I think that most or all of the hire boats had tabernacles. Getting the mast down was the easy bit but however carefully you arranged the rigging before hoisting there was always one line that got itself caught. In theory, one could lower the mast while under way, and raise it again after the bridge, though I never attempted this, but we became quite good at quanting under Potter bridge.
Done it many times. It’s what you do if you haven’t got a motor and quanting seems like too much work. For me, a sailing boat on the Broads with a motor is an abomination. The purpose of a vacation is to introduce some randomness into our usually orderly lives and without an engine you can’t be absolutely sure where you will be for the following night. In half a dozen weeks that I did, other than when a child, we never failed to cover virtually all the northern Broads, even on the occasion when we were accompanied by my idiot brother-in-law in a sister boat.
Well put!
When I was in my young teens we would sleep on a motor cruiser and also have a half-decker. These were usually a Yare & Bure OD, one of the White Myths. In one year we couldn't get one and ended up with a lugger, which was less fun but I do remember the name 'Noinin' and it appears in some cine film that we took.
The mad supermarket is Lathams, which is now part of the QD Stores chain, it is nowhere near as interesting as it used to be.
