Avast Behind

Available with residential mooring, or as a take-away.

£70,000 ONO, with mooring. Price for boat minus mooring negotiable.

Email cutworks@btinternet.com for viewing or more info.

Photo gallery being uploaded to http://cutworks.blogspot.com/

http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/defra-cuts-begin-to-bite-with-british-waterways-huhne.html

It's absolutely pathetic that one government department can suck the lifeblood out of another one, simply because they couldn't do their own maths.

DEFRA, a byword for incompetence in handling the countryside issues is now demonstrating their incompetence yet again by gutting the British Waterways budget to make up for shortfalls in their funding caused by them mis-handling payments to farmers.

What do farmers have to do with canals? Nothing much really, they're both used as props for the tourist industry as much as anything. Oooh, pretty sheep, ooooh, pretty boat, oooh pretty collapsing canal system!

DEFRA has decided that the easy target is to take money away from departments that have been making do and not cocking up.

Help save the waterways by standing up and saying NO to DEFRA. Tell them to go cap in hand to the Chancellor and say they've been bad and can they have more please. And tell them to keep their sticky fingers off the BW budget. Otherwise, tourists won't be able to say 'Oooh, pretty boat', it will be 'Oooh, pretty shopping trolley' as that's all that will be left in the ditches that used to be the canals of the UK.

http://www.saveourwaterways.org.uk/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6036139.stm
And in a bitter irony, the Pontyscyllte is a 'heritage' site
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml%3Fxml%3D/news/2006/10/11/ncanal11.xml
while the rest of the canals are at risk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml%3Fxml%3D/news/2006/10/11/ncanal111.xml

Makes you want to require all government minions to pass a maths test before they can order a new computer system, and to pass a logic test before they're allowed to mangle a budget. I know, it's too much to ask that money be spent responsibly. Silly me.

While struggling to get the dredger up through the pound between locks 17 and 18, yeah, the ones BW keeps saying don't need dredging... (pause for laughter), the dredgeing crew found this little stone. It's the basis for the great round mud-bar that has confounded boaters for years in this stretch of canal. The smaller rocks were merely a bit of decoration, they averaged about the size of a coping stone and were mere barnacles compared to this gem. One wonders what will be discovered when they start dredging in earnest, and they'll have to do some serious dredging to get the dredger and pans up through this section to the actual slippage up between locks 18 and 19.


At last someone has finally noticed how bad it is. When the dredger tried to moor in the slip that is normally occupied by nb 'Hakuna Matata' they couldn't even get halfway in as the pound was about a foot below normal. They tried everything but picking it up and walking it in and no luck. So, now we finally get the proof that this pound needs some serious dredging.

Here's a few more photos, the first one is of the dredger digging itself free from yet another mudflat to the stern of nb 'Cutworks' prior to it finding the big stone in the photo above.














You can estimate how shallow it is by how far the dredging bucket is immersed. Barely.
















And finally, here are some photos of the dredger and the Very Big Rock trying to get over the mudflat. Yup, we need dredging here. Paying attention, BW?

Well, it's getting to the point now where we might as well move to Cornwall. We've been stuck on the Rochdale minus any comment, assistance, contact or updates from British Waterways for a year now, well, minus ten days or so.

The Rochdale breach may or may not be open in May, June, July or August or never. Who knows? BW doesn't seem to be bothered, their last update was in November of 2005. And at that time we'd been unable to leave the canal for six months.

It wouldn't be so bad if they were even-handed in their treatment of boaters. However, this is simply not the case. We're inconvenient. We're owners of a 70' boat on a canal that is nominally capable of taking a 72' boat in the locks, but there are hardly any of the 'official' winding holes that can even handle a full-length boat now. There are only two 70' boats on the Rochdale, and only one of them actually makes any travels. Or would if we could.

We've been told in no uncertain terms that we're not eligible for craning as it's just 'not going to happen' That's an acutal quote from the BW 'customer service' people. Other boats in a hurry to get off the canal due to being from elsewhere got craned out last year at the same time we were being told we were not eligible to be moved so we could actually go somewhere.

BW, thanks again. We've been sitting here for a year now. We took our summer holiday last year in a caravan in Cornwall or else we'd have been sitting here. And we're still sitting here. And sitting. And we'll be sitting till the cows come home apparently as there are NO DAMN UPDATES on the Waster... sorry Waterscape site. NONE. Oh wait, the one last November has a familiar sound to it. I wrote most of it and sent it to you! Free updates.

We pay our license. We pay a LOT license. For what?

At this point we're either ready to crane the boat out and sit on the quayside, sell it or just refuse to pay a license until everyone ahead of us in the queue pays theirs. That should take a while.

When people speed past and claim that they're boating safely and carefully as in 'bloody hell, what do you want, I'm not making a breaking wash!' I genuinely fear for the future of this canal.

There are entire sections of bank giving way along the towpath below lock 17 and the entire flaming canal has been closed for the summer due to an embankment collapse.

Sometimes I genuinely feel it would be better closed as it's in danger of not just closing but being damaged beyond the ability of BW to repair when boaters think that 4mph is not just the maximum but the mandatory speed on the canal.

I'm planning on putting up a webcam, and showing that it's simply not my imagination. But who'd listen? The hireboaters are of the opinion as was expressed yesterday 'Complain all you like, I'll be off the boat and then what?'

Then what, indeed.

-Su

It's a white Christmas.



Happy Holidays. Fingers crossed for a better cruising season next year.