As the province I’m sure…

As the province I’m sure understands, the Canada Shipping Act does not attempt to define what a vessel is under its navigation rights that include anchoring. Even a barge enjoys anchoring rights. The province has my sympathy in attempting to ward off a proliferation of floating homes/cottages, but the new regs will be a disaster for cruising boaters where the 300 meter restriction is concerned.

As currently written, the definition of a “camping unit” includes “any watercraft equipped for overnight accommodation.” It sounds like the province is attempting to distinguish between vessels with accommodation that should enjoy overnight anchoring rights and floating structures that will be denied those rights. I presume the province proposes to include all craft with overnight accommodations within its definition of a permitted camping unit. But a significant problem arises with its proposal to “prohibit camping on water within 300 meters of the shoreline of a waterfront property with a building or structure,” in other words, a waterfront home or cottage.

This would be a disastrous restriction for cruising boats. Many popular anchorages on Georgian Bay, to begin, would be declared off-limits to cruisers because of the presence of a single cottage within that anchoring distance. A quick look at my charts tells me that many if not most of the anchorages in the 30,000 Islands between Midland and Parry Sound would become no-go overnight zones. To begin, boaters can say goodbye to several key anchorages around Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay Islands National Park where one or more cottages are found.

The authors of this proposal appear sympathetic to marina owners when it suggests that they could have a business opportunity in providing dockage to floating homes. (I would disagree. The selling point of these floating homes is to be in cottage country, in a floating cottage, not tied up at a marina dock.) I would suggest that many marina owners would face serious impacts to their business if the boaters to whom they lease docks could no longer venture out to anchor for the weekend or the week because of a regulatory conflict with shoreline cottages. For marinas in the southeastern Georgian Bay area, one of the finest cruising grounds in the world that attracts transient boaters from around Canada and the United States, the anchoring bans around Beausoleil Island alone would eliminate the very reason many of its customers have a marina slip and other cruisers visit the area. What few anchorages that were left available would become choked with vessels. We already have anchorages at which cottagers will approach an anchored boat and ask it to move because “you’re blocking my sunset” or “I swim over to that rock every night and you’re in the way.” (Personal experience.) A 300-meter ban will give many cottagers the ammunition they desire to eliminate cruising boats completely.

The 300 meter ban is regulatory overkill. It might be a huge win for cottagers who think they can own the water as well as the land, but a disaster for recreational boating and the industry that relies on the activity. Boats have been cruising these waters for as long as, or longer than, many cottages have existed. There is no reason to grant shoreline property owners the right to have anchorages emptied.