is exactly what happened to Jenners, (and this is a fact) since it expanded too quickly and ran out of cash flow in the bank.

By the way, their collapse also dropped the bottom clean out of the second hand boat market.

I am sorry to "diss"a few business theories, but some of us on the Broads have seen this before and from my experience, we are about to see it happen all over again.  Believe me, it will not be pleasant.  Including for the private boat owners, who might find they can't get their toilets pumped out or their diesel filled or their engine serviced as there are even fewer boatyards still in business.

 

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13 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

Including for the private boat owners, who might find they can't get their toilets pumped out or their diesel filled or their engine serviced as there are even fewer boatyards still in business.

Second hand boats will be virtually worthless. And that in turn could possibly lead to abandoned boats! Could prove expensive to the BA tracking down owners and taking them to court. Maybe eventually having to remove and trash vessels themselves. Frightening thought, let’s hope it comes nowhere near that scenario. 

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37 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

 Including for the private boat owners, who might find they can't get their toilets pumped out or their diesel filled or their engine serviced as there are even fewer boatyards still in business.

 

Perhaps this is also what the BA are trying to protect, since they provide none of these services themselves.  They rely on the boatyards for it, and quite rightly.

In future, they may have to provide these services and the cost will surely be reflected in your private river toll.

Let us be careful what we wish for.  The BA are trying to support the boatyards because they are a big part of the vital infrastructure that makes up the Norfolk Broads.

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Vaughan, I largely agree with what you have said above and certainly for a big yard in Stalham they do provide services for the privateer. However try getting some major boat work done and they can be very slow in responding as the hire fleet rightly comes first, but fuel and pump outs yes first class service. Speaking personally as a privateer I get 98% of my services, fuel, water, pump outs from non hire yards. There is one in Wroxham that refuses entry to privateers, with the recent change of owner that may have changed. Another in Hoveton that has that many boats you cannot normally get near for a pump out and fuel, and another in Potter Heigham where I was told last year you'll have to wait until we have serviced all the hire boats. I don't see the likes of Goodchild, Broom, Russell Marine, Horning Marine Services, Sutton Staithe boat yard to name a few, stopping doing services if the hire yards did stop. 

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3 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

09 – 17th Oct   - Lads Week with 3 x Jewels of Lights - If this one doesn't happen, I will have no other choice than to write a strongly worded letter to my MP

If this doesn't happen - we're ALL doomed Capt Mannering.

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1 hour ago, EastCoastIPA said:

I get 98% of my services, fuel, water, pump outs from non hire yards.

 

1 hour ago, EastCoastIPA said:

I don't see the likes of Goodchild, Broom, Russell Marine, Horning Marine Services, Sutton Staithe boat yard to name a few, stopping doing services if the hire yards did stop. 

I am very glad that, from your own very personal point of view, all is going to be well for you in future.  By the way, I trust you have paid your river toll?

Time will tell, and I fear sooner rather than later, what the Broads will be like , including for all of our members who are regular hirers, some for several generations of the same family. They are "stakeholders" in the Broads as well.  Let's not forget that, when we do a cool armchair analysis of the accounts of hire yards who are themselves, family businesses.  Some since before the War.  And the one that refused you entry - since before the First War.

 

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3 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

09 – 17th Oct   - Lads Week with 3 x Jewels of Lights - If this one doesn't happen, I will have no other choice than to write a strongly worded letter to my MP

and the pubs better be open by then too.

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Vaughan is absolutely correct. All Banks want to see is a flow of cash coming in that can service the company's debt.

That is their business and they understand it.

What they don't understand is boats, they don't want to be sending the company vehicles to British Car Auctions and putting boats on brokers books. That is why when the cash flow falters they loose confidence and pull the rug before the debt grows. 

The one saving grace is, I imagine many of the business own the freehold of their yard, now a charge on the land is very much more attractive to a bank than a 25 year old boat or even a new one. Unless of course they are already holding the deeds.

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3 hours ago, Vaughan said:

Let us be careful what we wish for.  The BA are trying to support the boatyards because they are a big part of the vital infrastructure that makes up the Norfolk Broads.

I don't doubt for one minute that the BA is trying to support the yards and that is very commendable and how it should be. 

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Again, Chris, your wisdom is exactly correct  The only businesses that survived the last Broads slump, or came out clear of debt, were those with their own freehold premises.

I am sorry if I am sounding rather grumpy right now and I apologise to ECIPA if I have singled him out. But maybe he singled me out too?

I am pretty sure I must be the only member of this forum who has actually been put out of a Broads boatyard business by a drastic recession and who has found himself literally sitting on his suitcases in what used to be the customers' car park, waiting for a taxi to take him to the railway station.  I swore then, that I would never let that happen to me again.  Sure enough it did, more than 30 years later but that is another story!

There are those who say it takes a lot of courage to start up your own business and make a go of it, and they are right.  I can also tell you that it takes a great deal more courage, and objectivity, to recognise when the time has come to shut it down.  That is what a lot of my friends on the yards may well be thinking right now and I feel for them.

All I can tell you is that when that time comes, you find that there is just nothing else you can do.  If the customers are staying away, for whatever reason, then the figures just don't add up any more.

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Vaughan, To be clear I don't feel singled out by your replies, neither am I singling you out. We just have different view points on some aspects of the subject and I do agree with a lot, if not most of what you say, just see some of it a slightly different way :default_beerchug:

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20 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

There are those who say it takes a lot of courage to start up your own business and make a go of it, and they are right.  I can also tell you that it takes a great deal more courage, and objectivity, to recognise when the time has come to shut it down.  That is what a lot of my friends on the yards may well be thinking right now and I feel for them.

Well said Sir!

I haven't been following this thread but I had a quick browse of the last couple of pages and the references to accounts seem to have a lack of attachment to the human side of business.

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12 minutes ago, floydraser said:

Well said Sir!

I haven't been following this thread but I had a quick browse of the last couple of pages and the references to accounts seem to have a lack of attachment to the human side of business.

And that's the problem with reading things out of context to the original discussion!

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On 06/04/2020 at 12:31, EastCoastIPA said:

 Was the lifeline offered by the BA actually asked for by the hire yards, or was it just offered at our expense?

Can we get a straight understanding of this please. 

Fact: the BA has not offered hire yards a lifeline. It is written into the Broads Act.

 

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Just now, FreedomBoatingHols said:

Can we get a straight understanding of this please. 

Fact: the BA has not offered hire yards a lifeline. It is written into the Broads Act.

 

And I don't disagree with that, but where is it written that it applies to hire boats only in The Broads Act?

And you are right it has been in the act all along, yet the BA felt it necessary to point that out to the hire yards, which again I have no problem with, until they said it doesn't apply to private toll payers.

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9 hours ago, RS2021 said:

My guess is that may be the retail price for a new boat, but the large yards build their own and I suspect a significant part of the cost is labour. Now if a yard goes into this crisis in a healthy position, does it furlough its staff and save costs, or does it keep the staff on, build new boats and then sell the odd old one off to balance the books on the material costs?

Sell a boat to who? Lockdown. 

I haven't spoken to many yards over the last week or so, but those I have spoken to have furloughed staff. 

There's a simple metric here: nobody is booking holidays so there is no revenue. Few businesses of any size can keep people employed for long if there's no money coming in.

On a more practical level, it's very had to build a boat AND practice social distancing at the same time.

 

 

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15 minutes ago, EastCoastIPA said:

And I don't disagree with that, but where is it written that it applies to hire boats only in The Broads Act?

And you are right it has been in the act all along, yet the BA felt it necessary to point that out to the hire yards, which again I have no problem with, until they said it doesn't apply to private toll payers.

Read the act: it applies to all commercial vessels.

I didn't need it pointing out to me and I doubt any other boatyard did either as we all make use of this rule each year for boats that are being built, refurbed, offered for sale or just mothballed.

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31 minutes ago, floydraser said:

I haven't been following this thread but I had a quick browse of the last couple of pages and the references to accounts seem to have a lack of attachment to the human side of business.

And I do have an understanding of the relationship between submitted accounts at companies house and the day to day running of a business, which some here clearly don't.

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