Victor: Why the delays?

Published: Sunday, 19 August 2018

HAVE you have ever wondered why, when things break on the waterways, it takes so long to repair?

The reason is simple my friends, more often that not a spare part has to be found—as there's the rub, for slowly but very surely all the spare parts are being used up.

And as we know the many workshops that created these have long gone in one reorganisation or another, so where a part could actually be made they now have to be sourced from somewhere or other.  So that is why failing pumps and the like are out of action for so long—someone is out there searching for the right part!

One more

So one boaters' organisation at least, after the 'Bargees' came out and hit out at the Environment Agency's hike of its licence fees, also responded—the National Association of Boat Owners.

But no word from any of the others, which prompts me to ask—what do they do for the boaters who pay such high fees to be members of those associations?

They don't seem to be too bothered about their members having to fork out increased fees to use the EA waters, or even complain about the state of our own waterways? How many are closed at the moment?  I’ve lost count.

BCrusiersWhere have they gone?

It was 20 years ago that we first moored on 'B' jetty at Sawley Marina, way before British Waterways took it over to 'make money for the waterways', that somehow or another failed to materialise. Then came the surge in boat ownership with lots of new jetties and a thriving marina with our jetty full of narrowboats.

This picture was taken last week, but where have the narrowboats all gone? Accept for the occasional few all that can be seen are cruisers, and small ones at that, so they don't raise a lot of cash.

Progress

The entire marina has now had brand new service bollards, as can be seen from the photograph, at a cost of £250,000, though for the life of me I cannot think why as the former ones did the job well enough, and what's the point of such expensive service points for the hundreds of small cruisers that do not need them?

But it brings the bollards into the modern age that can be operated with an app. That rather annoyed Jan, as she does not want her data shared even more, so told the office she was not playing.  But now, should we turn the power off, would you believe we then have to ring the office to have it turned back on again, but only during office hours—how's that for progress!

The two 2018How do they manage it?

I should think that many of you will remember the two boats that were moored at a water point on the 48 hours mooring on Sawley Cut last year, and stuck there for months.

These are two continuous cruisers that most definitely don't play by the rules, and are back, but this time above the flood lock moored on the 'No Mooring' area of the lock moorings, and have been there now for two months, with little sign of moving, as of course no one does anything about them.

An addition this time round, instead of one, now two generators!  How do they get away with it?

Victor Swift