Walking Pace is flawed

Speed

Calculating your speed in a boat is challenging, especially if you’re not used to it. What’s worse is that there are many written resources out there that will throw you off too. For instance, you’re likely to read elsewhere that you travel at walking pace. The Broads Authority suggests this, so it must be right, right?

I have a counter argument to this idea of travelling at walking page.

I am sure this is the advice given in many places as it’s a relatively simple thing to understand. However, I am not sure it’s too helpful. Whereas this might be an easy to thing to understand comprehend (everybody understands walking pace, right?), it is important to fully recognise that  walking pace is very individual.

We are all individual (rip Terry Jones)

An average fit 20 year old walks about 75% faster than the average 80 year old. In general, if you assume that you walk at between 2-3mph, you’re not going to be far out. But, even this 1mph difference gives a margin of being a third faster or slower. Step onto a boat, cast off and you now have an additional problem of judgement because you are invariably looking at a reference point on the bank as it’s the only fixed thing to compare. That reference is a number of metres away so parallax issues creep in too.

I have heard some people argue that that the difference between 2 and 4mph is negligible anyway, but you would be wrong. It might be slow, but 4mph is double 2mph – that’s 100% faster. Expressed like this and you begin to see the importance. And for the record, it’s usually those people I have had reported to me for speeding that make these and other claims (your honour).

The effects of speed

Speed has a direct correlation with wash. The faster you spin the propeller, the more it digs the rear of the boat into the water, the more turbulence is created and the greater the wash. Wash has many important factors that are environmentally bad; a heavy wash will cause bank erosion, it upsets other river users (just imagine spilling boiling water all over yourself as some plank hurtles past you whist you’re making tea), causes damage to boats and can kill wildlife. This might sound fanciful, but consider the possibilities of wash causing eggs to fall from nests, Kingfisher nests being flooded with helpless young inside and so on.

More than ever, we have a responsibility to look after our environment and by committing fewer selfish acts like speeding on the Broads, we are all doing out bit.

How to properly measure speed.

Historically, hire boats have been fitted with a plaque at the helm that gives you am idea of the speed when the engine is doing specific speeds as shown on the rev counter. Historically, this was about the best measure that was necessary and it still works today. It is arguably much better than the idea of gauging walking pace to my way of thinking. But still, it is of course, prone to considerable error, particularly if you are being pushed along by a 3mph current and have the revs set at what the plaque tells you is 6mph. You’re probably doing 8, that’s a 25% increase.

These days, there is no excuse. Your smart phone will have a full GPS receiver built in to it (I don’t think there has been a smartphone device since the introduction of the iPhone 3G in 2008 that hasn’t). What’s a little more difficult though is finding an app that is capable of measuring such low speeds because many road-based mapping systems aren’t concerned with anything below 5mph.

Aweigh - Map View

There are a number of apps that are designed for boating though. Until recently, we were recommending Sail Droid for Android devices. But in summer 2019 a killer app was launched for Norfolk Broads boaters and that app is Aweigh.

Up, up and Aweigh. 

So, what makes this the best app for your boating holiday? The key attraction is that it is actually designed for the Norfolk Broads. It shows where you are on a live map, gives you tide data (for the current day only), emergency numbers should you need them, access to What Three Words and, crucially for this blog, your current speed.

Download it and become familiar with its simple user interface before you arrive on holiday and you won’t have any rangers waving speed paddles at you or pulling you over for a quiet word….  

Aweigh is available in the App Store and Google Play and is entirely free to download. It comes highly recommended.

Aweigh - environmental data

And, if you are wondering over the spelling, it isn't some random cleverness on the part of the developer; it is a naultical term referencing the anchor of a vessel. Most of us would have heard Hollywood captains giving the instruction to "weigh anchor", but fewer would have seen this written. To Weigh Anchor means to begin to raise the anchor and so begin a voyage. At the point that the anchor is free of the sea or river bed, it is said to be aweigh.