|
The subject of tying up your boat on British Waterways'
canals has recently been a topic of debate everywhere from the lowliest of
boat-club bars to the House of Lords. ('Piers of the Realm?') So I thought it
was time for my own modest contribution to the discussion.
But first, a slight digression…
A popular annual IWA has been the BCN Marathon Challenge
Cruise. Boaters would spend 24 hours competing to score points for cruising the
most canals on the Birmingham Canal Navigations system, and thereby helping to
publicise the waterways. To encourage boaters onto the less-busy sections,
these scored more points. Over the years, the need to encourage use of
particular canals - coupled with the devious entrants spotting loop-holes in
the rules - meant that this scoring system gradually became more complicated,
eventually attaining truly mind-numbing levels of complexity.
There were three different standards of canal: the 'easy'
ones like the New Main Line would score you a single point for every mile and
every lock traversed, the slightly more adventurous stuff like the Dudley No 2
would get you double points, and the bits that only the die-hards dare risk
taking their boats into - such as the evocatively-named Chemical Arm - would
score triple.
Extra bonuses rewarded arrival at dead-ends, with the size
varying according to the length and obscurity of the dead end, the density of
shopping trolleys in the bridge-holes and the size of the canine (deceased)
population of the derelict terminal basin in which you attempted to turn you
boat before giving up and reversing back out again. Even the definition of a
dead-end wasn't simple: would a through route to a non-BCN canal that is
therefore effectively a dead-end for the purposes of the event count or not?
(The answer is best summed up as "it depends".)
And just in case you thought you could clock-up maximum
points by simply chugging up and down the same flight of locks or dead-end arm
for 24 hours, more complex rules and formulae governed the exact numbers of
different locks and miles that you had to traverse before you were allowed to
score points for going back to the same place again.
A team of 'scrutineers' checked up on entrants, making sure
they really had done all the boating they claimed in their log - woe betide any
unscrupulous boater who claimed that they'd spent Saturday evening going from
Warwick Bar to Perry Barr, when in fact they'd been in the Public Bar all the
time. And in order for the 'Scroots' to track-down every boat, they needed to
know where to go, so entrants had to submit an itinerary beforehand.
Now it might seem strange to spend your evenings before the
event plotting exactly which semi-derelict waterway you would be aground in at
4am, when you actually knew that you'd probably get a mattress on the prop
before you'd left Gas Street Basin and be hours behind schedule for the rest of
the event. But believe it or not, many boaters enjoyed this - they would sit in
the pub with 'Nicholson's', the Birmingham A-Z street map and the Rule Book,
trying to come up with a route that would score more than the previous year.
(And remember, the organisers changed the rules every year.) These people lived
for the Marathon, and liked nothing better than to argue about whether going
the other side of a toll island counted as a different canal, how long a basin
had to be to count as an arm, and whether you could score points for a canal
that had been filled in and turned into a railway line if you took your boat on
a train.
Last year the organisers retired, and the new team decided
it was time for a change - the 2003 event was more along the lines of a
Treasure Hunt. This was fine - a change is as good as a rest - but
unfortunately it caused severe BCN Marathon Deprivation Syndrome for the 50 or
so regulars who had enjoyed measuring the furlongs, counting the locks, arguing
the toss and generally immersing themselves in BCN trivia.
These people might seem a small minority - indeed when faced
with the BCN, many boaters would rather have their mind numbed by Banks's Mild
than the Marathon Rules - but in the socially-inclusive world of Britain's
canals in the 21st Century, they represented a group who were clearly being
disadvantaged, and needed to be brought back into our caring, sharing waterways
system.
You may be wondering where this is leading to, and what
exactly it has to do with mooring. Well, good old boater-friendly, kind-hearted
BW decided that something needed to be done to help these poor unfortunates who
had been deprived of their opportunity to do battle with each other and with
the ever-changing, bewilderingly-complex BCN rule-book.
And what BW did was to invent the Trial Moorings Code as a
way of keeping these people happy.
Sure, BW claimed that the Code was in fact an attempt to
prevent a minority of boaters from overstaying on visitor moorings - but given
the powers that they already had for dealing with this, and the doubtful
legality of attempting to enforce any further powers via the new Code - this
seems frankly laughable. A much more plausible explanation is that in a spirit
of egalitarianism they are broadening the old BCN Marathon Challenge to include
the entire canal system and every boat on it.
Obviously this will not be universally popular, but I think
(and obviously most of you IWA members agree with me, for your Association has
'broadly welcomed' the Code) that it would be churlish of the 19,950 canal boat
owners who didn't enjoy planning for the BCN Marathon every year to complain
about the complexities of the new Code.
And complexities the new Code certainly has...
Firstly you aren't allowed to moor in the same place for
more than 14 days in any 42 day period. (we believe the choice of 42 comes from
the radio show The hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where it is the
answer to the "ultimate question of life, the universe and everything")
'The same place' is defined as being anywhere within 10 lock-miles. Lock-miles
are defined as the number of locks plus the number of miles. (clearly betraying
the Code's origins in the BCN Rule book) So - for example - Braunston is the
same place as Napton, and Braunston is the same place as Hillmorton, but
Hillmorton and Napton are different places.
The code then adds that "in other words, you must always be
10 lock miles away from where you were 15 days ago" - which is a complete
non-sequitur, as you could spend three nights at Hillmorton, then four at
Braunston, then five at Norton, then two at Braunston, then two back at
Hillmorton, and you'd be exactly where you were 15 days ago even though you
hadn't moored for more than 14 days in any one 'place'. But never mind - it
will give BW the chance to play around with the rules every year, just like the
BCN folks did.
Then it starts to get interesting. If you don't have a home
mooring, you also have to cover at least 20 different lock-miles every 15 days.
(I wonder if the east-side and west-side chambers of the duplicate locks at
Hillmorton count as 'different'?) And you have to do 40 different lock-miles
every 30 days, and 120 every three months. (which will be interesting if you're
based on the Mon & Brec) And just like the BCN Marathon, there will be
'scrutineers' in the form of local BW staff who will endorse your cruising
logs. (You do all keep logs, don't you? Surely you don't just go as you please
around the canal system, stopping as the mood takes you, without a care in the
world about how many locks and miles you've done?)
This applies to boaters without a home mooring, but also to
those who are away from their mooring for... guess how long? That's right - 42
days! (Somebody at Willow Grange is a Douglas Adams fan, for sure!)
But just supposing you don't know whether you'll be back
after 42 days or 43: should you follow all the rules, just in case? (I can just
see it now - hammering through Marsworth flat-out at 11pm, intent on getting
back to Ricky by the 42nd night, because otherwise the 30 days I spent getting
from Fenny Stratford to Gayton and back will count against me...) Or do they
only start to apply after the 42 days are up?
To make it easier to comply, BW have gone on record as
saying that it will be applied "with a light touch" rather than rigorously, and
compared it to the general level of observance and enforcement in this country
of the 70mph motorway speed limit. (Do we take it that the same attitude
applies to their own 4mph limit, or to the various other waterways regulations?
Perhaps it will be OK for us to be just a little over the drink-drive limit, or
have just a couple over the limit of 12 people on our boats, or jump the
traffic lights at Foulridge tunnel by just a few minutes?)
But just in case you're the sort of cynic who doesn't trust
BW to be lenient with you, here are a few handy 'work-arounds' that should
avoid you getting into trouble…
(1) Hireboats. These aren't covered by the Code
(after all, you can't tell where the previous week's hirers moored). So declare
your boat to be a hireboat and hire it to one of your crew. This will, however,
mean you need to pay more for your insurance, make up rules about not boating
at night and then disobey them, paint your company name, phone number and
website on the side of the boat, take out any soundproofing around the engine
and be sneered at by a particular subset of the private owner sector. So how
about option two…
(2) Timeshare. Difficulties in ascertaining where the
boat moored the previous week also apply to shared-ownership boats, so it would
be reasonable for them to also be exempt. All you have to do is sell shares in
your boat to your spouse, children, dogs, cat, ship's parrot and so on, and
take it in turns to be the skipper. But you will have to pay more for a
multi-owner licence - and I have to say that enforcement of licence fees is
probably one area where BW won't be making any analogies with the level of
enforcement of motorway speed limits. Which brings us to option three…
(3) Sales. When a boat changes hands, the new owner
starts with a 'clean sheet' as far as the Code is concerned. So all you have to
do is sell the boat every fortnight. If you have a spouse or other boating
partner to sell it to, all well and good. If you're a single boater, try option
four...
(4) Boat swap. Just advertise in one of the magazines
for another single boater, and you can swap boats every two weeks. You don't
even have to move onto the other boat, you can simply sell your boats to each
other and then borrow them back. But if you think even this is too much
trouble, try option 5...
(5) Name change. How are BW to know that Lucky
Lady III, tied up at Autherley this week, is the self-same boat as
President No 195 which spent last week at Aldersley? All you need is
some paint, a brush and a fine evening every week or two. Finally, for those
with money to spare, there is an even simpler option...
(6) Double-sided. Buy two licences for your boat,
giving two different boat names. Put one licence on each side of the boat.
Paint one name on each side. Keep two log books. And simply moor whichever way
round is best, depending on where you've been for the last 15, 30, 42, 120 or
however many days. And bingo - twice as much chance of complying with the
rules! Although it has to be said for many boaters (including myself), as
regards the chances of them even comprehending let alone complying with the
rules, that's probably a case of twice zero equals zero. |
