What happens to boats with moorings in closed sections?

[mayalld]

1 hour ago, mattcyp said:

 

Thanks, that has prompted me to re-read the notice.  To "ash up the gates" is to insert strips of ash into the joins to minimise leakage?  My hope would be that their plan is as you say, and the canal becomes a linear duck pond, instead of a half filled ditch. 

 

 

Not strips of ash, but buckets of burned wood ash.

 

Basically, the shut the gates, empty the lock (the top gate has less places that it can leak from), and tip a couple of buckets of ash into the water upstream on the top gate.

 

Very rapidly, all the leaks of water through the lock gates slow to a trickle and stop.

 

Until you've seen it done, it is actually quite difficult to believe that such a small amount of ash will seal so well.

[mattcyp]

56 minutes ago, mayalld said:

 

Not strips of ash, but buckets of burned wood ash.

....

Thanks, that's interesting.  I'll look out to see what it looks like after they've done it on the L&L. 

[matty40s]

1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Maybe the judge said that because Mr Mayers agreed to the T&Cs when purchasing his licence.

The T&C for boats with a home mooring only changed a couple of years ago, 

[Alan de Enfield]

1 minute ago, matty40s said:

The T&C for boats with a home mooring only changed a couple of years ago, 

May 2015

[MtB]

30 minutes ago, matty40s said:

The T&C for boats with a home mooring only changed a couple of years ago, 

 

Correct. The T&C saying HMers can moor anywhere for 14 days current at the time of the court case was replaced with current T&C requiring CC-like cruising in 2015, IIRC. Mainly as a result of the Tony Dunkley case IIRC. 

[bizzard]

Dig your way to freedom by mounting a HI-Ab digger on the bows. Once you've dug enough to leave the canal and the water has followed you fill in behind you and keep on digging taking the water with you until you hit another canal, river or even the sea.

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Ah - yes I remember now some posts a while ago from Nigel Moore.

 

Something to the effect :

 

There is no legal right for a boat with a Home Mooring to stop for any period of time (legally not even one night) but out of the goodness of their Hearts C&RT allow up to 14 days. This is at their 'grace & favour' and could be rescinded at a moments notice.

 

Boats without a home mooring actually have the legal right to stay for 14 days (unless etc etc)

 

If I could get on a bit better with the forum search feature I'd have a look for them.

When most of the laws were written, certainly  in the halcyon days of commercial carrying, the need to earn money kept boats on the move as mu h as possible. Mooring up in random places was just not part of their scene. As with various matters, we have to try and interpret the laws as best may be in a very different world. That's what we have judges for. Trying to push the 'riules' to destruction can by a mugs game - however strong you think your legal case might be, no-one will give guarantees on the outcome of individual cases.

1 hour ago, mattcyp said:

Thanks, that's interesting.  I'll look out to see what it looks like after they've done it on the L&L. 

On the one occasion when I have seen it being done (and its worth trying to see it) I was told that that particular team preferred ash from a steam railway! Not all ashes are equal it seems.

[DonCorleone]

41 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Correct. The T&C saying HMers can moor anywhere for 14 days current at the time of the court case was replaced with current T&C requiring CC-like cruising in 2015, IIRC. Mainly as a result of the Tony Dunkley case IIRC. 

My recollection is very different.  As I recall the Trust used Tony Dunkley as a test case to see if they could get away with imposing CC'ing conditions on boats which were away from their 'home' mooring, and they came away from the Court with a bloody nose after being forced to discontinue their case.

[Alan de Enfield]

4 minutes ago, DonCorleone said:

My recollection is very different.  As I recall the Trust used Tony Dunkley as a test case to see if they could get away with imposing CC'ing conditions on boats which were away from their 'home' mooring, and they came away from the Court with a bloody nose after being forced to discontinue their case.

If that was the case they soon forgot and incorporated the 'CC' requirements into 'boats with a home mooring' requirements.

[MtB]

10 minutes ago, DonCorleone said:

My recollection is very different.  As I recall the Trust used Tony Dunkley as a test case to see if they could get away with imposing CC'ing conditions on boats which were away from their 'home' mooring, and they came away from the Court with a bloody nose after being forced to discontinue their case.

 

My recollection was that as Mr Dunkley was alternating between his home mooring and the towpath opposite, his argument was that he was complying with the T&C requiring him to move every 14 days, and distance was not relevant. He was moving so this why CRT got the bloody nose. They were wrong. 

 

So CRT responded by modifying the T&Cs to make HMers comply with CC rules. 

 

Thanks Mr Dunkley. 

[roland elsdon]

Happens every winter. Nothing new. Be on your mooring or off. As its not emergency crt are informing first, so no one can claim they didnt know , and start demanding craning out, which has happened in the past following sudden structure failure. Crt  will be sympathetic, but dont suggest you go to liitle venice and plug into a streetlamp for a month because you cant get on your mooring in blackburn

[Robbo]

18 minutes ago, roland elsdon said:

Happens every winter. Nothing new. Be on your mooring or off. As its not emergency crt are informing first, so no one can claim they didnt know , and start demanding craning out, which has happened in the past following sudden structure failure. Crt  will be sympathetic, but dont suggest you go to liitle venice and plug into a streetlamp for a month because you cant get on your mooring in blackburn

In winter the pound will still be navigable and your boat will still be level.  As the closure is planned they can inform the boaters on what water levels are expected in these pounds.  I’ve heard on the towpath rumour mill is that they will turn the supply off completely.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Robbo

[roland elsdon]

On our mooring at foss when this happened the only thing that could have navigated for two months would have been a hovercraft.

The level went down to the trickle left by the ashed up stop planks.

[Allan(nb Albert)]

4 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

As I understand it, CCers have to move "from place to place", however that is defined. Us home moorers just have to move, but can stay within the same area, but both are subject to the 14 day rule. The difference is in the distances required as home moorers don't need to be on a continuous cruise. Logically, CRT should agree to extensions if you can't get home. 

Additionally, when we all got stuck on the end of the Shroppie for six months due to aquaduct failure, we got a licence refund. 

I think this forum forgets earlier posts. In the bill which eventually became the 1995 British Waterways Act powers were requested to erect signage controlling mooring. The bill also demanded that every boat should have a home mooring.

 

In the event, BW were unable to convince that existing powers were insufficient.

 

They were also unable to convince that all boats required a home mooring.

Furthermore they were unable to convince that 14 days was a reasonable limit for those without a home mooring.
 

[matty40s]

2 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

My recollection was that as Mr Dunkley was alternating between his home mooring and the towpath opposite, his argument was that he was complying with the T&C requiring him to move every 14 days, and distance was not relevant. He was moving so this why CRT got the bloody nose. They were wrong. 

 

So CRT responded by modifying the T&Cs to make HMers comply with CC rules. 

 

Thanks Mr Dunkley. 

 

Tony was regularly hassled for overstaying offences -  taking his boat daily to a mooring(for shopping, going pub, doctors, mum, because he wanted to) and returning home in the evening. As the boat checkers and enforcement team dont work beyond 5pm - he was always clocked at the daytime spot rather than send someone along every now and again after hours or at weekends to see if he had gone. 

In effect, his boat was exactly the same as the Mersey ferry detailed by the judge and grudgingly admitted to by BW in the Davies case, it was a genuine bona fide navigation.

Another boat this relates to is Growler on the Soar - it is used daily as a ferry as there is no access to the island the owners live on - CRT have issued notices about overstaying and even tried to move them on during severe floods.

[Arthur Marshall]

I suppose the assumption is that a home moorer is generally either based more or less permanently at their mooring, or are a leisure boater. The former stays on the mooring, the latter, when out, wants to get as far along as possible. So in effect, we cruise. Thats why the change in the T&Cs really doesn't affect the bulk of home moorers /leisure boaters. 

The ones it does affect are those who, for example, CRT think might have the mooring next to me on the Macc, but who want to spend most of the year in a popular bit of London,without moving much. As I suspect that kind of thing is pretty minimal, it's a sledgehammer / nut scenario and just irritates every normal user pointlessly. 

 

[DonCorleone]

10 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

My recollection was that as Mr Dunkley was alternating between his home mooring and the towpath opposite, his argument was that he was complying with the T&C requiring him to move every 14 days, and distance was not relevant. He was moving so this why CRT got the bloody nose. They were wrong. 

 

So CRT responded by modifying the T&Cs to make HMers comply with CC rules. 

 

Thanks Mr Dunkley. 

It appears you are implying that this man's actions have in some way inconvenienced both yourself and others, but I am at a loss to understand quite how you have arrived at this conclusion.

 

I believe the alleged sin was the daily use of his boat in the same few miles of the Trent Navigation without ever returning to his nearby mooring, and it was on these grounds alone that his boat licence was revoked by the Trust. Having revoked his boat licence on these highly questionable grounds the Trust's lawyers had expected the Court to endorse their intention to deprive the man of his boat, but for some undisclosed reason they were subsequently obliged to discontinue the proceedings.

[Bod]

Wasn't one of Tony's moorings actually on EA waters, that CRT were claiming as theirs?

 

Bod

[Canal321]

To answer the original question. They are keeping all the pounds topped up, no boats will be sat on the bottom. 

[mattcyp]

44 minutes ago, Canal321 said:

To answer the original question. They are keeping all the pounds topped up, no boats will be sat on the bottom. 

Thanks.  That is re-assuring. If you don't mind me asking, where did you get the info from? 

 

Nice picture of East Marton there!

[Canal321]

Well I'm moored on this section (Gargrave to Wigan) that's shutting. My mooring provider told me after they received a call from CRT last week. 

[Robbo]

58 minutes ago, Canal321 said:

Well I'm moored on this section (Gargrave to Wigan) that's shutting. My mooring provider told me after they received a call from CRT last week. 

Goes and figure they tell third party mooring providers but not there own mooring officers or boaters that directly moor with them ? 

[NigelMoore]

22 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

According to the act, yes, that's exactly what it says.

 

The "move every 14 days" is explicitly only detailed in the act for those with no home mooring, and no limit is placed on those who have.

But that's just what the act says.  BW / CRT have in their wisdom decided that it applies to all, not just those without a home mooring, and I guess most of us would agree that is fair and sensible.

But they really don't have the force of law behind them, in my honest view of things.

As I construe the various Acts, they DO have the force of law behind them.

 

It cannot properly be said that the 1995 Act “exactly . . .says” that “if you have a home mooring you can stay anywhere on the towpath for as long as you want then and never need to move.” It is true that “ ‘move every 14 days’ is explicitly only detailed in the act for those with no home mooring”, but that does not imply absence of restriction for those with home moorings.

 

From the very first enabling Acts, the towpath was not to be obstructed; it had to be available to all for the use it was designed for – accordingly, overnight stays would have been the only (perhaps) tolerated use for mooring. In one of the major canal company’s Acts, in fact, pleasure boats were even banned from ANY use of the towpath (and that clause has never, to my knowledge, been explicitly rescinded).

 

Over the latter part of the 20th century, longer temporary use of the towpath for mooring became tolerated on a pragmatic basis, with 14 days fixed upon as a rough guideline for reasons lost in obscurity (for all that BW came up with postulated origins during the Select Committee hearings on the 1990 Bill).

 

Obstruction remains on the statute books as an offence, updated even in the 1995 Act, and overstaying stated times on selected sections has been used with County Court approval to qualify the boat – being thereby regarded as an obstruction - for being moved under s.8(5) of the 1983 Act. Anything longer than an overnight stay, as I see it, is simply permissive – with the exception of boats without home moorings, for whom only, the right to 14 days (or more if circumstances dictate) is enshrined in law.

 

For boats with home moorings when cruising away from those, the 14 day limit would apply only as a permissive one based on a fair-play comparison with the ‘continuous cruisers’. It is simply, in other words, that CaRT would find difficulty in justifying the application of differing standards based only on the nature of the boat licence application.

 

To suggest that any boat was legally free from constraint over use of the towpath is unjustifiable.

[NigelMoore]

16 hours ago, Allan(nb Albert) said:

I think this forum forgets earlier posts. In the bill which eventually became the 1995 British Waterways Act powers were requested to erect signage controlling mooring.
 

It is important to distinguish what was rejected and why.

 

Powers to dictate shorter time for moorings in select locations (and to signpost those), as well as powers for ‘officers’ to direct where and for how long boats could moor, were not rejected on the basis that those were not (arguably) sensible powers to have - or even that limiting mooring times was ultra vires existing powers - but because BW insisted on making disobedience a criminal offence.

 

The Committee noted that obstructing boats could be moved away under existing legislation, therefore the addition burden of criminal conviction and hefty fines was unjustifiable and distasteful.

[Robbo]

Just received this...

 

Quote

 

We've recently sighted you on, or near, the Leeds & Liverpool recently so you’ll likely know that we’ve been working hard to conserve water. It’s not only us though: thanks to boaters who’ve also been diligently doing to their best to help us make every drop count.

Local rain gauges show that some parts of the North West have received as little as 30% of the Long-Term Average rainfall in May and June – with no rainfall received at all in the first week of July - placing extra pressure on reservoir holdings over the past few months.

Last month we announced restricted opening hours on part of the Leeds & Liverpool, a small part of the entire 2,000 network, to make the available water last as long as possible. Use of locks at Barrowford, Greenberfield, Bank Newton and Gargrave was restricted to 10am – 6pm. Unfortuntely, with the continued drawdown of the reservoirs, the prolonged low rainfall and with the forecast for further dry weather, the Trust is restricting opening hours further to between 10am and 4pm.

Although reservoirs were full in April a number of them in the North West, particularly those feeding the summit of the Leeds & Liverpool (which has a unique set of water resource issues), are relatively small and rely on regular inflows from rainwater during the spring and summer to add more water to them as usage increases. 

The restrictions, that took effect last Friday, 13 July, will help to conserve some water however we will need to reluctantly close part of the canal to boats, between Wigan Flight (from below lock 85) and Gargrave (from below lock 30). This temporary closure will start on Monday 30 July.

It’s not clear how long the closure will last for but it’s likely to be throughout August and potentially beyond if there is no significant, sustained rainfall. While the closure will prevent use of that stretch of canal by boats the towpath will remain open for visitors and the local community alike to enjoy.

Arrangements are also being made at Bingley Five Rise and Three Rise with passage down the locks restricted to between 8am and 12pm and up the locks limited to between 1pm and 5pm.

Elsewhere we’re having to also introduce restrictions on parts of the Rochdale Canal and Huddersfield Narrow Canal.

The Rochdale Canal summit will be closed on Mondays and Fridays between locks 34 and 44. In order to conserve water the section will also be closed between 4pm and 9am on the other days of the week.  Moorings are available immediately below these locks for people arriving after 4pm or during one of the closed days.

The East Lock flight on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal is also being closed overnight to prevent water loss. The canal between lock 1 East and lock 8 East will be locked up between 4pm and 9am and, again, moorings are available immediately below these locks.

If you want to, you can keep abreast of the situation by looking at the Reservoir Watch section of our website and, as we do every summer, boaters across the country are asked to play their part by helping to make best possible use of water.  Every time we use a lock 200,000 litres of water are used and so we all have a role to play.

You can continue to help conserve water by:

 

• Sharing locks where possible and making the best use of the water available.
• Ensuring paddles are fully closed once they’ve passed through a lock.
• Aiming for minimal contact when navigating through locks by ensuring gates are fully open as they pass through. Pushing gates open using a boat can damage the seal between the gates, increasing its leakage.

Thanks for your continued help and support, 
Canal & River Trust
 

Edited July 18, 2018 by Robbo