Steve Haywood wrote: > I'm afraid you betray yourself, Adrian. Why is it a problem that continuous > cruisers don't pay for moorings? They are continuous cruisers, after all. > They don't NEED moorings.
Well they need - at least - overnight moorings. Even the most dedicated of continuous cruisers doesn't do 24 hours a day. True CCs, doing what I do when I'm doing the very limited amount of boating I manage to find time for these days, probably often also moor not "at moorings" but just somewhere nice when they can (even though - of course - this is entirely against BW's plan to have "moorings" with lots and lots of lovely signs, where you can moor if you get there before 2pm, and nothing else). But as we all know, when we're not making rhetorical points, many people - indeed, I'll go out on a limb and say the majority - who describe themselves as continuous cruisers are not continuously cruising by any natural use of the term. > It is only a problem if your mindset is - as your is - to raise money from > boaters. This is why you are so mistrusted on this list. Because you talk > like BW, with BW's concerns with raising revenue your primary concern too. I have no argument with a word of this paragraph. > Until now there have been two separate elements to boating. One is mooring > when you leave your boat unused; the other is cruising when you moor > overnight as part of the natural progression of your journey. You and BW are > both trying to blur the distinctions between the two so that eventually we > will not be able to buy a license unless we have an approved mooring. > And do you know what? This will cost us more. Even those who are quietly in > favour of what you're suggesting because it seems in their interest. I like the distinction that you make. The problem is that if you stay in one place for 2 weeks, move half a mile, stay for another 2 weeks and return, it's hard to see what is either continuous or cruising about it. Or what a "natural progression of the journey is". > To those people I would ask this: do you think we boaters as a group are not > paying enough for the facilities we use? Do you think we should pay more? Or > is that you think only SOME boaters should pay more? As I've said before, I'd love for BW to charge everyone something for mooring, and to refund the mooring only part of their mooring fees, end of the garden mooring fees (all of it in this case) and the "connection" charge for boatyards, basins and marinas. But I know very well that the first part would happen and the second not. > Finally, do you REALLY believe this will make your boating cheaper? The problems is that we are getting to the stage where legitimate cruisers - continuous or not - are finding it impossible to moor in some areas because of continuous moorers. That the latter are paying less than many of them are just adds insult to injury. There's a hope that if there was some cost then it might put a number off, or encourage them to get cheap "proper" moorings leaving the visitor moorings for visitors. And some extra revenue for BW would be nice when they are strapped for cash. It would be even nicer of course if we knew they were going to use it one something more useful than fish surveys, bollards and notices. Again, as I've said before, I cannot find any justice in a system where someone moored on their own land pays *more* to BW than someone moored opposite on the canal bank. The proper course of action, of course, is for BW to clamp down on the freeloaders and leave the legitimate boaters of all categories alone. Historic evidence suggests that this is about as likely as Adrian admitting he was wrong about something.
