Julian said: > No Roger your point was to "maintain" as was Adrian's not "restore". > So as said, you are wrong and have moved the goal posts to "prove" your > point. > > Would you argue that the mainland canals should be left to get like the > British canals unable to take boats of the design gauge, possibly you > would. > It is getting on here much like the sailing/motorboat divide that exists > on YBW, sad really as they are all boats
I quote from an earlier post of mine: Up to a point Sir Humphrey, but a wide beam craft will always require dredging to a wider(better) standard than could be 'got away with' for narrow beam craft. I'm not encouraging poor dredging standards, only pointing out that more significant dredging will be required for your type of craft at a time when waterway maintenance budgets are in free-fall. So, the last sentence indicates starting from 'now', the time when 'waterway maintenance budgets are in free-fall' and also clearly indicates clearly that I am 'not' advocating leaving the canals to drop below design standards if at all possible. I am, however, being realistic enough to realise that under present (and near future) BW funding projections we're not going to get dredging that will maintain 'existing' conditions, never mind 'restore' them to their original design profile. If it were possible to restore the system to original profiles then I'm not at all against a mix of beams navigating the system (where originally designed to do so). My point is merely that the current system is hardly suitable in places for narrow-beam boats and so is becoming even less suitable for broad-beam craft (passing/mooring etc). That being the case, and in the absence of some mysterious benefactor offering to dredge the complete system, then the chance of pinch points being widened to increase the range of wide-beam craft is nil. I cannot see how it could be justifiable to spend what little budget is available to open up pinch-point parts of the system specifically for 'minority' wide-beamers when the whole of the system is destined to continue to fall into disrepair for the 'majority' of the narrow-beam users. Perhaps you could persuade your mysterious dredging-benefactor to do it for you though? I'm really sorry if this realism about current budgets upsets wide- beam owners like yourself and Adrian but it's a fact of life at present and we're just going to have to get used to it. That's not to say that we can't fight the proposed Government budget allocation for waterways authorities, but being closely involved with SOW, I can't see a quick-fix at the moment. Roger
