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Waterway Map

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434 pointswcedmisten151 comments

I've been waiting for the day that HN would have something tangentially related to the English and Welsh canal system so I could gush about it. For those that don't know, we have around 2500 miles of (mostly) navigable canals around the UK. They were built during the industrial revolution prior to the invention of trains such that we could transport coal and other goods relatively quickly and without damage (consider trying to transport pottery, for instance, on the perilous roads of the late 1700s. If the bumpy roads didn't destroy your wares, the highwaymen might).

These days, obviously, all that has passed and instead we have a community of almost entirely leasure boaters - some choosing to own narrowboats [1] purely for pleasure, but a significant amount of us choose to live on them. Some based in marinas but quite a few of us (myself included) preferring a much more nomadic lifestyle - being obliged by law to move every 14 days at a maximum to new areas and consequentially experiencing the richness and beauty of what is, in my mind, a living museum - a testament to our past.

Life aboard a narrowboat is cozy. You never have much space but I don't find myself lacking. It gets cold in winter, but most of us have multifuel stoves which we stuff with coal and (often foraged) wood. Right now I'm sat listening to the wind and rain lashing against the boat (it's almost 4am so I should really get to bed), the boat gently rocking from the weather. And I can honestly say that there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat

I only found out about narrowboats recently from [1] (found at [2]), and they sound so nice!

I've wanted a tiny house or a skoolie, and I think if I was in Britain, I'd go for a narrowboat just as easily.

[1]: https://qmacro.org/blog/posts/2024/01/09/battlestation-2024/

[2]: https://lobste.rs/s/jrh1od/lobsters_battlestations_screensho...

> I only found out about narrowboats recently

They make excellent walking and biking routes. They are flat, no cars, often have a pub, wildlife is frequently visible and they are usually quiet. Absolutely loves my time biking them in England.

It’s always baffled me how the regard that the average Englishman holds for itinerant folk is wrapped in a big if statement:

  if (boat)
     … # All good
  else:
     raise TravellerAlert()

Double standards are practically a necessity to maintain bigotry. I’d be more surprised to find prejudice that lacks that kind of hypocrisy.

The narrowboaters thast stay near me don't seem to indulge in open air defecation everywhere around, they don't appear to litter and leave plastic and gas canisters in incredible quanties everywhere before buggering off, and they don't go door to door with dodgy schemes.

The travellers that occasionally stay in the field next to my house do all of this and more.

Pretending that this difference doesn't exist and that there's some "double standard" just means you have zero direct experience of the matter and just want to have some self-righteous "UK bad" moaning. Like it or lump it reputations are often deserved and caused by experience rather than by random prejudice.

Wow, all this escalated rather quickly...

You obviously don't have travellers near you.

Our local parks are now much harder to get into let alone if you are disabled as they all have a small rampart across any flat entrance to stop cars and caravans being driven onto the park.

I live in Spain, mate, I know a thing or two about this.

Since we're on the topic, are there regulations about sewerage for longboaters? Are there "hookups" available at mooring spots or is it more of a "well it all gets diluted when we dump it in the river" kind of thing?

You're not allowed to dump any human waste in any of the canals or rivers (ignore the fact that plenty of companies in the UK do this...).

There are two common approaches to dealing with human waste aboard canal boats; cassette toilets which you can carry to 'elsan points' placed frequently along the canal to dump semi-regularly (I hear anything from a week to a month depending on how many aboard). They look like [1] - you remove the bottom bit and carry that to empty. And secondly, pump-out tanks with a macerator toilet which chews up the excrement before being deposited into a tank. They're much bigger so need to be emptied less often (over 3 months for our 500 litre beast). They need to be done at marinas or the ever-decreasing number of Canal and River Trust-maintained self-pumpouts. Costs about £10-17 per pump-out. Elsan disposal is free as is covered by your license fee. Hundreds of thousands of words on forums have been written about the pros and cons of either of these approaches, and is considered on the canalworld forum to be a bit of a holy war.

A much less common approach is composting toilets. There's not a lot of room on boats, so storing the waste long enough to turn into an effective compost doesn't seem too feasible. And then once it's done, what are you gonna do with it? You're on a boat, you don't have a garden. And recently CRT informed people that they cannot dispose of this compost toilet waste in their provided refuse bins.

[1] https://marine-deals.freetls.fastly.net/media/catalog/produc...

Narrowboaters don't have the same reputation for a reason though. I've only had a handful of experiences with those who choose caravans as their method of itinerancy but they've all been negative. Everyone I know has had the same experience. It's disingenuous to suggest people hold differing views about them for no reason

bool boat = social_standing || affluence;

This isn't really true.

You get lots of people living on boats because housing is expensive (like my mother and stepdad).

You do get plenty of "crusty" boat people, but generally they keep themselves to themselves.

Maybe this is because people on boats are often in public and accessible places, where people will quickly complain.

They still own where they live though.

How is this different to travellers owner their caravans? Most people who live on boats don't own a permanent mooring. They either continually move around, or rent a mooring.

None of us have ever seen a marina or mooring place covered in litter and human waste, or been subjected to petty crime by the boaters.

I have, however, seen the Canal and River Trust's assets stolen from their working boats (steel fencing, tools, the door or something off an excavator if I heard the guy correctly). Not by boaters, but by the nearby travellers.

Why? They are different populations that engage in different behaviors; one group engages in more antisocial behavior than the other. It’s natural to want to avoid troublemakers.

If you were to give take a broad guess at the cost of moving around like that, in terms of maintaining supplies and securing a place to stay when you’re not in the mood to move with the current, what would that come out to, say monthly?

There is a massive time Vs money tradeoff with boats.

You can do it for almost zero money (perhaps $100/month) if you put many hours per day into maintaining the boat yourself and making everything you need yourself.

Or you can pay for good gear and get all maintenance done by a professional and your canal boat will be costing more like $3000/month - and when you do that, it becomes a rich persons hobby.

It depends on the level of comfort you want. If you're willing to shit in a bucket and shower once a fortnight then you can do it very cheaply and it'll be acceptable. Try that in a house and there will be concerns for your welfare. If you want a bathtub, on-demand central heating, a big fridge-freezer, bow thrusters, macerator toilets and a permanent mooring with mains electricity then you'll pay much more than you would for a house. Horses for courses. But doing things on boats is fun, and inventing solutions is great.

Edit: You wanted a figure - for the sort of boat you'll find on a canal in the UK. Bottom end: buy a small fibreglass boat for £5k, pay £1k a year for your licence (many at this end don't bother. Another £1k a year for maintenance and fuel )

Top end: Buy a big boat for £300k, £2k a year licence, £6k mooring, £1k insurance, £5-10k a year in maintenance.

Also factor in that boats mostly depreciate (though the last couple of years have been an exception). If you spend £100k on a boat today, you won't be able to sell it in 10 years get that £100k back. If you fail to keep on top of maintenance a boat will rapidly lose value.

You'll often see articles in the newspapers here gushing romantically about how a couple moved onto the canal in order to save money, and it's all so very nice and wonderful. The reality is once you've factored in a mooring, maintenance and other things, it tends to be comparable to living on land. A lot of people can't continuously cruise as we do, due to jobs and other responsibilities.

A few grand a year for a mooring, plus around £1k/year for your license (all boats on the Canal and River Trust's waterways must be licensed). Every few years you need your boat lifting out and the blacking on the bottom re-done (more £££), and in winter you get through a fair amount of coal and other fuel to keep the boat heated (I think we're at about £100/mo for diesel + coal, but some people burn a lot more coal than us).

You really have to want to do it for the experience of living on the canals rather than a way to live cheaply (though it can be done).

My 0.02p, it cost about £6000/yr to do it cheap. Goes up to £10k/yr with a full time mooring in a marina and outsourced services.

Boat pricing comes in a spectrum that very roughly looks like this:

3. £20-£40K Narrowboats are thirty or more years old, or are under 50ft. They have had many owners each of which will have done something to the boat. The engine fittings will be old eg. coolant hoses , the radiators might not work, the fireplace might need replacing, there is rust in important places needing welding and so on. There may be overplating on the hull to repair holes. In general, you can expect to perform regular/constant maintenance and repairs to maintain and keep them in working order. (some people enjoy this, you may not)

4. In the 40-60K range expect the boat to be about 20 years old. Generally modern and most things will be working but it might not have a good electrical system for modern lifestyles. It will have 20 years of wear and tear, and the interior might feel old and outdated.

5. In the £100k-£120 range you should see 5-10 year old boats. It probably will have a modern toilet/shower, modern electrical maybe a solar panel, a nicer kitchen and modern diesel engine/gearbox and propeller.

6. At £160K-180K you can get a new but simple/basic boat fitout probably no solar, no dinette, few cupboards. Or it’s a five year old custom build that has been fully fitted with many extras e.g washing machines, quality inverter/batteries

7. At £200K+ it a brand new boat, built to your specification. An all electric boutique boat is £220K-240K. I’ve heard of narrowboats up to £280K. Luxury wide beams over £350K do exist.

There are several narrowboaters who record their travels on YT, perhaps the best, certainly one of the first, is "Travels by Narrowboat", with 6 seasons on Prime[1] and the more recent years on YT[2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=travels+by+narrowboat

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@CountryHouseGent

Kevins videos have always been great, and from the same generation of “BoatTubers” as myself and my wife and dog (we’re Minimal List), but there were earlier (including the slightly more venerable CruisingTheCut) and a whole slew of great channels that came later, all speaking to different tastes and styles and audiences. My personal favorite as an introduction to narrowboat life has been Robbie Cummings for a while now; he ended up on the BBC as Canal Boat Diaries, so the production quality is just great, and he’s also about the nicest and most affable fellow I’ve met on the canals, which in this community is saying quite a bit.

How interesting that you're on HN. We regularly travel up and down the ship canal to/from Manchester. Give me a shout if you're ever in Manchester again, I think we'd enjoy a beer.

Fellow boater here - I live on a Dutch Barge. Also awake at 0530 with creaking lines in this storm. Lovely lifestyle. We registered our new baby’s address as the boat on a birth certificate last week and had no problems. Good luck to any future researcher geocoding that! I expected a postcode to be required but it wasn’t :)

Ah I love a Dutch barge, does yours have functioning leeboards? Very surprised you didn't need a postcode for the address on the birth certificate - although I suppose if it's 'place of birth', it could be anywhere really and that place might not have a postcode.

No leeboards I'm afraid - mine is a replica Luxemotor built in 2011. I have a friend with leeboards and they are beautiful but without sails they are just ornamental and one more thing to sand and varnish!

Surely a berth certificate?

I'm not a liveaboard but I live in an archipelago and have done my fair share of commercial fishing.

IMO: When the weather is nice, there is no better way to travel than by boat. If the weather is poor, there is no worse way to travel than by boat.

That said, while being stuck at anchor due to bad weather can be frustrating, there is something pleasant about laying next to the stove while you're being tossed about... Unless you're trying to sleep while you're listening to your anchor drag.

Is it literally possible to hear sound of anchor being dragged or is it sound of some kind of nav instruments?

Another narrowboater here - though leisure not liveaboard. We moor our 40-footer in Worcester, just off the Severn. I worked with the canals for many years, including a spell at British Waterways and then editing Waterways World magazine, and I still draw the maps for WW. I have a 75%-finished canal mapping app I really need to get round to releasing…

Some of us here would love to see it, or even just hear the concept.

Seconded. There's at least two of us for sure!

off topic: It's always fun reading the writings from Englanders about topics that are not foreign to America.

I understand the vocabulary that I've never read before but it's like reading a passage from the 18th century. :)

So, how does that work when you have to receive letters ? Do you have a PO box somewhere or a home port of some sort ?

It’s easiest to have a home address somewhere you can use as a permanent mailing addresss, but there’s a system called Post Retente that can be used to receive mail at a lot of (especially more rural) Post Office locations. For the most part though it’s best to convert all the bills and whatnot to online delivery and use Amazon lockers and the Click and Collect services offered by many shops to get what you need.

Loved the canals when I lived in England (Leeds). I didn't narrowboat, but rode bike (including commute) on the canal sidewalks.

Canals tend to have wildish nature around them (quite rare in England) and they are digged totally flat (with a very subtle incline/decline, apart from waterlocks). They have decent sidewalks that make them ideal to bike along (quite rare in England). They are very long so you can have a daytrip to visit multiple towns. And they don't have cars (quite rare in England).

Canals are great!

The "sidewalks" are towpaths - horses and/or people would walk along those to pull boats along.

This is incredible! How easy is it to buy and register a Narrowboat? How does it work legally, can you register your home address to the boat?

If you’ve got the money for one it’s easy to buy (see a site called ApolloDuck for used prices) and register, though the specifics of registration depend on which waterways you want to be on (the Canal and River Trust covers the majority, the Environment Agency some key sections, and there’s some odd few others managed by their own agencies). It’s perfectly legal, but as Covid really proved access to services can be a bit confusing, as it’s the mooring, not the boat, that can be classed as having a post code, and pretty much everything in the UK is tied to your post code. So while the boat can be your residence it can be more than a little difficult to access things like GP Surgeries (primary medical care( and other government systems that assume you’re at a fixed address. It’s a great way to live and to see the UK, but it has caveats for anyone with chronic medical issues, for example.

I see, thanks. And I'm also assuming I would need to get some special license to sail a Narrowboat? As a non-UK citizen (EU/Swiss), do you think it could be complicated to get a Narrowboat and live on it for half a year or so?

No, you don't need a licence to pilot a boat on most inland waters in the UK (there may be exceptions on busy commercial stretches).

It would not be complicated to get a boat, assuming you have the money. You basically need to buy a boat, pay for the relevant licences, make sure the boat has the correct safety certificate, and off you go.

You cannot just stop and tie up anywhere. You either need some private land where you will keep the boat, or you need to make sure you don't violate the rules of the public areas. There is a concept of "continuous cruising", which means you need to move on every 14 days (I think).

Anyway, not complicated, but requires a bit of homework. Easiest if you can find a mentor who is already boating in the UK to help you out.

Thanks, very helpful!

A friend-of-a-friend lived on a narrowboat for a year while we were at university.

It was all fairly straightforward, although maintenance cost more than he expected, and he was surprised to find he couldn't just moor it in central London — 'parking' is limited and restricted there.

You'll find plenty of people have written about this, e.g. https://livingonanarrowboat.co.uk/. You could also search "narrowboat holidays" and see if you can hire a boat for 6 months.

I don't think being non-UK will make any difference. You can visit the UK for up to 6 months as a tourist.

Thanks, very helpful!

A few years ago, we decided to travel to Wales, mainly to visit the Doctor Who Experience, but also to pay Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch a visit (for the novelty factor). We flew to Stansted and then drove through the English countryside and had a truly magical moment, when we decided to stop for a short rest. In small town we drove onto a parking lot, and then followed the sign to a small park/picnic are. The park was right at one of the waterways and there lay a few of those narrowboats and one or two were navigating the channel. It was such an unexpected sight, it felt light out of this world. Before that I had never heard of them.

Later I saw a depiction of life on such a boat when my wife watched Call the Midwife. It must have been Episode S05E07.

You can find a show or two on streaming services that expose life on narowboats.

Lovely! I'm Irish, we don't have it as much. But I'd love to do a canal boat holiday. Doddleing along the canals, stopping in a lovely english country pub... oh I can dream.

I made WaterwayMap.org, and one of the view is for anything OpenStreetMap considers “boatable”: <https://waterwaymap.org/#tiles=planet-waterway-boatable> I know nothing about this topic, so if there's anything missing, I'm willing to add it.

First I've heard of this, but it's super cool! Can you suggest a blog or small web site to learn more about it?

For the history of the canals, wikipedia[1] has a pretty good page. The Canal and River Trust (CRT) is the current authority for much of the canal system in England and Wales, and they have a site[2] with plenty of little articles on individual little bits and bobs.

If you're after more of a modern angle - i.e., stories and insights from people that live on them (or just use them) today, there are many blogs from boaters, but I tend to not read them unles I come across a particular post addressing something relevant to me (usually repairs...). There are also tons of vlogs and youtube channels where people document their journeys which other people in the comments have mentioned, and even TV shows! I highly recommend Canal Boat Diaries by Robbie Cumming, though outside the UK I'm not sure where it can be found. He also has a youtube channel [3] which is less highly polished and a bit more 'real'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_s...

[2] https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/canal-history

[3] https://www.youtube.com/c/RobbieCumming

Gush on! This is the kind of thing I love to occasionally see here. Wish I could live on the water, but slip fees are pricey and limited where I'm at. Best to you!

I spend 8 months a year on my narrowboat moving around the canals as I hunt for pubs, relaxation and peace. In winter I hibernate in my house, pining for the canals and freedom.

Also, I work full-time from the boat.

And its inverse: the watershed calculator:

https://mghydro.com/watersheds/

Edit: and river runner:

https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/

I made WaterwayMap.org. I wanna make a watershed map too!

When I was young, my grandfather talked about the possibility of taking his boat from his home in central Florida all the way to the coast.

40+ years later, this fills me with delight. He could have done it.

Definitely not all of these waterways are navigable. There are even underground ones, essentially pipes.

Right. Like trails in the woods, they shift and evolve.

Bingo. Trying to map the flow of water is like trying to map the flow of time.

Who mapped these? In New Mexico we have a ton of dry arroyos that maybe have a couple inches of flowing water a few times a year. Zooming in at places I'm familiar with, a surprising number of them are mapped. I know of rez roads[1] nearby that aren't on OSM or any map I know of, but the ditch we used for cross country practice is. Wild!

[1] Two-track dirt roads on the Navajo Reservation that are not regularly maintained, or officially numbered/named but which are actively used.

You can go to https://openstreetmap.org/ , zoom in and enable the map data layer. History is accessible from the object pages.

Thanks, that is helpful. It looks like for some of the larger ones the editors left comments that dataset was imported from USGS quads which makes sense, while other smaller ones don't list any source information - possibly mapped personally by hiking with a GPS?

I know I personally mapped one with a GPS and canoe.

Sometimes waterway maps include calculated flowlines. These are algorithmically derived from digital elevation data and more accurately represent where water would flow were there water flowing. That's really important not just for New Mexico arroyos but for most of the surface of the earth; there are a lot more flowlines than perennial streams.

I don't know the provenance of this data though. It's pretty spotty, I don't think someone just imported the NHD flowlines dataset or something.

In the USA, this is likely sourced from the National Hydrography Dataset:

https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/national-hydrograp...

Nope, it's 100% OpenStreetMap data.

(I made WaterwayMap.org)

OSM has some NHD imports.

I'm in New Mexico too, there's some creeks I frequent that are considered "navigable waterways" and unless it's monsoon season, you barely get your ankles wet lol.

By the legal standards that I understand to apply, “navigable waterway” is any waterway that is, or could be made, navigable. So it doesn’t take much.

I added a set of arroyos in New Mexico using USGS quadrangle sheets, which originate from digital elevation models and ground surveys in the 1980s. They're tagged as "intermittent streams" in OSM. There's a lot more work to do outside the national forests and major cities. One thing I noticed is that the dry beds shape road and settlement patterns, beyond just being useful for navigation.

NM is undermapped relative to other states. I've wondered if this has to do with the complex governance and land claims (which can make it difficult to do bulk data imports).

It is from OpenStreetMap. (see header and footer.) You can fix any errors you see!

I'm in Thailand, and zooming in to places I'm familiar with, a surprising number of rivers and waterfalls are completely missing. I suppose there are quite a few factors that affect data quality in different regions around the world.

Add them in https://rapideditor.org/rapid

There are usually several satellite image providers for anywhere that isn't a sea or ocean. You can trace over them.

Asia has much lower number of OpenStreetMap editors than say Europe.

Help is welcome! See https://www.openstreetmap.org

“Who mapped these?” All the data is from OpenStreetMap!

_(I made WaterwayMap.org)_

> dry arroyos that maybe have a couple inches of flowing water a few times a year

As you can see they are tagged as 'intermittent'. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/380234870

Yes, sorry I didn't mean to imply that they were incorrect or shouldn't be mapped. I was just pleasantly surprised that someone had done that work.

Kinda neat to turn on the Navigable By Boat filter and zoom in on England to find where I live, and all the 2500 miles of actually connected and navigable English (and Welsh) canals and rivers I’ve been on over the last seven years.

Or course there’s also a whole lot of “waterways” that sure as hell aren’t navigable by any boat that can support a human, but might have been at some point.

Yep. The first one I went looking for was the Fleet, which is something of a ghost river at the end of its journey.

I went straight into these comments hoping to find another HN (potentially narrow) boater!

What's interesting and somewhat amusing is that this map has determined that the section of the Soar that joins with the Trent just north of Loughborough is apparently unnavigable. This time of year I'd generally agree.

It’s got a lot of details wrong… it took us five real years (plus one fake pandemic one) to visit every nook and cranny, and they’ve implied things are navigable that sure as heck aren’t — just try and get on the Dee from Chester without a crane except in a lethally high flood, the lock was disassembled years ago — and unnavigable that definitely are (it’s got the Manchester Ship Canal on there, but not the Mersey we crossed to get to it).

(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OSM. You edit it to fix it yourself.

There's a difference between legally navigable and practically navigable. The Dee has a public right of navigation and therefore is tagged as boat=yes in OpenStreetMap. That's not to make any judgement as to whether or not you can get your boat through the Chester weirgate!

The Mersey ought to be tagged with boat=yes, though. I'm now wondering about Walton Lock which I think still has a right of navigation though is very definitely impassable...

(I made WaterwayMap.org)

> What's interesting and somewhat amusing is that this map has determined that the section of the Soar that joins with the Trent just north of Loughborough is apparently unnavigable

The boat views only use the OpenStreetMap `boat` tag. If a section of river is missing from WWM.org, then it's likely the tag is missing from the OSM waterway. You can fix that!

Hmm I investigated that and the missing sections on OSM are indeed tagged with boat: yes and motorboat: yes. I'll do a little more digging

PS. Despite using OSM for many years, I've never looked into editing it. Thanks for giving me the impetus to start! There are bits and bobs I've noticed aren't entirely correct as we move around the country, and now I'll be able to fix them where necessary.

Hello! I'm the creator of WaterwayMap.org.

The code is here: <https://github.com/amandasaurus/waterwaymap.org/> if you want to file a bug report or feature request. The main code to calculate the network is `osm-lump-ways`: <https://github.com/amandasaurus/osm-lump-ways>

Seems great for debugging waterway topologies.

Some things I noticed after a few minutes:

- A lot of smaller rivers system and tributaries seem not to be connected all the way through as seeing smaller disconnected systems with shorter total lengths.

- small rivers that and at the shore geometry of larger rivers but are not connected to the main centerline

- some streams are disconnected by other waterbodies where they should not be, as there seems to be little consensus on how to connect waterways through lakes and other waterbodies, having an unnamed waterway along the centerline connect through the named lake seems to be a good compromise to not mess up rendering but helps with linking up topologies.

https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/52843/does-the-rive...

(I made WaterwayMap.org) Yeah, it's been very useful to make OSM data better.

> some streams are disconnected by other waterbodies where they should not be, as there seems to be little consensus on how to connect waterways through lakes and other waterbodies

Yeah, the OSM community is still discussing this: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/should-river-lines-be-...

The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything, which is a bummer, because I've always wondered how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area.

It showed one path in my area which is a portage trail for canoes connecting two waterways

The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything

Selecting "Rivers" shows an awful lot of dry gulches and alluvial fans that haven't had water in them in half a century or more.

Yep.

Navigable by canoe leaves Australia with about 50 km of two rivers in Gippsland to be navigable.

It shows the Hunter and the Nepean as a single system.

Connectivity between ephemeral waterways which are joined by ephemeral lakes is poor.

All in all I think it speaks to the ownership of the market by private interests and the lack of utility of water navigation for most people.

Is there a "drag canoe" option?

You have both hills and urban areas blocking about the whole east side of San Francisco Bay. Hard for me to imagine being able to get through that. And further north you've got the Central Valley.

I'm not sure how hills or urban areas block the ability to canoe... Waterways always are locally low and canoe trips on rivers will typically have hills on either side of you. And I've been on plenty of canoe trips that went through the downtown of a city. Most older cities are built in some place navigable by boat.

The parent was asking about getting down to the SF Bay from somewhere in Sierras. I'd have to study a map in detail but I doubt there are much in the way of east/west routes in that area. Also, while there are navigable waterways in cities they tend to be very limited. There's often one river in older cities that flows through the center somewhere.

It really depends on the watersheds. You can get to Boston from pretty far north but you would have to cheat by going down the coast from the mouth of the Merrimack River which I think captures all the rivers in southern NH/northern MA.

San Francisco owes its growth as a city to the fact that the Bay provides a connection between the Sierras (and their goldfields) and the Pacific Ocean.

Regarding Boston, the interesting thing is that it used to be connected to the Merrimack via the Middlesex Canal. My understanding is that this is silted up now (which you presumably already know) but it shows how many more connections we used to have.

There are many dams and gigantic underground pipes that carry the water through the area. It works fine for the water but not for kayakers. For example the Briones Reservoir is upstream of the San Pablo Reservoir connected by huge gravity-powered pipes under the mountains between them. They are in fact redoing them right now.

There are a significant number of canal systems to the east of the bay. I have no where boating is allowed, but the ones we frequently drive past are ~100 feet wide and extend at least out to Stockton and Sacramento. I have no clue if you can get past those cities, though.

Even cargo ships go all the way to Stockton and Sacramento.

Looking at a map more closely I don't know how much is practical in a canoe, but the answer to up thread is probably however far you can up towards Lake Tahoe then down through Folsom Lake to (most of the way?) to Sacramento then Stockton (or just directly to the bay) and probably to the Bay from there.

Not sure you can do the equivalent further south but it looks like you could do a lot of it that way--at least in theory.

There's no blockage - in fact oceangoing cargo ships can travel all the way to the Port of Sacramento, thanks to a thirty-foot-deep channel maintained by the Corps of Engineers.

There are a ton of rivers and sections thereof that are easily navigable flatwater in MA which don't show up.

Compared to Europe, US is sparsely mapped in OSM. But even in Europe there are not many waterways tagged with canoe.

And it's seasonal. Flatwater vs. whitewater (also bidirectional vs. one). How hard? How much portaging?

None of it's really reasonable for a binary database.

> how far up into the Sierras I could drop a canoe and still be able to paddle back to the bay area

I've thought of doing this, I wonder if there are any good resources on best paths to take.

In the valley, we talk about the Cosumnes and Clavey rivers as "undammed" but they may still have flood control and irrigation equipment in them.

Growing up near the Mokulumne, one day I'd like to go from Camanche to the sea. It's not that far but would still have at least one portage at Woodbridge

As a native Sacramentan and boater, you can definitely get from the Sierra to the bay. Would you take your boat out to get around dams? (Lake Natoma dam, Folsom’s dam, etc). If you wanted and could do that, you positively could do the ride. The American is fed by snow melt from the top of the sierra and plenty of water in the spring to ride it down. Once you reach the delta the current would help you less so you better have some good oars. Also be ready to navigate some serious rapids in some spots on the American. Nothing that a little kayaking class wouldn’t prepare you for.

They used to have a few large riverboats that used to bring people from Sacramento to the bay. One called the Delta Queen and the other called the Delta King. Three presidents even rode on them including Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter. They permanently affixed the Delta King on the docks in Old Sacramento where you can still eat at a restaurant or stay in an onboard hotel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_King

All that to say, plenty of boats in and around the Central Valley.

> “The "Navigable by canoe" filter seems to filter out everything”

The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. That map only looks at things with the `canoe` tag in OSM. There are a lot of waterways in OSM which do not have this tag. If you know of missing data, you can just edit OSM and it'll show up on WWM.org tomorrow!

(I made WaterwayMap.org)

The Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is very interesting here, completely empty of waterways which would make one think it's a dessert area per other similar areas of the map, yet it's a very lush tropical jungle. A ton of water yet all of it runs underground, cenotes [0] are (mostly) undergound sinkholes, amazing to swim in

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote

Fun fact about cenotes: most of them were formed from the geologic upset that followed the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65Mya

Exactly, and if you look at a hydrological map of cenote locations in the Yucatan Penninsula, a very obvious, concentrated majority of them align very closely with the ancient buried crater's curvature. It's fascinating, and especially when you consider that of the millions of tourists and locals who visit the cenotes annualy, very few realize what the scope and ferociously violent origins are of the lovely little "scattered" blue pools they play in..

If you zoom in you see a length in km next to each river. For small ones it looks like it is the total length of that waterway. For bigger rivers that I'm familiar with I was not able to make sense of that number. It is not the length, it's too big for that. Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways? It also does not change when I travel along that waterway.

My example is the river Neckar close to Heidelberg in Germany. The number there is:2595963 km

In reality the length of each river is measured from it's estuary. For bigger waterways in Germany you see a sign every kilometer with a number. The number is the distance in kilometers to the estuary of that waterway.

> Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways?

Exactly this.

> For bigger rivers that I'm familiar with I was not able to make sense of that number. […] Maybe it's the total length of that waterway and all connected waterways?

Correct.

(I made WaterwayMap.org)

There's a group of people who regularly sail a great circle up the Atlantic, down the St. Lawrence & the Great Lakes, through the Chicago River & canals to the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and east along the Gulf Coast & around Florida. I can't remember anything more about it than that. Anyone?

I believe that is the Great Loop: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/great-loop.html

Sounds like a great trip (IF you like being on a boat).

What is maximum mast height? There are loops in Europe like this, but you need a mast that you can take down, which means you are limited in boat size - for sailboats anyway.

19.6’,limited by a bridge outside Chicago. Several routes require a maximum 15’ height and others are 17’. https://www.greatloop.org/great-loop-information/great-loop-...

I’ve been utterly fascinated by this since I learned about it a few months ago. It seems like a very approachable but still serious adventure and achievement once done.

Looks nice but it's probably not really usable for navigation. I checked the Netherlands and Germany. You'd need more details for safely navigating on the water. But it definitely has potential.

There are also some other specialized open street map based maps for

- rails: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

- cycling: https://www.opencyclemap.org/

- sea map (competes with this I guess, and is a bit more detailed for navigation): https://map.openseamap.org/

And probably loads of other ones.

For the canals in the UK there's https://opencanalmap.uk/

FWIW it's not really "open" in any sense. The code isn't public let alone open, and the source data doesn't conform to the Open Definition: the data is from the Canal & River Trust who have exasperatingly placed a non-commercial restriction on it. (I can guarantee that CRT spent more in lawyer hours writing a custom licence than they've received income from licensing the data commercially.)

> Looks nice but it's probably not really usable for navigation.

It is mostly QA tool for OSM contributors.

Looks like I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Bravo to whomever put this together!

Weird how so many streams end at the Massachusetts state line.

Not the dev's fault of course.

I've noticed a similar difference of how rock formations are recorded at state line boundaries on USGS maps.

Dealing with different datasets from different bureaucracies is an intractable problem.

See: USGS 3DEP Program

(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% from OpenStreetMap. I only have to deal with 1 dataset. I suspect people have imported data from Massachusetts into OSM, hence why you see the edge. You can edit OSM to connect things up yourself.

This is cool - makes me realize how incredible the Intracoastal Waterway is [1]: 3000 miles of mostly protected waterways along the US Eastern Seaboard. Definitely on my bucket list to sail it down one day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

Minnesota's has expansive rivers feeding the Mississippi[1] and it has one million acres designated to a canoe wilderness -- the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness -- bounded by the Canadian Quetico to the north[2].

They are navigable by canoe by design, yet they are flitting dots.

It gives me pause; what is this site trying to convey? It's a fantastic effort, yet for the water we have, it doesn't match.

[1] https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/watertrails/interactive_map/inde... [2] https://www.paddleplanner.com/tools/maps/bwcaqueticomap.aspx

Crazy detailed, but also kinda random. For my home area, there are small creeks/brooks (??? in German "Bach") which are literally just half a meter wide and in the middle of a forest on the map, but others which are flowing right through settlements are not listed.

Yes, https://www.openstreetmap.org has quite inconsistent detail as it relies on people mapping stuff.

And help is welcome, anyone can join and help with mapping!

I was surprised at the rivers in the middle of the Sahara.

But upon zooming in on Google satellite view, I do see dry riverbeds in those places, and even the occasional tree along the route of the 'river', so I guess occasionally there must be a storm and those rivers become wet and flow.

Similarly i was surprised to find its marked a river in my village i didn't know existed.

Turns out its the drainage ditch they dug to stop the new Barrett boxes from flooding.

I think the data may need some work....

> I think the data may need some work....

Well If you want to, mapping around local village is good way to start.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dditch

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:intermittent

Bunch of rivers in/around Toronto (Canada), but we've also lost a few to history as well:

* https://www.lostrivers.ca/disappearing.html

* https://www.hiddenhydrology.org/toronto-lost-rivers/

* https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_u...

To those who are thinking about waterway travel I recommend the book "The Unlikely Voyage of Jack De Crow: A Mirror Odyssey from North Wales to the Black Sea".

Would also recommend "Travels by Narrowboat" available on Amazon Prime. The chug-chug of the diesel engine as John moves from one canal to another (with some sort of horrific/terrific can-based recipe thrown in every now and then) is great background TV to have on for that sort of occasion.

Weirdly, in Cambridge, the River Cam is not marked as a natural waterway (fair enough, it is canalized) but the entirely artificial drainage ditches around the college back gardens and Hobson’s Conduit are.

The data on Open Street Map (OSM) doesn't materialise mysteriously out of the ether! It is the result of people like you and I doing recces.

For just one effort to grab data there is a great app called "Street Complete" (SC) - give it a bash.

You know how the Cam is so why not tell us all? I live in Yeovil, Somerset and after a few sessions on SC, OSM has way more detail on my immediate surroundings than Google's cars will ever gather. They (Google int al) will probably "steal" my work eventually but then it is public knowledge so not stealing at all.

SC gathers a lot of information. For example it wants to know about accessibility, which has to be a laudable goal. OSM doesn't flog adverts so it is rather more inclusive than anything that the FAAANAAAANGS might contemplate. It isn't driven by financial profit, so you get back what you put in.

Something in the same topic: https://map.openseamap.org/

I had a look at central Europe and this map not accurate e.g. motor boar = yes and it only shows w few parts of the same river.

(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OpenStreetMap. It's possible many rivers are missing the `boat` tag (which that uses). If you add the missing tag, then it'll appear on WWM.org tomorrow!

When choosing 'Navigable by boat', the massive Trent-Severn system in Southern Ontario disappears.

Well, it's probably worth your while to update it then.

(I made WaterwayMap.org) The data is 100% OpenStreetMap, and updated daily. Something missing on WWM.org means something missing on OSM. You can fix that yourself!

Is there a legend somewhere? Or a way to delineate something like a small culvert versus large canal.

(I made WaterwayMap.org) There isn't a legend, because all waterways are treated the same.

Cool, brb selling my car and getting a boat!

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