Wednesday 8 April
Thursday 9 April
Friday 10 April
Saturday 11 April
Sunday 12 April
Monday 13 April
Tuesday 14 April
Brundall
Brundall
Brundall
Brundall
Brundall
Brundall
Brundall to Berney Arms
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We arrived at Brundall in time for lunch at the Yare Inn while the man from Panks Auto finished installing our new Eberspacher heater. The old D4L heater, which was over twenty years old and living on borrowed time, had popped its clogs a couple of weeks ago when we were in Brundall recommissioning Starry Night (our first visit in six months!). New spares are unavailable; second hand spares have a limited life and are still not cheap.
So we had decided to go for the latest all-singing all-dancing Eberspacher D4 Airtronic. Commissioning of the new unit was completed by 3.00pm and Mike spent the rest of the afternoon routing the cable harness to the new controller and taking out the old wiring. This took over three hours but saved a small fortune and resulted in the job being done the way Mike wanted it!
The new heater is amazing. It's much quieter than the old one (ear defenders no longer required), and it modulates its heat output according to the selected internal temperature, supposedly without coking-up. The old one was basically on or off and temperature control involved the adjustment of doors and windows. We are much pleased. Mike is going to try to sell the old one for spares on e-bay; it might make enough to buy a pint or two to drown our sorrows at the horrendous cost of the new heater.
We spent a cozy evening reading!
The new Eberspacher heater - toasting my toes as I type this!
We discovered the local Tesco Extra and stocked up for the week, an ordeal of nearly two hours due to the size of the place and the crowds. Note for file - avoid shopping the day before Easter Friday! (should really know this already!)
On the way back to Brundall we stopped off at the visitor centre at Malthouse Broad to pick up some electricity cards. These cards cost £1 each and work the 240V outlets dotted around the Broads Agency moorings for charging electric boats. They also can be used for people like us to power their boats' domestic systems. On inquiring how many kWh one got for the £1 we were told that it depended on what was plugged in - very sophisticated or wrong! Put another way - how many units do you get for £1? And the answer was - interesting question, no-one has ever asked that before, its run by the electricity company and we don't know! Nevertheless we bought five cards. Apparently they were selling "like hot cakes".
The rest of today has been spent doing odd jobs including attaching our Norfolk Broads registration number (64S) and our toll disc to a board hanging from the handrails, all in accordance with the handbook provided for instructing boaters exactly where to place same. I can't say it improves the appearance of Starry Night, but the toll was much much cheaper than the equivalent for the Thames.
Starry Night resplendent with Broads Toll and Registration Plate - they don't come any smaller!
Today we made our maiden voyage of the season. We went up stream in the direction of Norwich past some very pleasant rural scenes. We had only been as far as the Ferry House Inn at Surlingham before, so this was all new for us. There were not many people about, and most moorings were nearly empty apart from Commissioners Cut which was jammed full.
At Thorpe we looked enviously under the fixed bridge with its all too low clearance of just 6ft at the lovely pub, the Rushcutter's Arms, and headed on the down the Thorpe New Cut which bypasses the part of the river cut off by the two railway bridges.
Then we stopped at the West end of Whitlingham Great Broad at the 24 hour moorings by the Outdoor Education Centre (Shown on the Broads map in completely the wrong location). From here we walked round the Broad - a very pleasant two-mile flat walk, but rather crowded being Easter Friday.
After lunch we headed back to Brundall. The moorings which had all been empty were now full and we were glad to be going back to the peace and quiet of our backwater marina.
The day finished with some polishing and varnishing. It's been a perfect mild and sunny spring day.
Thorpe Old River Lower Railway Bridge hiding one of the many the Rushcutter's Arms on the Broads
Starry Night's mooring with our neighbour's boat absent
We made an early morning trip by car to Wroxham with the main purpose of visiting the local Chandlers to get hold of the latest Small Craft portfolio of charts for the East Coast, but alas they were sold out. We picked up some other bits and bobs and then headed back to the boat as it was getting very crowded.
In the afternoon we had a visit from some friends from home who were staying with friends in Norfolk.
Apart from a quick shower first thing this morning it has been dry all day, mild and with sunny spells, though we have seen really black skies in the distance to the West. We seem to have escaped the wet weather here - long may it last!
The weather forecast has changed again and the promised good weather has evaporated. The sky is very overcast and it is cool and damp. Lots of rain last night and more promised so we have deferred setting off for Berney Arms. Instead we decided on a trip by car to the coast, which tuned out to be somewhat misty.
Tea and cake in Happisburg revived us and on the way back we stopped at Horsey Windpump and went for a walk out onto the Horsey Mere Nature Reserve. Our route took us to the disused Brograve Mill on Waxham Cut (with water the the same colour as the coffee icing on our Happisburg cakes), and then back via Horsey itself with its splendid church. All told about three miles of varied scenery and a very pleasant, easy walk indeed, to be repeated in warmer and sunnier weather. The distant booming sound that Maureen hoped was a bittern turned out to be a fog horn on the nearby coast - identified by the very precise and regular timing interval.
Then it was back to the boat to test the new heater some more!
Horsey Windpump
Brograve Mill
We took the train from Brundall for the eight minute trip into Norwich this morning, for our first ever exploration of this city, once second only to London in size and importance. Our first stop was the Castle Museum to see the exhibition of sculptures by Moore and Hepworth. The Castle and its Museum are well worth a visit and we will have to go back again to do it justice.
After that we headed for the market. Most of the fixed stalls (there are 187 of them) were closed but the temporary ones were all going great guns serving food to the masses. We had a lovely paella from one stand followed a bit later by some Turkish cakes from another. We just hope they will be there next time we visit. We wandered around the lanes area with its cobbled streets and did some shopping. Mike got some stainless steel screws from a traditional ironmonger who sold them loose; they cost 20p for ten as opposed to 20p each in your average chandlery!
We then headed back to the station via the cathedral area, another gem, and the riverside walk. We really liked Norwich and will definitely be going back to look at the cathedral and to visit the castle proper, as well as to browse the market. It is a shame that the moorings in Norwich have a bad reputation, reinforced by the signs at the Yacht Station instructing boat owners "for security reasons" to deploy their mud weight (= anchor) and pass their mooring lines through the dockside rings and take them back onto their boat.
The forecast is saying that the weather will improve starting tomorrow. So all being well we will be setting out soon for a short run around the Southern Broads just as soon as one last little job is done. It involves drilling a 54mm hole through the hull, which is 5mm steel - not a job for the Easter week-end as I expect it will make a rather unpleasant noise! We don't want to upset our fellow boat owners.
The sun was shining through a haze when we got up, promising a decent day. Having bucked up the courage to make the hole in the hull for the new heater's exhaust pipe skin fitting, and marked everything out very carefully, I drilled the pilot hole for the circular cutter and now we were committed!
The actual cutting of the 54mm hole was quite quick and fairly uneventful - apart from when the pilot drill became loose, dropped out of the cutter mandrel and fell through it's own hole into the water never to be seen again. Luckily I had a spare drill to fit the mandrel otherwise I would have had to delve for it with my big magnet.
The 2m exhaust pipe is too short to make a good swan neck at the skin fitting so I am having a stainless steel tube made to extend the length of the exhaust pipe. This will be ready to collect on Monday. More work!
After everything was tidied up we had lunch and set off .There was a cool wind but the sun shone. When we got to the marshes near to Berney Arms we saw a huge flock of Curlews wheeling and swooping over the river, to add to the Marsh Harriers and other assorted wading birds. As we strolled back from the pub we caught a glimpse of a Barn Owl hunting over the marshes just opposite Starry Night.
A new top under construction......
....to replace the old one on this mill
Copyright © 2009 Mike Hawkridge