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Boat sinks “lock keeper bang out of order”


PD1964

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21 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

I hope they can get out of this predicament and hopefully it might be a straightforward airbag/pump lift. 
  But who will foot the bill with 3rd Party insurance and what level of RCR cover covers salvage for free?

My first steel boat had third party insurance initially,because the insurance company wanted a hull survey before insuring comprehensively and I couldn't get a drydock booking for over a month.

The third party cover did include salvage recovery.

Comprehensive is worth having for the extra cover,fire,theft,damage and making good in the event of sinking.

 

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5 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

To say they don't know the difference between 3rd party and comp insurance is just ridiculous. Anyone who has a car knows that, as do people who can read.

The sooner CRT sort out their definition of continuous cruisers, the better. It really isn't being on one if you just tie your boat up somewhere and bugger off home for a few weeks - and if you can't afford a mooring, you certainly can't afford to do up a leaky boat from scratch.

Anyway, I've got to go and make a pie for tea now  so I'll leave it there.

Excellent reason, what sort of pie?

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Apart from anything else an EA lock keeper will be operating under health and safety legislation and going out alone to deal with an unknown vessel will not be allowed. It just won't happen. You would have to be on very good personal terms with the lock keeper for him/her to go out in shit weather and deal with your badly tied up boat. 

 

It might be the sort of thing you expect from "that slightly eccentric bloke on the scruffy boat over there who always helps people" but to expect this from a Thames lock keeper just shows basic idiocy and misunderstanding. 

 

The sooner these people disappear from the River the better. 

 

/Rant mode OFF/

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5 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

This is her latest and although she still feels the lock keeper was partly to blame she is surprisingly positive with RCR due to lift it when the level falls. From photos posted earlier on FB I wouldn't be surprised if she also had a centre line attached, but as the girl admits they didn't know better.

 

 

I just watched and it really is properly sunk to Davy Jones's Locker! Must be 2ft of water over the roof........RCR better bring their scuba gear!

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3 hours ago, PD1964 said:

I hope they can get out of this predicament and hopefully it might be a straightforward airbag/pump lift. 
  But who will foot the bill with 3rd Party insurance and what level of RCR cover covers salvage for free?

She says in the video that RCR will charge a couple of thousand if when the river level has dropped the water is down to the level of the windows, so they can just block openings with tarpaulins and pump like mad. If it is sunk deeper they need to get divers and airbags in then that will cost around £8k.

I was surprised that their third party insurance wouldn't cover basic revovery costs - I thought it was a CRT requirement that the minimum insurance included salvage, and Iassume EA requirements for the Thames would be similar.

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9 minutes ago, David Mack said:

I thought it was a CRT requirement that the minimum insurance included salvage,

Unless it is stated somewhere else on their website it would appear not - and C&RT warn that you should check it covers recovery as it could cost you .......................

 

 

Boat insurance

The cost will vary depending on the age and type of boat. Plus the type of cover you want.

You need third party insurance cover for at least £2,000,000 before you buy a boat licence.

This safeguards you, the owner or person in charge of the boat, from claims made against you for injury or damage in the event your boat is involved in an accident.

You may also choose to take out a comprehensive policy to cover your own boat, its contents and crew.

Read the small print - is the cover right for you

When buying insurance read the small print carefully, especially when it comes to salvage costs should the worst happen. Not all policies cover salvage following a sinking or a fire and the recovery costs can often be thousands of pounds.

You can find specialist marine insurers on the internet, adverts in the waterway press or from your boat builder or broker.

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9 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

I cruise the Thames several times a year and get a visitor licence.

 

I have to self-certify that my boat is insured and seaworthy (to the standard of the BSS requirements) but no evidence is required. 

 

So, if you are less than truthful then no one would know.

That explains a lot of the weird and 'colourful', both people and boats

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32 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

So, if you are less than truthful then no one would know.

That explains a lot of the weird and 'colourful', both people and boats

And, of course, the "I am on a continuous cruise, honest, guv, whenever I have the time to get to my boat for a day or two, but in the meantime I'll just leave it here in the only possible mooring spot for miles" brigade.

Most people are less than truthful when they can get away with it, same as most people break the law most days for the same reason (especially true now when hardly anyone knows what this week's laws about lockdowns are anyway).

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I wonder if the boat had been comprehensively insured, whether the insurance company would try and wriggle out by saying the owners were negligent leaving the boat on tight lines on a river prone to significant level rises.

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32 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

And, of course, the "I am on a continuous cruise, honest, guv, whenever I have the time to get to my boat for a day or two, but in the meantime I'll just leave it here in the only possible mooring spot for miles" brigade.

Most people are less than truthful when they can get away with it, same as most people break the law most days for the same reason (especially true now when hardly anyone knows what this week's laws about lockdowns are anyway).

I know that 'continuous dumper' gets to a lot of dyed-in-the-wool boaters but I am less sure about saying that it breaks any rules - at least if on a canal.

 

I have not seen anywhere that Continuous Cruising (properly: Boaters without a Home Mooring) requires the boater to remain permanently on or with the boat. For example, most will need to leave it for very short periods if only to buy food which is rarely alongside the canal. There must be a continuum between that and absences of up to 2 weeks.

 

If the boater moves the boat to a new 'place' and then leaves it there for, say 13 days, returns and moves on to yet another 'place', without returning to the former 'place' too soon, are they really breaking any rule? It may not be in the spirit of a bona fide journey but surely complies with it? Especially as if differs little in terms of impact on others from the more conventional permanent resident who moves only every 14 days.

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3 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I know that 'continuous dumper' gets to a lot of dyed-in-the-wool boaters but I am less sure about saying that it breaks any rules - at least if on a canal.

 

I have not seen anywhere that Continuous Cruising (properly: Boaters without a Home Mooring) requires the boater to remain permanently on or with the boat. For example, most will need to leave it for very short periods if only to buy food which is rarely alongside the canal. There must be a continuum between that and absences of up to 2 weeks.

 

If the boater moves the boat to a new 'place' and then leaves it there for, say 13 days, returns and moves on to yet another 'place', without returning to the former 'place' too soon, are they really breaking any rule? It may not be in the spirit of a bona fide journey but surely complies with it? Especially as if differs little in terms of impact on others from the more conventional permanent resident who moves only every 14 days.

As my original comment says, no, they aren't breaking the letter of the law, just in most cases (not all) the spirit. It's a rule set up because, originally, it only really was any use to those genuinely living on an extended cruise.

Times have changed, society too, and very few of the old laws work properly now, which is why CRT try tinkering with the T&Cs. It might make more sense to build more big marinas where people want to live and use economies of scale to keep moorings cheap, but that would take investment which isn't there, and forethought, which isn't, either.

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18 minutes ago, dor said:

I wonder if the boat had been comprehensively insured, whether the insurance company would try and wriggle out by saying the owners were negligent leaving the boat on tight lines on a river prone to significant level rises.

Is it a matter of negligence which, as far as I understand it, relates to causing loss or damage to others. In this case, is it not more likely to be related to the duty to mitigate loss or potential loss and here the old friend 'reasonable' comes into play and it will depend a lot on the quality of the insurer as much as anything. 

 

The lass in question may well have been inexperienced (on her own admission) but did she take and follow as much advice as anyone else, knowing themselves to be inexperienced, have reasonably taken? 

 

In this case the navigation authority is EA, not CaRT, and it may be that the extent to which they warned boaters about the specific danger becomes a determining factor. The old idea of commonsense sometimes seems to be overlooked but, in any case, it may depend on whether the danger was apparent to a reasonable but inexperienced boater? The boat, it seems, was moored in that location because of evident water level problems - I think it is admitted that the lock was 'closed' for that reason. However, the options available once in that position are limited so the question might become 'were they reasonable in setting off to cruise in the first place?' or, having found themselves there did they do all that they could reasonably be expected to do to mitigate the risk? Was informing or consulting the lock keeper sufficient? 

 

For the sake of the owners, I hope that no-one gets that picky about it - they have enough to cope with as it is - at least they were not living on board at the time.

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19 hours ago, Ray T said:

A slight tangent. At the moment due to Tier 4 Covid I am essentially barred from going to see my boat.

The marina staff where we keep her have said they will keep an eye out and walk the pontoons every day. 

 

I really need to check with my insurance whether, should the unthinkable happen and the boat sinks am I covered?

 

I will contact the insurance and report back.

 

I don't blame you for asking the question, but it seems to me that the position regarding a marina and its staff is different from that of a Thames lock-keeper. The former have a duty of care towards their customers' property. The latter does not.

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

I know that 'continuous dumper' gets to a lot of dyed-in-the-wool boaters but I am less sure about saying that it breaks any rules - at least if on a canal.

 

I have not seen anywhere that Continuous Cruising (properly: Boaters without a Home Mooring) requires the boater to remain permanently on or with the boat. For example, most will need to leave it for very short periods if only to buy food which is rarely alongside the canal. There must be a continuum between that and absences of up to 2 weeks.

 

If the boater moves the boat to a new 'place' and then leaves it there for, say 13 days, returns and moves on to yet another 'place', without returning to the former 'place' too soon, are they really breaking any rule? It may not be in the spirit of a bona fide journey but surely complies with it? Especially as if differs little in terms of impact on others from the more conventional permanent resident who moves only every 14 days.

 

Good post Mike.  Despite the rants, most "dumpers" I know of are very good about it.

 

Part of it is simple: if they are leaving the boat for up to a fortnight in a random place, they don't mind walking a little bit further to the bridge/path/layby/whatever than someone who will be making the same journey up to 28 times in the same period.  Many of them will choose to moor on chains or pins just past the end of the rings on a visitor mooring, leaving the rest of the mooring available for others.  This is especially true on short term moorings, if only so they don't get aggro from the Licence Support team

 

There are the odd one or two that seem to deliberately try and cause aggravation - chained to the water point tap is one of the worst (best?) examples I've seen - but I find that most of the boats hogging prime moorings for longer than they should from April to September aren't on a CC licence anyway ...

 

It's also very noticeable that the "dumpers" and the "continuous moorers" usually stop being any problem at all between about October and April when the summer boats are hibernating, then they all revert to their nefarious ways again in the spring! ;)

 

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13 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

As my original comment says, no, they aren't breaking the letter of the law, just in most cases (not all) the spirit. It's a rule set up because, originally, it only really was any use to those genuinely living on an extended cruise.

As someone who lived on one boat and had a second boat when the act was set up I think you are wrong. All we did with the second boat was to go boating every weekend and leave on a different mooring afterwards. It was our way of getting to see the whole system. Perfectly legal and one of the reasons the act was worded the way it was. Remember there were very very few people living on boats at that time.

 

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This is definitely a post that makes you examine your preconceptions, my first thought was to suggest an alternative title for the video of 'sense and sense of entitlement' but on viewing the last episode it is hard not to empathise with their (admittedly self inflicted) situation, and i doubt my shoulders would be broad enough to retain that much good humour. 

 It takes a lot of bravery to publicly admit you got it that wrong, and not stick the cap out for donations. It would have been nice to see a full retraction of blaming the lock keeper as it is clear from the later video that the bankside was well underwater, perhaps it will follow in a later edition. 

 I wish them well for the future, but i don't think they fully appreciate just how much work and money is involved - more so as the cabin appears to be timber...

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8 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

I have not seen anywhere that Continuous Cruising (properly: Boaters without a Home Mooring) requires the boater to remain permanently on or with the boat.

I think this applies on the Wey and Basingstoke Canal - you cannot leave your boat unoccupied  overnight without prior permission. Perhaps this is something CaRT  might consider. They could easily have some on-line notification system  system, which could be automated, giving automatic permission only flagging up where a boater is clearly abusing the system. I don't like this sort of approach to boating but as usual a significant number of people are abusing the system and spoiling it for the rest of us.

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