Steamerpoint

It will keep coming up on the agenda every Wednesday now until a debate is scheduled. Not next week though as next week is a special week for some reason. Can't remember what the Clerk said was going on next week mind. Apparently it just comes up for a reading, but it isn't read because of the blocking motion and they just move on to other Bills.

Mr Christopher Chope MP has placed a blocking motion on the Bill so it must go to a formal debate before a second reading can be heard.

Who said anything about newly constructed marinas? We are talking about the MLC controling existing marinas that do not belong to them.

There are marinas on the canal system where no licences are required. Take School Road marina in Wigan for example. The MLC want to licence boats within the bounds of private property. Is is important to understand the difference here. This area was a largely underwater. Much of the area is below sea level. Boats were the only form of transport, so when the 4th Earl of Bedford and the other 12 entrepreneurs wanted to drain the area to provide them with land on which to make money, there was huge opposition to his plans. The way he managed to get his bill through Parliament was to promise boaters free access as long as they were not carrying goods. The new drains drained the area making a lot of people very rich. Since the railways were opened, trade has left the ML, but the MLC has managed to service it's 6-locks for over 100 years without the need to take back this right. In fact, this is not about raising more money because if it was, why didn't they look at creating moorings and rent them out at a £1000 a pop. This is all about taking powers and aligning the navigation with other navigations, namely the CRT system so they can hand over control in the not too distant future. Remember that these are merely open drains designed for drainage and irrigation. They are not built for boaters. Their principle use is for the land owners who must have this support. Boaters can just leave and then the boating community is destroyed leaving it empty apart from those wealthy enough to stay. Too many people in favour of this Bill are either jealous boaters from other systems or don't give a dam about anyone until new laws adversely effect them.

For the record, it was I that was in Foxes Marina before Christmas handing out leaflets and informing boaters of the impending Bill and what they can do to learn more. Until the end of December and after I handed out the leaflets, I had never heard of the NBTA. I am not a member of the group now either. Also for the record, I was not asked to leave by anyone and was actually invited back for various bbq's this coming summer! I also spoke to the owners of Fox's to gauge their opinion on the matter and left on good terms swapping email details etc. As for the NBTA. I found them to be a nice bunch. Very helpful and have allowed me to see things from their side. We don't live on our boat as we live in our house near Peterborough and I have a job to fund my house, boat and moorings, but I have met bargee travelers who tend to be law abiding citizens, many of which also have jobs, but enjoy living on the water. One or two I have recently met are working on very low incomes. One I know works voluntarily in a charity shop and during 2-days a week works as a driver for a local temping agency on minimum wages. This is a good person who is entitled to housing benefit and a house, but claims nothing from the state. If this person is forced to pay an extra £1000 a year for a licence, they will be forced to sell the boat and claim council benefits. Two sides to every story I find. Furthermore these people are not freeloaders. They have a right to use the ML. Unlike land gypsies that often trespass, boaters have every right to navigate the ML and with permission of land owners, moor up and stay there as long as they like. If they are not permitted to moor up in places, say for example the 36 hour moorings in March, the council should move them on, simple. They are moorings provided by the council after all. Also, as has already been said, these boaters spend what money they have in the area. They pay VAT and tax on their wages, so they have every right to live in the area and they are doing nothing wrong. They are completely legal. The ones I have met are also British citizens. As an Ex-RAF engineer, I have served my country for many years, including during the first Gulf war, so I feel I have done my bit to preserve the rights and freedoms of these sacred isles and I am not prepared to see them given away easily. Especially when you read the proposed Bill. The MLC are promising nothing positive in it. No extra moorings, no water taps, no disposal points, toilets or showers nothing. All these people that believe that with fees comes an expectation, an invisible contract if you will, you will be extremely disappointed. This is a Take, Take, Take Bill!!!! Look at the River Cam Conservators. They overturned their act in the 19th century so that they could charge pleasure boaters. Guess what, they provide NO facilities whatsoever, nothing. They are also about to raise their licence fees to, wait for it....................... £2500 per boat, per year!!!! I approached the March Cruising Club in January during their AGM. We discussed the proposed Bill. Afterwards, the Commodore asked the members if they were satisfied or whether they wanted to object to it. 1-person was happy with the bill and 30-people were very unhappy with it. These are boaters in the heart of the Middle Level, so think about them for a minute will you. Many will be forced to sell up and quit boating. I produced an online petition and the leaflets I handed out to boaters, pointed them towards it. I produced 500 leaflets and handed them out in Foxes, Bill Fen and Floods Ferry. The petition received 485 signatures! Also if you read the Bill, you will be shocked to hear that the MLC will be able to reject boats/ boaters if they wish. They could remove boats they consider offensive, abandoned, incorrectly moored, the wrong colour with only 14 days postal notice. What if you are on your package holiday somewhere when the letter arrives! Bye bye boat. They offer no route of appeal so anyone evicted would need to take the MLC to a magistrates court if they are unhappy with a decision! Wow. They want the ability to force boaters to display the boat name, boat registration and Owners Name on the boat. Really They want to have the right to give out boaters personal details to third parties! Data Protection. They want the right to enter and inspect a boat whenever they want, even if that is a persons home. How would you like that if the council wanted immediate access to your home? If one of your boat guests threw some litter/ a crisp packet etc. overboard and this was reported to the MLC, they want the right to demand the boat owner gives the names and addresses of those guests or else! What ever happened to the right to remain silent! They want boats in private marinas to comply with all their terms and conditions otherwise they want the right to remove those boats! The list goes on and on and it will effect every boater to some degree. One business owner (Who wishes to remain nameless) has said that they fear for their livelihood if the Bill is passed. This individual is terrified of any repercussions if they speak out against the Bill. Very Sad. There is already a requirement to hold boat insurance and a safety certificate on the ML. These could be checked at any time by the MLC and as they also control the entry and exit locks with MLC staff, it would not be a difficult task to carry out. In the same way we all have certain rights, (Freedom of speech, right to roam, public right of way, right to vote etc.) this is another long standing right that is currently at risk! One day our children may thank us for keeping it safe.

Salters Lode lets water out during high rainfall and low tide. Stanground is primarily a sluicing operation with 80% of it's duties taking up with sluicing (According to the Lock Keeper that is) They are also there to control/limit the number of boats coming down and prevent overfilling ghe ML. Marmont Priory is not technically manned, but the owners there have been asked on many occasion to let water down. Call that what you want, but I call that sluicing! The MLC meeting minutes clearly discuss the forthcoming meeting with CRT in April and the nature of that meeting!

The Middle Level Commission needs to dredge as part of their drainage duties. Silt comes off the land, not from the small number of boats that navigate the waterways. In fact it is a well accepted fact that boats help to spread the silt along the bottom away from the run off points. If for arguments sake, a thousand tons of soil runs off the land into the drains, the Commissioners must remove the same amount each year else the drains will silt up completely. Dredging is necessary as a direct result of draining the fens. As the Commission must maintain the waterways as a navigation under their statutory duties, it makes sense to dredge the drains to a depth that allows boats to navigate. They also have boats themselves, which benefit from maintaining the waterways as a navigation. They only have six locks to maintain, two of which require staff as part of the sluicing duties. Unless they want to invest in the automation of these locks, then they must pay staff to be there. The other 4 locks are needed to control the height of the water on the different sections of the waterway. While they could replace these locks with weirs, but again, as they have a statutory obligation to provide a navigable waterway, locks make more sense. As for all the water pumps they use, these are required as part of their drainage responsibilities. While it is true that the Well Creek section of the waterway requires a pump to keep it topped up, the Commissioners are keeping one thing very quiet here. They need to top up the waterways because farmers use water for irrigation during the summer months, which they charge for. No water in the creek, no water for irrigation and no crops. We have had a public right of access free of tolls along the Nene since the 4 century and we are unwilling to give up these rights without a fight. Most of us have rights of access to our own homes. How would we feel if those rights were removed and we had to pay extra to use the pavements? The MLC are really trying to hand over control of the Middle Level and this is why they want to amend the act. Don't believe me, they have a meeting with CRT and EA in April 2017 to discuss the handing over of the Nene.

Okay, great. Sounds different, can't wait. Chris.

How do you plan to drive the prop from the Lister? Will you be running a prop shaft from the engine under the wheel-house straight through the back cabin and out the back or will you be using a hydraulic drive and running hydraulic pipes round the sides/ floor of the back cabin? Otherton Boats used the hydraulic drive method and because they were putting the power through a hydraulic pump, they were also able to power a hydraulic bow thruster. These I understand and much more reliable than the electric variety.

Seriously Jeallous here! I rang them a few months ago and asked for a quote to build me a sailaway. I understand that they built Strawberry Fields being shown at the Crick show earlier this year. Linky Not sure why, but this type of boat really apeals to me, but at £95k for the finished product is too much for me at the moment! Good luck with it.

Looking at my waterways map (See below) it would appear that any boats wider than 7-foot only have one route from the South of England to the North of England (And visa versa) and that is up the River Nene, out into the salt water of the Wash and back into the Witham Canal up to Lincoln. See no entry signs and green arrows on the map. This could of course be an old map and not a reality these days, but if true, a wide beam canal boat is very limited!

I asked the very same question this weekend to a good friend who has lived on boats all his life. He told me that wide beam boats are not appreciated by many people with narrowboats. The reason being that while you can get a wide beam boat in a lock, you can't then get another boat alongside it in many of the double width locks. This holds up the flow of traffic when it's busy and it is less efficient use of water when only one boat needs ten thousand gallons of water to progress through one lock! In addition to this, a wide beam boat can cause difficulties in many of the tunnels where they are just wide enough for two narrowboats to pass inside. Tunnel Officials apparently need to stop narrowboats from entering until the wide beam is through! On the basis of not wanting to annoy everyone else on the cut, I have decided to rule out a wide beam boat.

Google translates Dutch, fairly badly, but you will get the gist of what is written.

There is a very slight curvature to the top edge of the transum and because of the boats rigging attachment points, the motor is sitting an inch or two slightly off center which ment that the motor is at a very slight angle, but the prop is centrally position under the boat and I'm fairly sure that the weed would have still caught the prop however the outboard was hanging. We were litterally going through thick weed! I guess a powerful NB engine would have shredded it all up and not thought twice, but the leccy motor wasn't that happy with it.

Ouch! I never really thought of that! An expensive mistake if it fell in completely. Even if we got a diver in to fetch it out again, are the electrics able to cope with it, I doubt they would. I made the mistake of towing the boat down to the water with the outboard mounted on the transum! I figured the 2-miles down to the slipway on good roads would be fine, but the last 100-meters was quite bumpy and the boat pitched about quite a lot flicking the motor up and down quite badly. Luckily it hung on okay, but I won't be doing that again! I found there to be quite a lot of weed on the cut near the Yacht Club, which was just below the surface of the water. Twice the motor picked some up and you could feel the motor working harder with an increase of vibration. It was simple enough to lift the motor out and pull the weed off, but this forced me to position the motor higher up so that it was only just below the bottom of the boat causing some occasional water cavitation. Didn't catch anymore weed after this and it was nice to hit the deeper lake again and get the motor down. This made me wonder just how practical any outboard might be when there is a lot of weed about!

Well today was a success with the little Watersnake electric outboard. My son & I took the boat up to the sailing club on Ferry Meadows (Gunwade Lake), rowed out of the way of the sailing boats (They were in a race), dropped the leccy motor in and chugged out under the low pontoon bridge onto Overton Lake, out onto the River Nene, past the Peterborough Yacht Club, to the lock and back. The motor did a great job. Full speed was only around 4 knots but fast enough. To conserve battery power we cruised at half speed, which was nice and relaxing. The motor is so quiet that people sitting out on the bank were surprised to see us right next to them and hadn't heard us coming. The battery lasted just under 3-hours, which included some flat out bits. Photos below. It is an 85 A/h battery and was struggling at the end. I decided to get the ores out again for the last 100 meters back to the sailing club as it was just ticking over and I was ready to head back in anyway. Bald head catching just a bit too much sun! For a relaxing play about on the water, these leccy outboards are great only limited by battery capacity. Recommended. Childs Play Fishing, 10-year old style 4-Knots Hands Free! Overton Lake

Next Friday I will be in Braunston having crewed Dorado with Steve from Stockton. The idea is to leave my car at Braunston for my return trip to Peterborough late on Saturday morning, but I could jump in it for a trip up to yours for a couple of hours on Friday sometime. See how you get on with taking some photos yourself as the lens and image quality from your phone is reasonable and I may not need to visit you, but if not, PM me with your contact details and I'll pop over. Another option is to email me the photos you take and I'll improve them for you. Again PM me and I'll give you my email address. If you can't get your whole boat in the shot because your lens isn't wide enough, take a few photos of it making sure you overlap each photo and I'll stitch them all together for you and email the finished photos back. You'll need to stand in the same spot when you take them and they would be better if you turned the camera over on it's side when you do this, otherwise the finished photo will be very long and thin! Between us all, will get something nice to show off your boat. Chris.

So how do you explain when a property is down valued by a surveyor? The buyers have agreed to part with their money for a given property and the surveyor comes along, disagrees and the buyers can't buy it for what they think it's worth!!! What is the true value in this scenario?