Tam & Di

I guess one difficulty is the vast number of craft currently in existence with no paperwork - it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to set up, but I'm sure some MPs would vote for that if they found a way of profiting from it. Tam

With the butty on cross straps on empty working boats tight bends are if anything easier than with a single motor. You initially move the tiller to start the turn, then the weight of the butty pushes it further round - the motor steerer utimately has to steer 'out of the turn' to stop being pushed too far and to snatch the butty fore-end round. This will not be much different for pleasure craft - if there is a steerer on the towed boat make sure he does not attempt to put his rudder over to steer round the turn at that initial point or he will simply stop the 'tug' getting round. You need to have the mind-set that the towed boat effectively acts as a rudder in that situation. 'Narrows' would only be a challenge if it means they are too narrow for boats to pass each other. If you meet the gravel barge when it is loaded you will need to try to be as close to him as you can, as the pressure wave from his bow will push you sideways away, and if you are already right over at the edge of your channel that would give you problems. If the towed boat is on cross straps that makes it more difficult for the 'tug' to get clear of the shallows at the edge. It is also fatal to assume you should ease right off to tick-over when meeting or, God forbend, to go into neutral. You only have steerage while you have a decent amount of power on. Tam

Towage at sea and on narrow restricted waterways are altogether different. The rudder of a butty is called an 'elum' by working boat people who dropped the 'h' of helm in their language. Alan_fincher and BEngo have explained how commercial narrow boats worked, breasted up or on cross-straps on wide canals such as the Grand Union when empty, or using a 20' snatcher between the motor and unpowered butty on short pounds (distance between locks), or a 90' snubber on long pounds when loaded. Towing a modern pleasure boat is another thing altogether as they will not generally have a sufficiently large rudder to be steered without thrust from the engine, and the towing boat was probably never designed with towage in mind, and its engine may well not be up to the job. Their relative drafts will also differ, as they are neither fully loaded nor empty, and the way one boat affects the other will not be the same For someone experienced it would be a matter of trial and error until the ideal method could be found, but at least they would have something to go by. An inexperienced boater will have no background to understand what might work and what might not, so it would be a matter of chance. Chance would likely as not mean the towline fetched up around the blades of the tug, and the tug gaining more dents in the stern every time they got stuck in a bridgehole or arrived at a lock - an unpowered boat has no form of brakes other than running up the bank. Tam

But as I recall there is another rule alongside those that says nothing must be thrown or allowed to fall into the canal, so fishing it back out would by doubling the fine for breach of byelaws. Tam