grendel

to be honest, i am all for staying at home, i do have a machine indoors that i can use to get my daily exercise, so i am using it rather than take a walk around the block, to avoid others. i go out for shopping once a week, and am working from home. do i want to be out on a boat - you bet i do, but i'm not.

Thanks Tom, the differences between areas is causing a great deal of confusion over what is an isnt allowed

Paladin, you are totally avoiding getting the point of lockdown, it shouldnt be a case of travelling no matter the distance, its that unless there is an absolutely essential reason, we should not be doing it, in my book visiting a boat to go on a jolly isnt an absolute essential, and they have already said winterisation and maintenance are not considered essential, so how is a day trip on the boat more essential than that. You can live within the new regulations, but you would still have to persuade a police officer that your trip to the boat (for non maintenance or winterisation) was more essential than those two reasons. its not a case of finding legal loopholes to allow you to do things - its about restricting your travel to absolute essentials to prevent the spread of the virus, its about doing the RIGHT thing to protect everyone.

I know the legislation as worded doesnt restrict the distance you can travel, but the whole point of this lockdown is to restrict the possibilities for the virus to transfer between hosts and between areas.

its the problem with different circumstances, if its ok for you to go and do these things, then someone may well decide that if its ok for you to drive / walk a couple of miles to visit your boat, then someone will see that its ok for them to drive 10 miles, etc until we have people driving down to their boat from hundreds of miles away - it all starts with one small reasonable step, but then unreasonable people use that as a reason to do the unreasonable. Thus if you were going to do it, just quietly get on and do it, rather than trying to justify it online, as its the justification that the unreasonable will use to visit their boat.

or a monster eel

my dad was in hospital having had a section of bowel removed, he was due to come home, but not allowed until he had been seen by the consultant, the consultant was running late or my dad would have been at home when sepsis cut in, within 10 minutes he was back in the operating theatre having the wound opened up and flushed out, the drs said if he had been at home they wouldnt have been able to treat him in time. take care, do it now not later.

you just need to work out how thick the veneers cab be without being too far for the magnets to work. or all magnets orientated to attract each other.

neodidium magnets recessed intoo yhe frame and covered by a veneer, and steel plates recessed and veneered similarly.

neodidium magnets?

meanwhile the BA website still shows the update from yesterday - https://www.broads-authority.gov.uk/news/coronavirus-covid-19

i see we have had a message from DEFRA to British Marine I have quoted verbatim from the web page linked, but have highlighted the one important part.

except we are not wanting to go boating in the lake district, we want to boat on the broads which are operating under their own guidance, which currently says no, what do the canal and river trust advise? (though we are not under their guidance either) everyone is interpreting things differently. who is right, who is wrong, there may be people up in the lake district arguing against boat use because the broads authority has said no.

on that point i can agree, we can sit and argue the wording all day, but everyone will have a different interpretation, and some will be right and some will be wrong. me i will be staying at home as much as possible except for shopping once a week and exercise, much as i have been except for the odd holiday away for the last 9 months.

Which then leads to the question is your boat an outdoor place and is it open air recreation, that will be down to interpretation, I wont say you cant go to your boat, but if stopped its down to the police officers interpretation. currently the BA website says no, but they have it under review awaiting DEFRA guidance. they may reverse that decision, or other areas that currently allow motor boating may reverse theirs, who knows

i may have inadvertantly been quoting the scottish guidelines https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-on-travel-and-transport/ which uses the word unnecessary 5 times in relation to travel, but at the end of the day its not how its worded, unnecessary - or without a reasonable excuse, the meaning is clear enough, the intent is clear.

ok, so having checked the regulations i find this- so necessary or unnecessary was just the wording used in the preliminary announcement, - semantics again, so if we replace all my necessarys and unnecessarys with 'without a reasonable excuse', you have to persuade the police officer that your excuse is reasonable, and then its down to them if they accept the fact or not, you are getting hung up on the actual wording, and not the intent of the laws / regulations, if the police officer decides your excuse is not reasonable, you are stuck with it.

It may be but the word necessary has been used in all the published guidance, according to that you should avoid unnecessary travel, therefore it boils down to whether your journey is considered necessary, while you might try arguing the exact wording of the law if you are stopped, i am sure that you would then be seen to be unnecessarily obstructive, which wont do you any favours with a police officer who has stopped you. I have a letter on company headed paper stating that i am a key utility worker in a company that serves over 4 million customers, that i could produce to explain why I am travelling if i get stopped. other than your interpretation of the regulations, what do you have to rely on if stopped? While you are probably correct with your statement, and would be able to argue the fact if it went to court, the first person you need to convince would be the officer that stopped you, who has by this time probably heard every excuse under the sun. the whole aim is to reduce the chances of spreading the virus - to others, and between areas, which wont work if everyone decides to go for a day out on their boat, or to the beach, or .......

all of which boils down to, does the policeman that has stopped you believe your journey is necessary? You can argue the semantics of it all day, but at the end its down to the policemans interpretation of what is construed necessary, and that may not coincide with your interpretation.

in the same way all those spanners will cause scraped knuckles

its simple, they are all used to accidentally cut your fingers

marshman, if you tag @BroadsAuthority they should get a notification

by the sound of that the work is done by the yard, so nothing stopping that going ahead as normal surely

thats simple, they want to know the rules so that they can think up devious ploys to get riound them that mean they can ignore the government restrictions.

Surely though the matter of Marinas closing should rightly be brought up with those marinas, as no matter how hard we all try we cant change anything, only the Marinas can change the state of play, as no matter what we agree on here, they are the ones holding the keys.