IanD

Oh come on, you've seen Thunderbirds and SpaceX landings -- never mind the bed, just have rocket thrusters on the whole boat... 😉

Disagree. If I was a liveaboard CCer moving round the system, it's quite possible there would be occasions I'd like to stay in an interesting town/city over a couple of weekends -- and then move on, and carry on moving round the system, probably hundreds of miles a year. That's "bona-fide navigation" by any reasonable test (not an idiot judge whose word is not case law!), because cruising is the main intention, with stops as necessary. CMers are the other way round, stopping as long as possible (most of the time?) in or near one place and moving the absolute minimum needed to not get nicked. I think the difference is clear, and reducing the 14 days to 7 days would have bigger negative effects than positive ones -- and unless you have twice as many checkers halving the time between checks on boats, meaningless. Which now means you have to check all boats everywhere boats every day (otherwise 48 hours is meaningless), as opposed to every week with 14 days -- which of course isn't done in practice today, but could be. (to meaningfully enforce any time limit on anything -- boating, parking -- you need to check at least that often, and preferably twice that often) How do you propose CART check all boat positions/moorings every day to enforce a 48h rule? (of course there is an easy answer, enforced GPS trackers as a license condition...)

14 days is also a good choice of length of time to stay legally in one place for boaters who are genuinely cruising around large parts of the system with stops to do stuff and look at places, which is what the CC exemption was intended for. 7 days is a bit short given constraints of when people might be able to move, for example it means you can't stay in one town/city for a long week including two weekends. The idea should be to allow "real CCers" to travel around without major inconvenience, while discouraging CMers. Shortening the time from 14 to 7 days would penalise CCers and would make little or no difference to CMers -- especially since to enforce it you would need twice as many checkers to spot infringement. The problem is not the 14 day period, it's the lack of detection and ineffective enforcement -- and the second is largely down to the legal situation and rules, which is what the commission is set up to look at.

Which like the first meeting of any commission came to no conclusions, it was mainly considering what the commission was going to do -- because that's the first step, better than jumping in with both feet not having any plan. I know that making lots of noise and publicity and decisions in haste that later turned out to be bad ones was how the last government worked, I'd hope that this commission doesn't do the same... 😞 If you find those minutes funny I can only conclude you either don't understand how commissions like this work or have a *very* strange sense of humour... 😉

Huh? Most common case is stern on the cill, that's where the doors are? Closed bulkhead is at the sinking pointy end where you don't want to be... (yes there have been *very* occasional exceptions like Drum, as opposed to the dozens of stern cillings every year -- I prefer to worry about bigger risks, not negligibly tiny ones -- see below...) Or if you're struck by a meteorite, that could punch a hole straight down through the hull and sink you in seconds...

If the slope is steep enough to be a problem you've already sunk... 😞 I try and not have anyone inside the boat at locks for all the obvious reasone, including keeping them busy steering or doing the lock... 😉

Not an issue, unless your boat is ballasted *very* bow-high. The slope along the length of the bed on mine is half an inch or so, completely unnoticeable unless you go to bed with a spirit-level as a companion... 😉

That's one reason my bed is lengthwise with a cross- walkway at the foot, I can slide out of the bottom and walk around to the loo... 🙂

The wire voltage drop doesn't matter if you're just trickle/float charging, it will drop to close to zero as the current does. No current = no voltage drop, Mr Ohm sez... 🙂

There's an awful lot of speculation based on no evidence and anti-CART conspiracy theories going on here. How about we wait to see what the commission does -- assuming it talks to any non-NBTA boaters! -- and then recommends *before* slagging them off? 🙂

Why would you be "stuck in the front, unable to get out" when you can walk inside the boat to the stern -- you know, the end where the steerer is that *isn’t* sinking? And of course if you don't have a well deck (with scuppers) or front doors, the bows can also go down a *very* long way without the boat taking on lots of water... 😉 So if you're worried about sinking in locks or being trapped inside by a cilling, I'd say it's much safer than a "normal" boat... 🙂

That was kind of my point -- all these "oh my god you can't stand in the well deck with a rope" objections simply don't seem to be an issue in real life. Just like many of the other objections to almost anything posted on CWDF... 😉 I don't know why more boaters don't keep a few carabiners on board, they can come in really handy sometimes e.g. round a riser, or in my case to attach a spring line to the eyes on the gunwale. Maybe it's because some boaters don't want to acknowledge that anything new or from outside the "traditional boating" world has any merit, and certainly not something from a completely different field like climbing... 😉

...which then drips onto the bed... 😞

That's not the reason for not having one though (because I did consider it) -- possible water ingress and draughts are... 😉 I assume you noted that the front couple of feet of the roof don't have solar panels anyway, to give a grippy cross-walkway and for getting on and off the roof? (oops, sorry -- cabin top...) But they are advisory about safety, which you seem so concerned about -- are you suggesting they should be ignored? You seem really hot on safety in every other possible area... 😉

I'm perfectly well aware what the BSS says, thank you -- the fire fixation was replying to other posters. If the boat is cilled going down -- by far the most common cause of lock sinkings -- then the stern will be going up and the bows down -- why would I want to get out at the bows? If the bows hang up under something going up -- the next most common cause -- the same applies. While cruising there will rarely be anyone in the bedroom anyway, if they're inside the most likely place is the dinette/kitchen at the stern -- again, no need to exit at the bows. And having a watertight bow with no well deck eliminates one potential cause of sinking which is filling up the well deck from a leaky gate -- which I've had almost happen in the past. Given the amount of time I spent designing the boat, do you really think I didn't consider all this, based on many boating holiday over many years on many boats covering most of the UK canal system? Of course I did, and I made my decisions looking at all the tradeoffs, and chose a design which was best *for me*. Other people may make different choices or disagree with mine, that's fine... 🙂

Two small problems -- that's the foot end of the bed, and the last thing I want in a bedroom is a potentially leaky draughty sliding hatch... 😉

Thanks for the suggestion -- that's probably what I'd do anyway, it's the obvious solution 🙂 Out of curiosity, what do singlehanders do? They can't simultaneously be on the bow and at the stern...

The doors over the bow cabin would be about a foot high -- it's not empty inside, it's full of clothes storage... 😉

In other words you don't like reverse layout boats, which is absolutely your choice -- and on a traditional layout boat with the saloon at the front, of course front doors (and well deck?) are the best choice, which is why they're so common. Many people nowadays -- including me -- prefer a reverse layout (bedroom closest to the bows) for all sorts of reasons, and a front exit makes little sense in this case, certainly not for everyday use. The BSS is quite happy with them for emergency use, and so am I. Of course they're not ideal, but neither are breakout/opening windows or Houdini hatches or tiny fall-out-onto-the-bows doors over a full-width bed, all of which are also acceptable to BSS. The odds of me ever having to use any of them are minute anyway, given the lack of most of the common causes of boat fires... The side hatch in the bedroom has hardly ever been opened, flashing is unpopular in the circles I move in. The ones either side of the dinette often are, for exactly the reasons you said... 🙂 Doesn't skin it, only gets the fur off. A bit like de-bristling a dead pig with kettles of boiling water and a scraper/knife, thoroughly unpleasant... 😞