A boat owner is puzzled by a parking ticket he received for his sailboat tied up in Saltery Bay.
The well-maintained boat, a Haida 26, is tied up out of the way to a mooring buoy in the eastern corner of Saltery Bay, said Michael Conway-Brown, the ship’s captain.
In early May, Conway-Brown paddled out to his Haida 26 sailboat after returning from a winter in Mexico to find the notice of trespass taped to his boat’s varnished wood. Pulling the notice off, it also pulled a chunk of varnish off too, he added.
Conway-Brown stopped using the government wharf there after his boat was damaged by other boaters coming into the harbour too fast causing the moored boats to bash against the wharf, he said.
A total of six boats, some sailboats and other commercial vessels had received the same ticket, he said.
The notice was issued from the ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations (MFLNRO) on April 8 and said that the vessel contravened section 60 of the Land Act by “mooring on a permanent basis a vessel and mooring buoy without authority.”
The owner was given to June 15 to move the boat or risk having it seized and destroyed.
But Conway-Brown said his boat posed neither a hazard to navigation nor to the marine environment.
“I leave the anchor light on all the time,” he added. “There’s no possibility it could be a hazard to navigation. It’s a dry boat. It doesn’t leak a drop. There’s no dirty bilge water going out. We’ve always met the letter of the law when dumping our toilet and keeping the environment clean. Then suddenly I’m getting this notice.”
Conway-Brown said the buoy he ties up to has been there for more than 20 years and he has permission from the owner of it. However, the owner did not apply for a permit when placing it. He added that Transport Canada told him that permits are not usually required for the installation of the mooring buoys.
The Peak contacted the ministry and a spokesperson said that in fall 2014, the ministry’s compliance enforcement branch became aware of vessels and structures that were permanently anchored on provincial Crown land in Saltery Bay, but were not tenured and/or authorized under the Land Act. Officers were unable to contact the owners of the vessels “to advise them that they didn’t have the required authorization to moor there,” he said. So, on April 8, they posted the notices of trespass on the mooring buoys and vessels.
But Conway-Brown said he did not think the ministry has the authority or jurisdiction to issue such a ticket.
He thought jurisdiction for the federal government began at the median low tide, so he wonders why it is the provincial government ticketing his boat. When he looked for the federal law for mooring buoys, his buoy meets the letter of the law with the exception that it is the wrong colour, something Conway-Brown said he is going to correct.
He explained that once he received the ticket he went to talk to the ministry office in Powell River about it and to apply for a permit, but “they were baffled when I asked them about a mooring buoy ticket,” he said.
Since then he said it has been confirmed that the provincial ministry did not have jurisdiction to ticket his boat or the mooring buoy and the ministry bought him a can of varnish to repair the damage. “That’s good and I appreciate it,” he said, adding that while he plans on taking his boat out over the summer, he is looking forward to tying it up to the buoy again when he returns.
