DonCorleone

Have this piece of C&RT correspondence framed and take great care of it. Any form of written material on or within which they are telling the truth is a rare and highly collectible item and certain to increase in value.

Yes, perfectly feasible, but also potentially very hazardous. You must have suitable weather and river conditions that both you and your boat can cope with, and the appropriate pilotage and tide time information. From Howden, just above Goole on the Ouse, to Keadby (Gunness Wharf) on the Trent you will be sharing the river with commercial shipping, and for the whole of the journey you will have to cope with the all of the many effects and characteristics of the area's tides. Pilotage and/or pilotage information and guidance is available from a retired former Humber, Ouse, and Trent barge and tug skipper on the Thunderboat forum.

Strictly speaking, boats making use of the canals are obliged under the law to be licensed, whereas boats enjoying the common law public right of navigation still applicable to the Trust's river waterways satisfy the law's demands by simply carrying a annual registration certificate, which for some reason known best to the Trust's decision makers is misleadingly presented and sold to boaters as a 'Rivers only Licence'. This throws up something of an anomaly in that whilst promoting the myth that the registration certificate the law demands for using a pleasure boat on a river waterway is a type of discounted Licence, the Trust does not insist on compliance with the National Access Agreement provisions on 'Licences' in respect of boats moored in marinas located on rivers under their control.

Possibly, maybe, but certainly worth a try, and you would have to go down the lock stern first with the stem in the mitres of the top gates - the cill is very short and stays covered with the lock drained right down. If you can't get through Thorne you can by-pass it via Selby or Goole and the Ouse down to Trent End, but only in conditions suitable for both you and your boat and with all the appropriate pilotage info. All the advice and guidance you need will be available via the Thunderboat forum.

Correct on the first count, and entirely wrong on the second. There were pairs of empty boats from Wellingborough going back to Brentford to reload with wheat and they too ran abreast up Slapton Fields and Marsworth, and from the Cowroast to Cowley Lock.

Yes, I have done a bit of boating on the 'canal system', including occasions in the early years when I went along on the forced passages through the Ancoats locks in protest against the Rochdale Canal Company's abandonment Bill. It was hard going, but very satisfying after having finally made it by bodging up collapsing lock gates with bits of old carpet and wood in much the same way as the C&RT are now attempting to mackle-up Lock No. 45.

In the days of regular commercial traffic it was customary, everyday practice for pairs of empty boats returning to the Midlands coalfields to run abreast from Cowley Lock to the Cowroast, and from the top of Marsworth to Grove Lock.

Your explanation of the difficulties encountered with a boat of approximately one quarter of the displacement of the boats the canal was built for doesn't hang together, any more so it would seem, than do the gates on Lock No. 45. Demolishing buildings and raising the levels of roads crossing the line of the canal are not issues relating to navigable depth. If your assessment that the canal is "now a 12 foot wide and 3 foot 3 deep waterway at best" is in fact correct, it would be more accurate to describe it as having been reopened to navigation whilst remaining in a semi-derelict condition rather than as having been 'restored'. The fact that "its full of crap, has limited water, and very few boats use it" also tends to confirm that maintenance standards are set no higher than whatever is needed to keep the canal in it's present semi-derelict condition. Whilst it is unarguable that the regular passage of boats is beneficial to the general condition of a canal, the same cannot be said of lock gates which have, apparently, been left in service until they have become too decrepit to retain their shape under retention level water pressure and the influence of gravity.

In assessing/calculating the effect on pound level of taking 'x' number of lockfuls of water from a pound, the depth of the pound and the depth of any connected reservoir capacity at the same retention level has no effect whatsoever. The one and only factor which does have an effect is the total water surface area of the pound plus any directly connected reservoir capacity at the same retention level.

Whilst I concede that the likes of the C&RT may well do as you suggest, such action on the part of a navigation authority forced into restricting the use of or closing down their canals through lack of water by mid-Summer can hardly be described as "sound business and commercial practice".

The terms 'big' and 'deep' are relative, to say the least. The canal was built to take 74' x 14' 2'' size Mersey Flats loaded down to 5' draught. The fact that you needed ''support'' from the navigation authority to get something approximately half as wide and half as deep along the canal is hardly cause for compliments or praise.

Assuming that you're speaking of canal maintenance, the answer to that is I have no responsibility or obligation to contribute anything towards it other than through taxes.

I've said nothing of charges related to marinas in this thread or elsewhere, apart from pointing out that sound business and commercial practice would see the owners and/or operators of marinas situated alongside the Canal & River Trust's canals charging the Trust for providing additional reservoir capacity.

This is news to me. I keep a small outboard powered open boat in a private boathouse.

All locks require maintenance, irrespective of whether or not they are in the vicinity of a marina.