The story quotes a liveaboarder as saying that the best outreach would be using some of the money earmarked for enforcement to help boat owners clear out.
“It’s going to cost $1,500 to tow me to Brentwood Bay and another $3,000 to drop a mooring pin up there,” he said. The story says the man believes kayakers and kayak businesses are behind some of the city’s push to oust liveaboards from the Gorge and called them “a bunch of snots who think they own the whole freaking harbour.”
So what makes him different? He obviously thinks he owns the whole freaking harbour, and also the whole of freaking Brentwood Bay.
I’ve got news for him. Brentwood Bay doesn’t want him. What makes him think he has the right to moor his boat wherever he wants? Up to about two years ago, I could launch my catamaran off the beach in front of my house in the evening and sail around Brentwood Bay. Now, if there’s any wind at all, I can’t get out past the boats moored in front of my house, and if I could get past them, I couldn’t sail in the bay — there are too many boats there.
So the man quoted shouldn’t bother coming to Brentwood. In the not-distant future, the federal government will start enforcing the Navigation Protection Act, and all those boats will have to leave. Including his.
Ian Cameron
Brentwood Bay
