Arthur Marshall

It would have been the association, to stop tenants filling up the drives with rusting wrecks, or running illicit car dealing.

Don't see why it's an insult. A hobby is usually something you enjoy and that costs a lot, and that you think is worth doing, but don't do for a living. It's often a better description than "leisure boater", which implies one boats in one's spare time when you can't find anything better to do, rather than as with a hobby, when the important thing is playing with the boat.

Mine's 40 foot, both a starter and finisher as far as narrowboats go. My next one will be a cruiser. It's a bit like posh car drivers, I think. They still only get from A to B, and get stuck in the same traffic as me. Boating is a great thing, and all that matters is that the water stays outside where it belongs. But I agree any snobbery is a minority pastime, though a bit more prevalent than a while back, but then there are more boats about, too.

Back to the fridge. I've ordered a new gas jet as I think that's the problem. But I also noticed as I cleaned it all up that the silver foil like stuff wrapped round the insulation on the flue has disintegrated near the bottom. Any suggestions as to what to replace it with? I think it's only there to keep the insulation in place but obviously needs to be flame proof. The upper half of it is ok.

As what is now a hobby boater, I do think of the period from mid March to the end of October as my boating season. The other four months I just check it every now and then but have no intention to potter off. The phrase has always been used to cover the main hire boat season, from Easterish to Autumnish. I don't see it as a problem. The way things are going, CRT calling it an open or closed season isn't going to make any difference to the fact that half the system will be unusable at any one time, due to water shortages, floods, lock failures, bank breaches and the odd bridge collapse.

You are absolutely right!

Farms do vary - I and many others lived happily at one on the Shroppie, the first one I moved to on the Macc was fine, then doubled the rent overnight for the liveaboards and my current one is adamantly against anyone living on board. Most don't advertise apart from a board on the mooring, so easiest way to find one is to cruise along and ask at each one. Hard to do without a boat though.

But that's beside the point, because he likes the marina he is currently in. I remember vitriolic rows on here about the legality of mooring permits, when they came in, which seemed to be in the same category of doomed barrack lawyerese. Same as all the t&c tantrums. And winter moorings. And whether 48 hours is the same as two days. Oh, and that ****ing lightship...

All us single handed boaters are regular. Otherwise it can get really awkward.

Good grief. I must have obliterated from my memory, luckily. I presume some on here or FB must have pointed it out to me as I don't actually trawl the web looking for mentions of me. I really don't remember ever having seen it before, and I am now going to forget it again, even if it takes the other bottle...

Horrible, wasn't it? I hadn't seen it before, thank gods. It's why I don't watch vlogs. I deny all responsibility for idiots - I got into enough trouble for a song about Parry! Me too. That's why I've taken up the trumpet.

I have an urge when people mutter the boat's name as they go by to yell "Google it" .. or just put a note in the window! For general information, the next tune in the book was "Lady Windermere's Dump" and i was very tempted...

Well, mine was kindly repainted by the previous owner when I bought it. Unfortunately in lumpy hammerite which took an entire summer to get off. As I have been on an income of (usually considerably) less than 12 grand all my life, I can't afford to have it professionally painted, so I do the best I can with a couple of cans of Weathershield. The boat's hit a few bridges and been hit by a few boats in its time, so it's a bit dented here and there. I've done my best with what I've got, which is a much loved unshiny old boat that has been either my home or leisure activity for thirty years. I don't polish the brass because life's too short. I do the best I can with what I can afford. I also appreciate that some lucky people can afford professional care for their boats, and as long as they do it for the same reasons as me, and have an inclusive attitude to others pottering about, I'm all in favour. Almost all boats are interesting to look at, though sometimes the slightly more battered ones have more character, rather than looking like something out of Homes &Gardens - but the latter are nice too. Gives you something to aspire to! What matters is the attitude of the person (usually a bloke) at the tiller. There is certainly a higher proportion who refuse to make eye contact, wave or say hello as they go past you than there used to be, and I'm afraid they are, in fact, usually on shiny boats. Still a minority though, and they do make me laugh. What upset the OP wasn't, as far as I can see, the question, which was fair enough, nor the bloke's shiny boat, but the attitude. And also, in my opinion, she can justifiably get snotty about some of the attitudes shown by some in this thread, who, on the evidence of their willingness to go on the attack, would probably have responded to the approach even less charitably, assuming they had the nerve to act in person as they have online.

Doesn't matter. The licence is a benefit to you because you want to live in the marina, and you can't without it. End of argument. It makes no difference whether CRT insist on it, or the marina, or Joe Bloggs down the road who will hit you with a shovel every day if you haven't got one. If you want to live on a boat, in a marina, without being hit by a shovel, you benefit by having a licence. Nobody else benefits at all, though CRT get a tiny drop in the ocean of their cost of keeping the water level up so your boat wobbles instead of being a bungalow.

I'd like to know a bit more before conclusion jumping. Where this happened, and why some bloke thought they had the right to ask how long someone was staying somewhere - assuming that person A is on an ordinary mooring and within the usual time limits. If you're on a water point, or a service station, then it's a valid question, though there are ways of asking... same on a short shopping mooring. I've asked a few at full visitor moorings who looked as if they might be moving on, in case it was worth waiting. I've also been asked to move a ring or two to make space, though I usually notice and offer first. I've certainly been sneered at a few times by shiny boats and one or two have refused to share locks (my boats about 60 years old and a bit bruised). Can't say it bothers me, but ivnever been spoken to particularly unpleasantly. The original post looks like someone whose been pissed off by someone's attitude and is venting, and most of us have done that one time or another and a fair few of the comments are imo uncalled for. ETA I also do wonder if some of the responses would have been quite so extreme if the OP had been male....

I've sunk, been burgled, been shouted at... didn't spend tons originally but made up for it later. Thirty years later, still love the old tub, the sound of rain on the roof and those odd days sitting on the back in the sun with a good book...

The licence is for your benefit, so you can moor in the marina and, should you wish, use the canal. Nothing else.

Need is irrelevant, as is logic or common sense. All that matters is what a marina says you have to have to be allowed by them to moor in it. Nobody has to justify anything. There's no end to this particular argument, as we all know... There's no law, for example, to say I can't live most of the year on my current leisure mooring as I did on the previous one, except that this farmer will turf me off and the other one didn't mind. Laws, terms and conditions, rules, guidelines - none of them have any actual meaning or effect unless they are enforceable, and, if they are, and they are enforced, and you don't have the reciprocal clout to disenforce it, then you're stuffed, and that's all that matters. It all comes down to where you are in the food chain...

If it is mostly hirers, which I'm not sure of, then it comes down again to the wilfull ignorance of those who do something potentially dangerous without any research. People buy chainsaws in the same way. But something like this can happen to the most careful of us. It only takes one small lapse of attention at the wrong time and glug... A friend of mine hung up and sank at Wardle, and I left the boat in reverse and nearly did the same, both of us with over twenty years experience. It's just that 99% of the time you get away with it, same as car driving errors.

My boat and engine, for reasons historical, vibrates horribly at certain speeds. It doesn't appear to be fixable at a reasonable cost. It's fine at very, very slow, comfortable at 2 or 3 mph. It's the bit between tickover and 2 that threatens the fillings in my teeth and the engine bolts. So for fishermen I drop the speed by a third, and if they don't llike it they can go and torture fish on rivers. I have the same problem with the 1 mph brigade and those who slow right down at bridges. I used to get annoyed about the last lot, which I finally realised was pointless, so now I just park on the mud for a bit, make a cup of tea and catch them up again half an hour later. In extreme cases I overtake.

I always assumed they went on at the same time, in the same room. That's the one. If that's the agreement, they aren't doing much trading as some of those wrecks have been there for about fifteen years!

I accept your figures, I just find it remarkably high. I do wonder about the accuracy of CRT's checker website, though it should be linked to the licensing section. And your numbers wouldn't have included the boats without any number showing, either. If yiu recall, were they mostly on offside moorings? I know there was a boatyard on the t&m at Stoke that always seemed to have nothing but apparently abandoned and unlicensed boats, though last time I went by I saw some there with licenses. I always wondered how they got away with it.

That does seem rather a lot. Considering that the Macc, Peak Forest and Caldon aren't exactly a rampaging mass of boats, and assuming the sizeable majority of boats do show licences, you must have gone past a couple of thousand boats in that area in September. I do find that hard to believe, as only three or four boats go past my mooring on the Macc most days I'm down there. And the Caldon is even quieter. I suspect you may have counted a lot of them twice as you went up and back.

I assumed the reason for slowing was so that the drag of the boat didn't hoick their keepnets into the cut. Got told recently that most don't use them now, but of course they do in competition. I slow down slightly, but then my max speed is 3mph anyway.

As a relatively (these days anyway) rule respecting good boater, I can't say I've ever been worried about any daft rules CRt or BW before them impose. I didn't when I lived on a leisure mooring, either. In practice, I don't think the bulk of these changes will affect anyone who boats with a bit of consideration. And I still think the oddest changes are down to their seemingly endless hassle with young Dunkley, ex of this parish.