vaughans posts of memories of thorpe and the broads.

[Tearose]

I think I may have met him Vaughan. Would that be Bill? We spoke about it and as far as I remember he was going to have to stitchweld the block. 

 

[Tearose]

Here's a more recent one. 2018 

[marshman]

Somewhere in this green and pleasant, there are people who clearly revere the old Stuart Turners - me well I just hate them!! Had a 2 cylinder one in a Macwester 27   Bit like Seagulls as far as I am concerned - always went first pull when it wasn't absolutely necessary, but when it was necessary? 

Those old engines always had minds of their own - in the early Fifties when my Dad had a 16' lifeboat originally from Jacksons in Peterborough ( I think) I hardly ever saw his face whilst out,  as he seemed to be forever bent double over a British Anzani Pilot on the back winding a bit of string around the top!

Happy Days

[ChrisB]

As I have often written, never had a problem with Seagulls especially when they gave the go-ahead in 1978 to re-jet from 10:1 to 25:1. Mine was hung on the back of my Seawych but I chose it because of the vast number of Seagulls I saw used and abused on the back of inshore, open clinkers on the shingle beaches between Deal and Bognor. One must remember they were never designed for leisure, they were working engines designed to be run at "Full-chat". I once motored all the way from Beaulieu to Wareham, even with the long range tank fitted it required numerous re-fuels hanging over the transom!

This is not the place but I can tell you tales of woe regarding new Honda 15 and 20s float needles and flywheels.

[Vaughan]

[grendel]

they missed out position 7 swim to the bank 

[BroadAmbition]

You would know even without the outboard 

Griff

[ChrisB]

Both my Seagulls had a clutch but smaller ones and early examples started "In-Gear". OK on the foreshore but not so good in a crowed marina.

I think some of the British Anzani were the same.

[grendel]

my number 6/7 experience was caused by the lack of clutch on a seagull, the result was a submarine experience, and the realisation, I think i am going to need a bigger boat - I did stay in the boat though.

[ChrisB]

Cheer-up Grendel, there are worse things without a conventional clutch.

For a number of years my late wife and I were into two cylinder Citroens Dyanes and 2CVs. And their derivatives. We went to a "Rallye" in Normandy and saw a really early 2CV with a tiny engine and centrifugal clutch! So technically it started in gear! 

I was told some DAF cars were the same but Volvo vetoed them when they bought DAF.

We only ever owned BIG engines 602cc

In 2018 I went to the 24 heures du Snetterton and talked to some of the guys in the pits. There is an 1100cc BMW bike engine that slips straight in. I would like one of them.

[Vaughan]

From Blakes catalogue of 1939.

The carburettor had a float chamber on top with a little pin that stuck up and you tickled this up and down until the chamber overflowed, before starting.

So once you had neat petrol flowing down the side of the engine into the tray underneath, you then pressed the starter. Can you imagine that, in the bilges of a yacht?

No wonder we have the BSS nowadays!

[ChrisB]

I had nearly forgot "Tickling".  Ridge Wharf Marina was an oil slick on starting my Seagull, not to mention the dead patches on the lawn starting the Atco and Suffolk Punch.

[BroadAmbition]

'Tickling Carbs' - Yes, remember this well, two stroke various off road bikes I had as a young teenager, petrol lawn mowers, outboards, goodness alone knows how we survived.  Ignorance being bliss got me through a lot of it

Griff

[Tearose]

So burnt bulkheads would have not been that uncommon then. And worse besides.

[Vaughan]

Here's one for Polly!

[marshman]

Great stuff - loved the outboard diagram as it illustrates perfectly the position adopted permanently by my father in Fig 4!!!

Chris i hear what you say and yes I understand - my recollection was that they loved the full throttle position when started but sadly I recall only too well the fact that after a tiring days sailing, coming back to an offshore mooring where we had left the dinghy and it not starting - necessitating a row ashore in an inflatable! What we used to put up with just to get out in the Thames Estuary!!!!  

[marshman]

Oh yes - had forgotten about Atco mowers too!!! I used to shove it back into the shed and say "I can't cut the grass - could not start the mower!" Strange that as when he tried it it sometimes went first kick!!! But then had I been cutting the lawn, I might have missed out on all that exploratory work which, as an early teenager, you tried out on the local girls!!

[Bytheriver]

We had a Seagull on the work boat on the lake in Battersea Park in the 1960s & early 70s it was always a pain to start & we did not have proper 2stroke oil just SAE30 & always blamed that but the Japanese outboards on the trip launches always started first time.

On the mower front when the staff claimed their mower would not start by the time I got there they inevitably started first time having dried out from the usual flooding Worse were the idle summer staff (students) who one of the fitters eventually  told me when a machine was sent for repair they had put something unspeakable in the tank to waste time!  (The London County Council were notorious for replacing the staff cars & chauffeur driven black Austin Cambridge's & Morris Oxfords (Top officials had more luxury than the lower ranks)but not mowers which were expected to last for ever.

Those were the days. 

As soon as the by then GLC went in 1974 the cuts began & hardly stopped since!

[webntweb]

On 18/04/2020 at 07:38, ChrisB said:

I was told some DAF cars were the same but Volvo vetoed them when they bought DAF.

I remember some DAFs in the 60s and early 70s were belt driven. I think it was called "Variomatic".

[grendel]

so were some of the volvo 340's

[marshman]

Indeed - they use to race them in autocross at Lydden Hill many many years ago. If you have really good memories these were often broadcast Sat afternoon in Grandstand!!

Still find CVT's in Honda s!!!

[ChrisB]

The Japanese love CVTs Toyota, Subaru, Honda. Nissan are now moving out of them and using Renault's twin clutch system. 

Personally I do not like CVTs, especially ones with a step in them so they feel like a conventional auto actually changing up.

[Vaughan]

We were talking about boat insurance somewhere the other day.

It has reminded me of a story which is sometimes told when boatyard folk get together in a pub and for all I know, it may be true!

It concerns a customer who brought his boat back to the yard on the Saturday morning and announced that he had lost an expensive watch over the side during the week. Before he claimed on his insurance, he wondered if the yard had any equipment, for searching on the bottom to see if they could find it.

"Do you know where you were moored, when you lost it ,sir?"

"Oh yes, I know exactly where I dropped it. I made a pencil mark on the side of the boat."

[grendel]

that sounds a bit like the story of one of the as laid drawings for a new electricity cable i was sent by the cable jointer, i looked at the sketch and there were unusually very detailed dimensions on it, unfortunately they were all measured from the back corner of his van, when i tracked him down in the yard and asked him how he expected he would find this in the future, i got the answer - he would park the van in the same place.

[Vaughan]

 

This is an EDP article of July 1968.  The Jenner Group was in its 2nd year of operation at that time.

The main photo is taken in the Yard of A.G. Ward & Son, whose premises along with Thorpe Old Hall, became the main base for the Jenners operation.  This site has now become the Old Hall Close housing development.

Before I tell some stories of Jenners radio breakdown vans and some of the breakdowns they covered, I wanted to mention the two people in the photos :

The "man in a van" is Tony Thrower, who went on to be the chief engineer at Hearts Cruisers after Jenners closed down.  He and I became very good friends over the years, as we both shared the same dreadful sense of humour.  You needed that, when you worked for Jenners!  He was still working at Hearts until the late 90s, when he sadly died of a sudden heart attack, after diving on a wreck off the north Norfolk coast.

The controller in the office is Pat Moss, who was chief engineer at Jenners and whose father Billy had been foreman at Wards for many years.  When Jenners closed, Billy became the foreman at Hearts where he continued until his "retirement" after 51 years as a Broads boatbuilder.

 

In fact he never retired, as he also owned the boatyard and moorings on the other side of the railway crossing which leads to the Frostbite Sailing Club in Thorpe.

He was still at work until the day he died, one winter Sunday morning when he went down to the yard to put a quick coat of varnish on a boat, but didn't come back for his lunch.  They found him sitting with a mug of tea, in front of the "pot belly" stove in his boatsheds. The yard was taken over by his son Pat but I don't know who has it now. Hopefully, it is still in the same family.

Billy's yard was the original premises of Stephen Field, a wherry builder and hirer of skiffs and half-deckers, who moved there from the Wensum in Norwich, near Cow Tower, in the early 1800s, where he had been a neighbour of John Loynes.  He passed his business to John Hart, who was then landlord of the "Three Tuns".  This pub later had several names, including "Thorpe Gardens" and is now "The Rushcutters".  Sometime in the mid 1800s he transferred the business (and his home) over to the island which had recently been created by the railway, and which passed down the family as G.Hart & sons.  My parents bought the business just after the War and re-named it Hearts Cruisers, although the boats already had their "Heart" names.

So one way or another, there is a lot of old history in the boatyards of Thorpe!