RIVER LIMIT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 28 December 1926, Page 7

RIVER LIMIT

!To The Editor.!

Sir, —It is difficult to- understand Captain Whiteford at the interview at the Harbour Board’s Office stressing the danger of the water between Golden Bay and the end of th o present riverlimit and the need to have a captain with a certificate for extended river limits, and, if a boat has an auxiliary oil engine, the necessity for a certificated engineer. He did not appear to me to care so much what the boat was like so long as she employed the two certificated men. I wonder was he ignorant of that particular coast or did he not want to be “made wise,” as the Americans ssiy, and did he know that the Marine Department had previously given a permit for a small coaster, the “Maid of Italy” (and a very old maid at that, as she had been running in tho Bays for upwards of 50 years) to run between Golden Bay and Motueka outside the, present river limit, and that they would not permit her to conio from Motueka to Nelson in the present river limit, presumably because on the former run it was more sheltered, and she was never more than a mile or two from a harbour of refuge, whereas between Motueka and Nelson she might be six or seven miles from one. I think I am right in saying that the captain had not an extended river limit certificate, and she did not carry a certificated engineer.

To insist on the need of employing a captain with an extended river limit certificate and certificated engineer on a small coaster, for which the river limit is asked to be extended is simply too ridiculous in the face of so many years’ experience. Whether the Marine Department will flout the wishes and requirements of a whole district without being able to give any reasonable objection remains to bo seen, but I think not. —I am, etc., ONE WHO WAS THERE. 23rd Dec.