Residential Moorings

Finding a mooring was the major stumbling block to buying the boat - especially as I needed a proper residential mooring in order to get the credit to purchase.  Anyone currently looking may want to check out Clarence Dock - there's been space here for residents ever since I moved in.  This was the only available mooring I found to be practical during several months of trawling.  But - if you're looking for somewhere with Sun, peaceful atmosphere and a parking place then this might not be right for you.  Saying that - it is exceedingly handy for the city centre.

I've continued to keep my eyes open for other moorings and so far had little luck.  Thwaite Mills at Stourton was an option for a short while - but it didn't take long for problems to arise.  First of all, residential moorings are actively discouraged by BW.  Especially linear moorings on the canal/river itself.  This particular policy meant my move to Thwaite Mills became a non-starter.  That is unless I replaced all my steel with wood and turned up in a traditional working boat, or had a business license and run a business which gave something back to the waterways.  Whilst I can see why BW want to keep everything clean and 'traditional', I really don't see the issue with residential boaters, as long as there are policies in place, saying what you can and can't do and these are properly enforced.  As a non law breaking boater with an interest in the outdoors I would make every effort to keep the mooring tidy, adding 24 hr security at the mooring and helping out where possible.  So this is rather irritating.

In fact even at Clarence Dock there are many rules - few of which it appears are taken very seriously.

These range from the usual such as outstaying your welcome on the visitor moorings (which i think can normally be policed on a common sense basis) to more obscure rules which prevent you hanging washing out on the boat, having anything on the pontoons, no bikes / storage on your roof, smokeless fuels only and absolutely no maintenance at the dock.  All of these are routinely ignored by many to varying degrees.  Being quite new to the scene, I've tried not to upset anyone - and apart from spending a week on the visitor mooring in July and burning a little wood (to get it going) in May, have stuck to the rules.  Now i don't want to go off on one but whilst we have many rules - the tennants in the surrounding flats appear to get away with lobbing stuff down at us from the balconies, late night noise etc and all sorts.  I think I'll start recording the fallout on the blog too!  Thankfully now it's cooled down over the last couple of weeks, incidents have become rarer as they keep the balcony doors shut!

Last night I had a quick trip over to the River Derwent and met a guy living aboard his 25ft cruiser.  Amazingly he pays less to moor there over a year than I do in a single month!  Now I was aware that CD was about twice as expensive as your average BW mooring but this is crazy.  For this price he has a riverside mooring with road access, basic facilities to empty and water.  No shore power, but this needn't be a problem - especially if fitted with Solar panels and the like.  He took great pleasure in showing me his 40 inch 3D tele running from an 150W inverter (allegedly!).  So this could save me 5k a year in mooring fees - which would however be slightly offset by the 2.5-3k cost of commuting to Leeds.  I'll keep quiet for now as to where it is, at least until I get my interest registered.

So good luck to those looking for moorings - especially up north.  But if you're in the Midlands, there appears to be a new marina opening every month!