Sheila back, and grumpy boater

Friday 1 June

After a rather erratic night’s kip, I made a lazy start to a beautiful day. I took a wander into the village for a paper and stuff, then back to the boat to check email.

There’s a debate going on the canals list at the moment about the recurrent issue of continuous cruisers who have local commitments. I should explain that if you don’t have a paid for mooring, then before you can licence your boat with BW, you have to accept the rules which apply to continuous cruisers. These are that you have to be engaged in a “genuine journey around the system or a major part of it”, and that you can’t stay in one place for more than 14 days at a time.

I think that this blog demonstrates that we largely comply with these requirements, although the winter stoppages mean that it requires some finessing on occasions. On the other hand, these rules are BW’s interpretation of a quite complex legal situation, and I have to ask what they achieve. Obviously, if someone has a job at a fixed location, or kids in school, they are inclined to stay in one vicinity, if not actually in one “place” for quite long periods of time, and it’s questionable if they are engaged in the genuine journey bit, though some do indeed manage this.

As I said in a post to the list:

It seems to me that the crucial issue is not about the minutiae of BW's imposed interpretation of CCing, but whether people who do have local commitments are spoiling it for the rest of us. That mainly comes down to blocking VMs [visitor moorings] and creating extra lengths of on-line mooring.

There's a trickier bit about the loss of amenity for the rest of us if mooring sites become cluttered with junk, like the section beyond the puddle banks at Braunston, because that's an aesthetic judgement...

It seems that from BW's point of view, there's a de jure situation which would make compliance with the CC rules *almost* impossible for those with local commitments (being engaged in a genuine journey round the system or a substantial part of it, for example) though again some members of this list manage to achieve that. And there's a de facto situation where local BW staff use their judgement about the blocking and amenity issues, balancing that against the utility of some of these people. In turn, that means that where the utility is the fact that they are employees or contractors of BW, the local manager is open to accusations of cronyism.

I caught up with the blog whilst running a wash load, and then had lunch sitting out on the bow in the sun. I started to doze off, so took my self for a walk up Crack’s Hill, the local prominence which overlooks Crick village and marina. It’s about 20 minutes walk from Yelvertoft along the towpath to Bridge 17, and then up a gravelled bridle path to the foot of the hill.

I took some photos of the view, and then ambled back to the boat for a cup of tea and to run the engine again. It had not been running long when there was a triple knock on the roof, and a rather aggressive man asked “Do we have to put up with this for three hours?”

He was off Marimpa, the boat which had tied behind Sanity last night. It seems they were sitting out on the bow of their boat and getting the benefit of Sanity’s exhaust. I said I only needed to run it for another hour, and would be happy to turn off now and start again at a time to suit him. With no very good grace he indicated that six o’clock would be OK.

I pottered about for a while, and at 6.15 went back to Marimpa to ask permission to start up again (that’s how it felt, anyway). A woman on the bow was perfectly pleasant and said they were about to go in to have tea.

I started up, had my own tea and then watched yet another episode of Blakes 7.

Saturday 2 June

Waking to a beautiful morning, my mood was lightened further by the thought that Sheila was coming back today. Breakfast supplies were running low, so I put some EasiYo yogurt on to make during the day, and stewed some more fruit. I made my usual walk to the village to get the paper – Marimpa, which is a bright shiny new Stowe Hill boat, was still all closed up – better not run the engine just yet then.

At 11 or so I noticed they were running their own engine, so I started up too. Cathy, Graeme and Sheila turned up at 11.30, and we had lunch sitting out on the towpath. I stopped the engine for a while.

Graeme announced after lunch that he had a lawn to mow, so off they went – hopefully when next we see them there will be three of them – Cathy is very near her due date.

Marimpa’s crew had gone off somewhere, so I restarted the engine at about 2. We spent a mixed afternoon, partly lazing around, and partly cleaning the boat. When Marimpa’s crew came back and sat out on the towpath, I did the decent thing and went and asked if the engine was bothering them, explaining that it only needed about another 30 minutes. The guy was still grumpy (though she was a mixture of apologetic and anxious), so I turned it off. We’ll manage on what we’ve got, as we have a long run in the morning which should make up for yesterday and today. Looks like Mr Marimpa has a severe case of new-boatitis – hopefully he’ll recover from it, or I fear he’s not going to get much fun from his boating.

We finished the day with a cold sausage and egg salad and some white wine, still sitting out on the towpath.