Monday 16 November 2009

Letting loose

It's fun being on the move again - just a trip down the Macclesfield canal for a couple of weeks but feels good to be travelling.
I came across this loose boat this morning...

It's the third boat I've found wandering in the last couple of months and each time, I suspect it may be other boaters letting them loose. The reason I think that is because the mooring pins are carefully laid on the bow and stern deck and the centre rope, held by a chain, was unclipped and that placed on the roof. Also, each time, the boats have been moored in fairly inconvenient places - where the canal is narrow and shallow (in today's case) or perched on the end of permanent moorings.
Trouble is, if you have a problem with where a boat is moored, I guess there's nothing stopping you from moving it along but just letting it loose gives other boaters a hard time. Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to go past a loose boat without at least trying to get it back to the bank. After all, the returning owner won't be able to access it at all.
Lovely sunshine yesterday, wild, wet and windy today. The nice thing about boating is that you never quite know what you're going to get next!

3 comments:

Simon said...

the word 'reprehensible' was floating around my head this morning, and it applies quite nicely here. ;-)

You would have thought any other boater wouldn't countenance letting a boat drift, but the sad truth is that not all boaters are, y'know, nice. Friendly. Conscientious. That kind of thing.

Anonymous said...

Good word, 'reprehensible' ;-)
I might be wronging boaters here - perhaps it's a curmudgeonly local or BW employee with a grudge or grumpy swans or.. or..
Ok, maybe not x

Simon said...

it must the be swans. They remember which boats don't feed them anything, and come back and take their revenge later... ;-)