A missed opportunity
Like several other narrowboatworld contributors I was surprised (actually, in hindsight I probably wasn't!) to read that hire boats would be given preferential treatment in navigating through the partially opened Napton Flight, writes John Howard.
Although I did think that common sense might prevail with those CaRT staff 'on the ground as it were' in making sure that the private boat owners were hastened through the lock as they reached their position at the front of the queue.
Working as a team
We all know from experience that if you have a good bunch of people who really understand what they're doing, and when working as a team, you can really whistle through a lock flight when everyone pulls together. So with some, hopefully experienced, CaRT guys on site to support the potentially less experienced hirers—and those less nimble private boaters—one would hope that everyone would have been able to take their turn and make it back to their various bases with the minimum of delay and fuss.
Yet again CaRT are seen to shoot themselves in the foot by missing another golden opportunity to show all boaters that they are all equally important to CaRT. What was it I wrote in a recent article about apartheid in boating? Once again we see that 'all boaters are equal, but some boaters are more equal than others'—at least that's what George Orwell may well have written, had he been a narrowboater back in 1945!