REGULATION - SUNDAY 6TH JULY - BRUGES

 

If there’s a greater oxymoron than “European Union” then I’d like to know what it is.

Far be it for me, a guest in any one of its member states at any particular time, to criticise the well meaning bureaucrats who have to administer any regulation across any of its borders, nor anyone at all who speaks to me in my language rather than their own.  On this rainy Sunday, we were expecting a knock on the side of the cabin from our friendly waterways inspector, who each year turns a blind eye to the fact that we don’t have a proper ship station license for our radio.

Over a coffee and cake we usually regale him with the impossibility of being Australians with a French vessel plying the waters of Belgium (or whichever other country we may visit), and he very kindly skips the box that is supposed to have a tick in it.   

After contacting the communications departments from several countries in “the Union”, we thought the latest letter from one of the French Authorities might provide him with at least a giggle.

“Dear Sir,” the letter began kindly, in English. 

So far so good, but then in the very next line we had the old sinking feeling.

“Unfortunately this Office does not have competency for riverboats.”

Perhaps it could have been left there, but sadly it went further to elaborate on this lack of “competency”, setting out in some detail and an enormous number of acronyms, that while a riverboat is required in some jurisdictions to have a VHF with ATIS, in France it is not, and unless you have an MMIS you can’t have an ATIS.  Furthermore a riverboat can’t be issued with an MMIS unless it has an AIS and it certainly can’t have a VHF with DCS.   It concluded with the hope this has been helpful and provided details of how we can make an application should any of the above make sense.

It didn’t, but we did make the application.  They are going to mail their response to our home address and we have forty days from the date of the decision to appeal it, which we suspect will be about seven days fewer than the delivery will take, but at least we have another piece of paper which may stop that little box from being ticked for one more year.