Winter stoppages and the 14-day rule
A stoppage that blocks your route is a genuine reason to stay longer than 14 days, but the Trust expects to be told rather than to work it out later. Note the stoppage, note the date, and keep the evidence with your log.
Every winter the Trust closes sections of the network for maintenance — lock gates, culverts, embankments. The programme is published in advance, and it is the single most common reason a continuous cruiser cannot move as planned.
Where you stand
The 14-day limit allows for genuine reasons to stay longer, and a navigation closure that blocks your route is plainly one. What it does not do is excuse you automatically. The Trust expects to hear from you at the time, not to reconstruct your reasoning from a sighting record months later.
What to do
- —Check the notices before you commit to a route, not after
- —If a stoppage traps you, tell the Trust and note the date you told them
- —Record the stoppage reference alongside the mooring in your own log
- —Move as soon as the route reopens, and log that move
Why the note matters more than the excuse
At renewal, an unexplained three-week stay looks the same as any other overstay. The same three weeks, annotated at the time with a stoppage that anyone can verify from the Trust's own published notices, is a different thing entirely.
That is the general shape of all of this: the facts rarely change the outcome on their own. The record of the facts, made when they happened, is what does.
Keep a record as you go
CruiseProof logs every mooring with a date and position, counts the days from when you arrived, and produces a cruising log you can send when you are asked for one.
Start your log — free