Tony Dunkley

You should be able get down Thorne with a narrow beam x 68' boat without having to go stern first, . . I've been [downgate] through that lock with a 67' x 14' 6" BW Trent bucket dredger, on the way back to the Trent from Doncaster. There's a lot of depth over the top cill of that lock, and if the pound from Thorne to Keadby is on weir or close to, it's still got a foot or so over it with the lock drained right down. With your draught you can drain the lock down enough to be able to let the fore-end run under the walkways [on the bottom gates] and into the corner by one of the heel posts before there's any chance of the stern end catching the cill. When the lock has drained right down, open the other side bottom gate and shove the fore-end across. Leaving Goole with a pleasure boat to get to Trent End at flood [Low Water] isn't a good idea, for several reasons. Even with your shallow draught, there are some places where you'll ground near LW unless you're spot-on in the deep channel, and you'll be outside of Free Tide Time at Goole so you'll be paying £31.25 for the pen out at Goole. If you go out earlier [no later than 1.5 hours after Goole HW] to avoid the charge there and lay on Blacktoft Jetty over the ebb, then ABP will charge you the same for doing that. Your best option is to pen into the Ouse on the last minutes of Free Tide Time, run down to Trent End, turn into the Trent, then anchor a couple of boats lengths off the stones [half tide wall] a good 400 yards upriver of South Trent Light. Get underway again, up the Trent, on the last of the ebb about 15 - 20 minutes before flood. You must only undertake this in suitable, settled weather conditions, and you will either need to know the river very well, go with another boat that does, or take a Pilot, . . . the lower Ouse and Trent are no place for pleasure craft in the hands of first timers on these rivers.

You could do that, but you would need to buy a standard single pump cover plate, and either shorten the existing spindle or buy a new spindle for that model/size of pump without the bilge/auxiliary fitting. PM sent in response to yours.

If it hasn't got a 'built-in' bleed off from the main chamber, and it's going to function as a bilge pump, it'll need a constant dribble into the suction side fed from a very small bore pipe tee'd into the output from the main pump, . . . . you can tap into the cooling water circuit anywhere that's convenient, . . . either before or after it's been round the blocks/heads. Just make sure that the pipe work rises from both sides of both pumps, . . . . so they're never dry on start-up, and they'll prime quicker. Tell whoever buys the engine to always turn off the cooling water intake cock when leaving the boat unattended. Depending on the outside [of hull] water level in relation to the engine, when the engine isn't running, water from the engine cooling side can leak past worn or damaged impellers via the bleed off arrangement and into the bilges from out of the bilge pump suction/strumbox.

You won't do any harm to that one if you run it 'dry' !

Bilge pump, . . . or they can be used for circulation in a secondary cooling circuit. If you don't intend to use it for either purpose, then you must take out that impeller, . . . they 'burn out' if run dry. Some dual pumps [like that one] have an internal 'bleed' to keep the impeller wet/lubricated, but some don't, and need a bleed off feed from the output side of the main chamber.

You can't possibly break or breach the conditions 'in the licence contract', because Licences [in compliance with statute] are NOT contracts.

It wouldn't be an 'offence' in the normally accepted sense of the word, but it could be argued to be a contempt of Court, although it would probably be more trouble than it would be worth to pursue the matter.

To follow up on what Nigel has said in post #694 :~ It is undeniable that C&RT exist and operate in a world of their own, with little or no connection to reality, truth, or anything resembling even common decency. The Section 8 procedure is certainly their favoured enforcement 'tool', despite never being intended for the use to which it has latterly been put by both BW and C&RT. It is lengthy, costly and, if responded to appropriately, in Shoosmiths own words [when discontinuing legal action against me in 2014] ultimately "worthless and academic". Incredible as it may seem, those very words were used by C&RT/Shoosmiths in an Application [to Discontinue] to Nottingham County Court which consisted mainly of whingeing about how C&RT's legal action had been wrecked because I had filed a Defence and bought a new PBC for my boat AFTER they had issued the Claim. The 1983 Act did NOT confer any powers whatsoever to remove boats from the waterways for alleged [or proven] breaches of Licence T&C's, NOR does it empower them to take possession of a vessel with the intention of selling it, if the owner is known to them and wishes to reclaim it, and NOR does it provide for the recovery of alleged, or proven, debt in the form of unpaid Licence/PBC fees. The following selection of lies and mis-information, published with the intention of intimidating boaters into complying with unenforceable T&C's, is currently to be found on the C&RT website. It is interesting to note the complete absence of the 2013 Order with regard to 'Tadworth' [the one that was the basis for all the recent lies and nonsense] from the list of Court Orders they publish on the same part of the website. Our main tool for enforcement is the power for the Canal & River Trust to 'section 8' unlicensed boats. This relates to powers given in the British Waterways Act 1983 (and transferred to the Canal & River Trust) and allows us to remove boats from the waterway if they are there without our permission or persistently in breach of our licence terms and conditions – including not having a licence. If a boat is also someone's home, we take the added precaution before exercising these powers to get a court order to remove the boat from the waterway. Once we've removed the boat we can either sell it or, if it is of little value, we may destroy it. We have first claim on any sale proceeds which we use to recover outstanding fees and to cover our costs of taking enforcement action.

You nullified the 2013 Order on the day you bought the Licence for 'Tadworth' back in February, and it was that uncomfortable truth that led C&RT, in the form of the local Enforcement Supervisor to resort to any means they could think of, blatant lying included, to attempt to convince you that the Order made in 2013 had the effect of permanently excluding you from their waters, at their discretion. The fatal flaws in their thoroughly dishonest intimidation and boat thieving strategy have had some very publicly exposure, and they have nobody but themselves to blame. If they had simply left you in peace with your new LIcence it's unlikely that more than a very few would have taken much notice, or realized the implications for all the other past, and future, recipients of their pointless Orders. But C&RT seem to be quite incapable of learning anything from all their blunders, and true to past form, they've shot themselves in the foot yet again.

Section 8(1) of the 1983 BW Act defines a " relevant craft " as ' any vessel which is sunk, stranded or abandoned in any inland waterway', or 'left or moored therein without lawful authority'. Section 8(2) of the 1983 Act empowers C&RT to 'remove any relevant craft after giving not less than 28 days notice to the owner'. Section 8(3) of the 1983 Act limits C&RT to recovering ONLY expenses incurred in 'the removal, storage or destruction of the relevant craft', or 'the removal or storage of any furniture, tackle and apparel of the relevant craft, or any cargo, goods, chattels and effects on board the relevant craft', or 'marking, watching, buoying or otherwise controlling the relevant craft'. The Orders, that C&RT waste so much time and money obtaining, merely confirm that they have the right to exercise the above statutory powers if the owner fails to remove the unlicensed vessel, specify a date by which the owner must remove the unlicensed vessel, and [in the form of an Injunction] elevate the severity and the consequences of returning the vessel to C&RT waters, without first buying a Licence or PBC, to being 'contempt of Court' rather than simply the minor criminal offence, punishable by means of a fine, that keeping or using an unlicensed boat already is in statute and byelaw. This is precisely why using Section 8 powers to deal with unlicensed boats, with a known and contactable owner, is so utterly pointless and ineffective, . . . the Orders/Injunctions can be nullified on the day they are made, simply by buying a Licence or PBC.

You guess wrong, . . . . it's a process that dribbles on for many months, and furthermore, the Section 8 process, as laid down in statute, does NOT include any means or provisions with regard to recovering either alleged or proven debt. The [Court] Orders obtainable via the Section 8 process do NOTHING more than confirm that C&RT have the right to remove a vessel from their waters, . . . . they DO NOT authorize C&RT to either take possession of the vessel, or to hold it as lien against any debt. Potential problems that may be encountered in enforcing a debt judgment are no reason or excuse for attempting to collect a debt by illegal means, and C&RT are presently in severe difficulties for, amid a selection of other illegal/unlawful acts, having committed the criminal offence of doing precisely that in January 2015.

If only they would just leave it at that !

It's the question of compliance with the law, as opposed to compliance with what C&RT wish was law, that's at the heart of this matter. If you buy a Licence or PBC via the 'home mooring' option in the 1995 Act, then the 'law' simply requires that the mooring is 'available', whereas C&RT [unlawfully] insist that it must be used, . . . and waste huge amounts money in attempting to enforce that. As for C&RT incurring high costs, particularly when taking action against boat owners who have failed to obtain a current Licence or PBC, the responsibility for any high costs rests not with the boat's owner, but solely with C&RT as a direct result of misusing the powers they have under the 1983 and 1971 Acts, both of which provide for the recovery of unpaid Licence or PBC fees as a civil debt under Sections 5 and 7 respectively. This, together with a criminal prosecution in a Magistrates Court [ under Section 5(1) of the 1971 Act, and the 1976 Byelaws] is the correct and appropriate action against licence-dodgers, but C&RT invariably choose the costly, futile and ultimately ineffective Section 8 [and 13] route instead.

The Claim issued against me on 1 April 2016 was, in essence, to obtain Declaratory and Injunctive relief to the effect that the Canal and River Trust [C&RT] are entitled to prevent an individual from exercising the Common Law Public Right of Navigation on any or all of the River Navigations [PRN Rivers] listed in Schedule 1 of the British Waterways Act 1971(as amended). The Claim was grounded in the false premise that C&RT are empowered to demand that any vessel kept or used on any of the above mentioned PRN Rivers must be licensed by the Trust, whereas the sole statutory obligation is simply for the vessel to be registered with the Navigation Authority by means of a Pleasure Boat Certificate, and then, only if it is to be used within the main navigable channel of any of the scheduled River Navigations. Included within the relevant part of the legislation [section 5(1) of the 1971 BW Act] is a proviso exempting any pleasure craft from the need to hold a current Registration Certificate, or PBC, in order to use the PRN rivers if the vessel already has a Licence permitting the use of the canals upon which the PRN was extinguished in the 1968 Transport Act, . . . something which C&RT appear to have erroneously treated as being a requirement for vessels on PRN rivers to be 'Licensed'. It would seem that at least some of these inconvenient [for C&RT] truths may have at last begun to find their way into the warped and feeble minds of the Enforcement hierarchy.

By way of further emphasis on the utter futility of C&RT obtaining Section 8 based removal and [subsequent] exclusion Orders/Injunctions, I have drawn the Court's attention to the fact that pursuing the suggestion of 'licensing' my boat [E-mail in post #1261] would have the immediate effect of nullifying the Section 8 and 13 Notices upon which C&RT's original claim relies, and ultimately, in the event of the original Claim being successful, rendering the Declaration and Injunction sought by the Claimant pointless and superfluous, as happened previously in August 2014 when the C&RT discontinued a substantially similar Claim [Nottingham County Court Claim No. A00NG769] after they were obliged to re-issue a PBC they had unlawfully revoked some seven months earlier in January 2014.

Following the receipt of 'further instructions' from C&RT's Legal (?) and Enforcement departments, Shoosmiths have sent me the following E-mail :~ Dear Tony, Further to our telephone call yesterday please find attached a copy of the Order made by Judge Owen QC on 1 June 2016. Please also find our application to set this order aside, together with the supporting witness statement of Lucy Gray. We will of course notify you once we receive a response from the Court in relation to our application. Meanwhile, if you would like to make a proposal to CRT to resolve this matter, as per our discussion yesterday, please do bear in mind that this must address the issues of licensing your boat “Halcyon Daze” as soon as possible, and meeting any outstanding arrears. Kind regards, SHOOSMITHS LLP . . . . the wording, and tone, of the above E-mail makes an interesting comparison with the concluding paragraph of the Claimant's Skeleton Argument, so very recently filed at Nottingham County Court :~ quote: "The Claimant believes that unless it is granted an Injunction against the Defendant, . . . . . . . . . . the Defendant will simply move or tow the Boat to another mooring on the Canal or another canal or inland waterway controlled by the Claimant such that these proceedings will not have achieved their objective and will not enable CRT to comply with it's statutory duty to ensure that the inland waterways controlled by CRT are safe, well-managed and properly conserved." . . . . . . All in all, a very pronounced and distinct change of objective, from 'we've got to get rid of you in order to ensure and safeguard the future of the UK's inland waterways', . . . to 'buy a boat licence, irrespective of whether or not the law demands that you do so, cough up whatever figure we dream up and claim as arrears, and we'll forget all about it." Just immediately prior to the sending of the above E-mail C&RT have had to face up twice now ['Tadworth' and Andy Wingfield], in the space of one week, to the utter futility of deceiving the Courts into making inappropriate Section 8 based Orders, . . . . it's probably too much to hope for, but maybe the above E-mail is an indication that even the dead from the neck up hierarchy of the 'Enforcement Team' may now give some consideration to confining future litigation to the appropriate use of the powers which were specifically intended for dealing with genuine unlicensed or unregistered boats, . . . as opposed to boats that have been rendered unlicensed or unregistered as the result of C&RT's unlawful terminations of Licences or PBC's.

I'm not defending failure to obtain a Licence or a PBC when required by law to do so. The point I am making is that C&RT's failure to use the appropriate powers they have at their disposal for dealing with unlicensed boats is not only wasteful of money that would be better spent on repairs and maintenance, but that the inappropriate use of Section 8 powers isn't an effective or economically sound means of achieving what should be the desired result, . . . ie. the offending owner is convicted and fined [ by Magistrates], the unpaid licence fees are recovered via a Civil Court, and the vessel remains on C&RT waters, licensed and contributing to the Trust's income. The means to achieve this are all available to C&RT, as they were to BW, but they bloody-mindedly refuse to use them, preferring instead their much loved, costly, easily nullified and ultimately pointless Section 8 procedure.

You're standing this whole issue on it's head. All the past abuse of 'the system' has originated from C&RT. They commenced by misusing/misapplying the 1983 Act by Section 8'ing an unlicensed vessel in 2013 rather than recovering the unpaid licence fees as provided for in Section 5 of the same Act and bringing a [criminal] prosecution against the owner under the General Canal Byelaws. They then rounded off the abuse by refusing to issue a Licence when legally obliged to do so.

This is nothing more or less than the normal standard of performance that can be expected from C&RT's foot and knuckle dragging Enforcement and Legal departments. Their unlawful antics and threats have, understandably, made you reluctant to move or use 'Tadworth' since paying the full year's Licence fee in advance last February, and you should insist on either a partial refund of the Licence fee to cover the period whilst they have been indulging in all their nonsense, or, if they are going to issue a fresh Licence, that the start date is no earlier than 1 June. I think you'll find they will agree quite readily to a revised starting date, but if they do attempt to argue the toss about it there is a precedent of which you are very welcome to remind them. When their legal action against me was falling apart in June/July 2014, I made a Renewal Application for my PBC [ the C&RT 'Rivers only Licence' which had been revoked in January 2014] to run for 12 months from the normal renewal date of 1 July. This was initially refused by way of the same sort of specious arguments that you have just been subjected to. They eventually accepted that they had no option other than to issue a new PBC in August, and sent one with the usual starting date of 1 July. I pointed out to them that, due entirely to their unlawful refusal to renew from 1 July, I had been deprived of the [lawful] use of my boat for the intervening time. Another new PBC [C&RT's 'Rivers only Licence'] dated from 1 September 2014 arrived by return of post.

I have to admit, it was, in truth, none of my doing, but simply a series of minor occurrences, starting with me being unable to attend the hearing due to some very messy and anti-social side-effects from the medication that I'm on at the moment, then progressing with what appears to be a breakdown in communications with the Court by Shoosmiths which culminated in them not attending the hearing either. It's worthy of mention, and a somewhat happy coincidence, that the Judge who made the strike out Order on Wednesday was the same Judge who sat over Andy Wingfield's 2nd Trial in Nottingham last year.

C&RT's already long drawn out and ponderous Claim against me for a Section 8 and 13 boat removal Declaration and Injunction was struck out on Wednesday morning last at Nottingham County Court, and they have been given 7 days to apply for the Order to be set aside. For reasons which I'll explain in a few days time, I'm not going to publish any more information about what what went on, for the time being, except to say that there are indications that they are very anxious at the moment to avoid airing their arguments with regard to the PRN, and their contention that boats kept moored and out of commission on private moorings outside the main navigable channel of a scheduled river must be 'licensed'.

If you've got new rings in freshly honed/glaze-busted bores they can make a surprisingly loud sort of zizzy, scuffing noise until they've run for a few hours, . . . . not really loud enough to be heard when the engine is firing, but loud enough to hear perhaps on the over-run, or if you stop it decompressed. It's difficult to be sure without actually hearing it running, but my best guess would be that it's air passing rapidly in and out of the crankcase breather. Both pistons move in and out together on the Coventry Victor twins [both cylinders at TDC and BDC at the same time] and an engine in good nick, with minimal piston/ring blow-by, will 'pant' in and out through the breather at the same frequency as crankshaft rpm, but more loudly and noticeably than a well-worn one with lots of blow-by and crankcase pressure

Well, I don't think Parry and his boat snatching Enforcement gang would see it that way, but a genuinely independent Ombudsman, such as his predecessor Hilary Bainbridge, would certainly be a welcome change.

The present Waterways Ombiasman was appointed by C&RT, instead of by the Ombudsman Committee as he should have been, and is far from independent. He is about as much use as Lord Lucan's passport, and prior to making any decisions he refers his findings and conclusions to C&RT for approval.

Can you tell me a bit more about the noise ? How loud is it, is it constant or pulsating, and does it change note or volume with crankshaft rotation speed ?