Don't want or need Big Brother

IF ANYONE is really sympathetic to continuous cruisers they should not be encouraging them to insist that CaRT define 'distance' or ‘place', writes Eric Weiss.

It really is the difference between 'cruising' and not 'cruising'. You are not 'cruising' if you are dragging your boat 40 yards down the towpath. You are not 'cruising' if you catch a tow 200 yards to a water point and then catch one back to where you were.

If you book a cruise, you would, quite rightly, demand a refund if you embarked at Dover, were turned round every day, but didn't leave Dover. So wrote one observer on a forum.

Lancaster Canal

It was the same with the howls of protest from the mooring ‘blockers' on the Lancaster where the only defence to their selfishness in leaving their boats unattended for weeks on end was the introduction of 48hr limits. Some left their boats with ‘For Sale' notices up or simply left to hold ‘their' space at local hot-spots for the next time they wanted to go to Ow'd Nells or the Tithebarn or other prime locations.

Now the ‘freedom' loving Bargees Association (such an insult to the past) is pushing CaRT for hard definitions of distance and place which if responded to fairly would not need ‘enforcing' and costing thousands of pounds of wasted licence fees. If such definitions were made law boating would become ‘less free' as everyone would be looking over their shoulder for being inadvertently in contravention of punitive enforcement notices.

Not the fault of CaRT

It would not be the fault of CaRT; it doesn't want to tie us all down with draconian rules that would breed resentment. The rules as they are—are deliberately flexible to maintain the relaxed experience that boating holds. The abusers invariably squeal the loudest because they like to think the 'soft' rules should not apply to them.

They stupidly regard home mooring users as somehow wealthy and that they, are the downtrodden ‘real' boaters: Such phoney class-war logic is fooling no one. They are the spoilers of everyone’s boating experience.

According to recent figures, 66% of continuous cruiser licence holders travel less than 12 miles during their licence period, and this figure was being verified downwards. Hence 34% plus are outside any enforcement interest, so why antagonise them with this letter? (CaRT still bullying?)

[Eric Weiss is our Lancaster Canal correspondent.]