Craig - happy to agree to disagree - have enjoyed the discussion. Having just participated in a major battle (in support of kayakers against our metropolitan authority) to keep kayak visibility (day & night-time) from being over-regulated, it has been refreshing to debate it from the other side ;-) We successfully defeated regulation requiring coloured clothing & equipment (daytime) and a continuous all-round white light (night). One of the senior people from our National Maritime Authority spoke in favour of the local regulation and expressed their wish to see it introduced nationally for all VuO. It may come to that someday - but for now they are reduced from 'requirements' to 'recommended practice'. As they are (in theory, anyway) not allowed to run directly against the CollRegs (International Treaty) - they must have reconciled this with their interpretation of the CollRegs lighting requirements. I know that some jurisdictions in Australia have already implemented lighting regs for kayaks. In a Paddlewise discussion some months ago, somebody brought up a question as to how the CollRegs (International) could be 'trampled on' or overruled by a local regulation. That was a good question - and I resolved to find an answer. After the resolution of our recent war, a friendly coffee with the Harbourmaster gave me the opportunity. He smiled and said that about 20 years ago most of the regional authorities had quietly extended their 'Harbour Limit' jurisdictions out to the national maritime limit and along the coastline to the extent of their land domain. So that there were very few bits of NZ water remaining that were not officially in somebody's 'Harbour'. The CollRegs, of course, explicitly allow local authorities to make local rules that can extend or change the CollRegs within Harbours ;-) (That's in the first 50 words of Rule 1 of the CollRegs and it lists Harbours, Roadsteads and Inland Waterways - so it didn't really intend local authorities to have open slather on making their own rules...) Seems the actual reason for it here (at least the politically acceptable reason) was that people wanted their local authorities to police Jetskis ! The authorities got fed up telling irate citizens that their coastal bays were outside local jurisdiction - so the authorities decided to bring them all within local jurisdiction, by extending the Harbourmasters' limits. I wonder if there are similar situations in Florida or Maine - with coastal recreation areas that once fell outside working 'Harbours'; but which have now been pulled into the extended zone of a nearby Harbour - to allow local restrictions to suit the local burghers. Best Regards Paul Hayward, Auckland, New Zealand *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Mar 26 2010 - 03:46:28 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:40 PDT