Its that time of year again....

spannerman

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I have just got back from a weeks holiday down on the south coast of Norway with the girlfriend at her families cabin. I went to Arendal to see the F1 race which was spectacular, although unlucky for Steve Curtiss that they had a cooling hose failure when they were in the lead and so lost to the Victory team.
While I was 'on holiday' not one but five of our customers ( 4 Princess's and 1 Windy)rang to say they had hit the bottom resulting in several new props and axles and ruined holidays while they waited for them to be repaired. Admittedly the coastline here is a navigational nightmare with thousands of unseen hazards.
But I was always taught when I was having flying lessons, you always have to know your position at any given time in relation to hazards and emergency landing places, and I think the principle holds true for boating too.
And seeing as these expensive boats have chartplotters and depth sounders as standard what excuse is there for driving onto rocks in clear weather, unless you have a motor/steering problem.
It seems to me that many owners just don't take the time to understand the equipment they have at their fingertips.
Then we had a guy the other week with a P38, who noticed the starboard motor ran a little warmer than normal so thought he'd check the header tank, after filling it with 20 liters of water he began too wonder how it could have got so low without seriously overheating...!
He'd poured the water into the oil filler, luckily he had the sense not to start the engine, so we goat it back on one engine and sucked the water out which lay at the bottom of the sump, then we changed the oil and ran it up to get it hot and changed it again, he was lucky as it could have been very expensive, but so often I go onboard and find the handbooks and manuals still in their plastic envelopes never opened.
I guess the owner is too busy making his millions to bother with mundane things like instruction manuals.
Still it keeps us busy and pays our bills...!
 

volvopaul

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Agree entirely! nothing more to add, have bought boats and seen manuals in wrappers, still they are handy to keep for the next owner, these new plotters are very good and display everything you need unfortunatly for some you have to look at them as well and work out where the right bits are to go into, that seems the hard bit for some owners.
 

hlb

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I've met a couple of blokes, that did not like charts. One told the tale of how he knocked the bottom out of the boat.

The other said he used an auto route?? If it got rough, his wife told him to go faster and faster. Met him in Delette?? Brittany.
Never seen a boat as full of cracks, wonder it held together.
 

MaltaBob

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Well, I blame Jeremy Clarkson ! He always boast's " you're not a proper man if you have to read the book".
Mind you, some instruction books are written by technical geeks who know the system backwards - the're not best placed to write handbooks.
Let's be fair, yes , they are ' doing their thing ', and they HAVE to share it with you when it goes pearshaped! So what goes round , comes round , and Spannerman and Paul get to share in their 'good' fortune ! But as an engineer, its sad to see unnecessary waste and damage eh ! /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 

omega2

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It's good for you, but not so clever for the emergency services with idiots about on the water, some are unbelievable. Like a guy who came alongside us whilst we were fishing and asked for directions to Harwich, we pointed in the general direction and off he went, an hour later he was back alongside, asking for Harwich again, we explained that he had been here before about an hour ago and what was wrong with his compass? Nothing said he and handed me a sixpenny woolworths job, Iasked if had anything a bit better, no was the reply, I asked where he kept it and he pointed to the dashboard, I could not see properly so asked go onboard, he invited me and took me into the wheelhouse, then he pointed at the binnacle and said I keep it there. Imagine the look on his face when I rolled the cover back to reveal a real compass, like I said, IDIOTS.
 

Andrew_Fanner

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[ QUOTE ]
Like a guy who came alongside us whilst we were fishing and asked for directions to Harwich, we pointed in the general direction and off he went, an hour later he was back alongside, asking for Harwich again, we explained that he had been here before about an hour ago and what was wrong with his compass?

[/ QUOTE ]

There's a very old dit about a similar hail in very foggy condituions. On being told "just off Ganges" there was an admission of serious navigational failure, he only wanted to go as far as Lowestoft.
 

oldgit

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Praise be to the joys of the very gentle and forgiving nature of our glorious east coast mud.
So gently does it slow you down and bring you to a inexpensive halt.
 

omega2

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[ QUOTE ]
Praise be to the joys of the very gentle and forgiving nature of our glorious east coast mud.
So gently does it slow you down and bring you to a inexpensive halt.

[/ QUOTE ]
try hitting the Buxey at 12 knots.
 

Stoaty

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Some years ago I was fishing near the Red Sand Towers in the thames estuary and a chap in a 18 ft open boat with a 20hp outboard came along and asked us if he was going in the right direction for Canvey Island. I pointed in the direction of Canvey, speechless and with my mouth wide open. He was towing a raft made out of 45 gallon drums and planks with a mini digger on it. To this day I cannot imagine where he could have come from.
 

oldgit

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Arr.... but this proper Medway mud, a bit nicer smelling and you could use it for a beauty face pack,not that cheap imported stuff you have up there.
Anyway 12 knots. ..... Some of us dream about being able to go that fast.
 
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