For us it was a chance holiday in early 2014 on board this little vessel Brinks Breakaway 1 on the Norfolk Broads.
We had been looking around for holidays and the chance to hire this little boat came up cheap so we jumped at the chance. Liam had holidayed on the Broads as a child but for me this was my first real foray into the boating world.
It wasn't all plain sailing. The boat was a bit of a handful, access on and off was terrible and getting to the bow to handle the bow line was at best taking your life into your own hands with the steep coach roof and low bow rails. In the picture above Breakaway is sat in the mud outside the Reedham Ferry pub. Access to the cockpit was so bad moored side on that the chance to have a stern on mooring was too good to pass up even if it did mean being left high and dry as the tide went out.
This was also our first meeting of our now long time friends Steve and Chris with their Sealine 310 Devocean, you can just make out the green canopies of Devocean to the left of the picture. Little did we know that in many years to come we would also be fellow Sealine owners and dedicated boaters. It was many years later in 2008 that we would meet again as we were buying Naughty-Cal. It's a funny old world.
We hired boats many more times between this first holiday and our eventual purchase of our own boat, always on the Broads and always from the Barnes Brinkcraft yard but it is this little boat, which is still on hire today, that truly gave us the boating bug. Thank you Breakaway.
We used to take our Ocean 30, 'Oceans Eleven' down to the Norfolk Broads for the summer when the kids were little. At 1st we would moor at Bells then laterly opted for Eastwoods. With the slower displacement boats we used to make a summer of it, until we bought Luro... Had a 1st holiday on her down there also, never been on Moonshine, will save that for another time xx
ReplyDeleteWe have taken Naughty-Cal a couple of times now. We love it down there. The plan is to head back next summer.
ReplyDeleteWe usually head from Boston to Lowestoft, spend an evening in the yacht club then have seven days on the Broads before heading back for Wells then home.
ReplyDeleteLast time we had a couple of nights in Southwold as well which was lovely.