Feb - July 2009
2009-07-21

Cold weather and snow came with February. Velvet 3 was out on the river testing GPS systems for a Great Yarmouth company causing us the need to break the ice several mornings to let them escape onto the main river. Work on the hire cruisers continued in the big shed opposite with ‘Dynamo’ Dave compounding and polishing and Steve painting. This work carried on regularly until continuing freezing weather caused our water main to leak and the car park was dug up for repairs hours before the tide shot up necessitating the wearing of wellingtons for quite some days. As well as this, normal winter maintenance on Solace was being carried out, such as varnishing which is virtually a never ending job. Later in the month the water levels began to drop and one or two cruisers drifted out on hire to experienced crews. Sara had a quick fostering job on with a black greyhound called Evie who soon went to her new family.

March too was fairly cold as all the above work continued as normal without much of interest happening until Jim a brindle lurcher arrived on the 21st and following a couple of settling in poos and wees in the house on the first night soon settled in.

A couple of days later, Steve and I cut out the first sections of my new sailing gun punt Shoveler which was meant to be a long term project but in fact once we had started, sort of took over Steve’s time as luckily he was between jobs.

For now though Solace and her fleet was taking all our effort as well as seeing the odd boats in and out again. On 12th April Jim was a particularly naughty boy and galloped the whole of Sara’s Easter egg down in one go – he was not popular!

A couple of days later we piled all of Solace’s gear on board and pushed her to the yard from her winter quarters. This mess took us several days to sort out but was necessary as Paul needed to complete some quite intricate engineering work. On the 27th April we launched all the boats out of the garage and later rigged Solace ready to move the whole of her fleet up to Wroxham Broad on the 7th May.

At this time apart from the usual turning around of hire cruisers we were, despite having got rid of Solace still trying to clear our private winter work including the white boat Painted Lady which we have looked after for many years and which returned to Wroxham Broad on the 18th May, which was about the same time as a run of damage to the hire cruisers began, firstly with Velvet 3 sustaining two holes!!

Sara moved her 3 bee hives to a farm at Ranworth on some oil seed rape fields for a few weeks before fetching them back in the yard van (a bit of a nerve racking time having thousands of bees inches away from you!) . This venture was a success as this yielded over 60 lbs of delicious rape honey (For Sale in the office £4 a jar!).

I received a tip off concerning some gun punt remains at Catfield and one evening drove over to find and measure the scant remains just off Catfield dyke which I had first seen in much better condition around 25 years ago but had not then taken much of an interest as I was after wherry remains at the time.

The yard joined in Wroxham’s scarecrow convention at the end of May and some of you may have seen our eel-man (closely resembling a certain member of the boatyard!) sitting in his tiny punt Wee Maid that has been on loan to the Broads museum in Stalham which we then borrowed back for the scarecrow weekend and which for a short time lay alongside Shoveler which by now was progressing well.

The 1st of June saw us pulling out the old wooden Broom Genevieve for a bottom check up and later in the day Velvet 1 broke her window at Potter Heigham. Also on the Friday evening we had to quickly find a hob to replace one not working on Diamond – no easy task so late in the day. The next morning Commander 1 hit a private boat and Ambassador 2 broke a rear window within 10 minutes of leaving the yard.

Tim, the Wroxham bridge pilot had his own boat lifted on our gantry and the large metal keel cut off.

The following wet day, we launched Shoveler and rigged her out with a set of Coypu gear. On the Sunday we took Shoveler onto Wroxham Broad for a really good sail and testing of the gear.

Launched Genevieve and then slipped Sharomel an Ernest Collins cruiser into the big shed for a massive repair and varnish job (still ongoing as I type 21 July).

That day also I checked on a fishing boat that Velvet 3 had swiped a couple of weeks previously. Had a long drive to Beccles for a blocked toilet. It took about 30 seconds to clear but interestingly the lady on board informed me that it wasn’t her fault as she didn’t use the loo at all during the week, holding out until she got home!!

At the end of May after a couple of months of living with us, Jim moved onto another foster home as we were going away in a couple of weeks – I have since heard that now he has found his forever home at last.

Monday 22nd June – Sara and I arrived in Adelboden Switzerland for a cake eating...I mean walking holiday high up in the Swiss Alps. Sara was rather disconcerted that it was only 5c that afternoon, but the weather slowly warmed up to really high temperatures until it was really rather too hot at times. We spent the week riding about on the local buses and cable cars to different destinations and slowly winding our way back to the hotel for a massive feast every night. All the meadows and pastures high up were full of alpine wild flowers and the cows had been driven up to the high pastures. However the week was quickly over and alas we had to return back to Norfolk . Tillie had a super time at Sara’s parents where we suspect she was thoroughly spoilt but don’t mention the brown grass patches to Sara’s Father!!!

Since then things have carried on pretty much as normal except that the tide was very high a couple of weekends ago so no boats could get up to Coltishall so that I didn’t have any piloting to do on Sunday morning.