We are delighted to make a new guide available written for the guidance of leisure boaters on commercial waterways. It covers and Yorkshire and the Trent Commercial Navigations.
This is mainly for pleasure boat skippers unaccustomed to rivers, tides and waterways carrying freight.
The advice is given in good faith and no liability can be accepted for any consequences of its use.
You can download it here.
It cannot be comprehensive in a booklet of this size so you should gather as much information as you can from other sources including CRT’s Boater’s Handbook, charts, tide tables, experienced personnel and other publications.
Original content courtesy of First Mate Guides, NABO and the barge operators, updated by Stuart Sampson in 2021 with information kindly supplied by IWA, CBOA and CRT.
The TMBA have published a summary of the results of the Thames Motor Boaters Survey conducted during October/November this year.
This survey was open to all motorboaters based on or visiting the Environment Agency managed non-tidal Thames during 2021. The TMBA was supported by river user organisations and other interested parties, particularly the Association of Thames Yacht Clubs (ATYC), DBA-The Barge Association (DBA), the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), the National Association of Boat Owners (NABO), and the Residential Boat Owners Association (RBOA).
The document can be downloaded here
This summer, our 250-mile cruise between June and October has been entirely within the CRT West Midlands Region. When we arrived in Birmingham, we moored on a finger mooring in Cambrian Basin. We are Waterside Mooring customers who notified CRT of our intention to be away from the mooring for more than 30 days and had consent to moor at vacant long-term CRT mooring sites while cruising. Cambrian Basin is listed as a long-term mooring site. When we received news that my wife's nonogenarian mother had had a fall, we returned to ensure that she had the care she needed at home. While home, I received an email from CRT pointing out that we were overstaying on visitor moorings. I replied that, as a CRT moorer, I was entitled to stay on vacant long-term moorings. CRT enforcement replied that only four of the eight finger moorings at Cambrian Wharf were long-term moorings and the rest were visitor moorings, so the T&C did not apply. There is no signage saying that. I told the Licence Support Officer our situation and negotiated an agreed overstay without any problem, but clear signage would have helped!
You are all aware of the shortage of refills for Calor gas bottles, particularly in the last year. Calor has put the shortage down to record demand for cylinders due to lockdowns, warm weather, the boom in staycations, and the associated shortage of cylinders. Yet we also see that waterside Calor dealers have a stock of empty bottles that are not being collected. We are told of continuing concerns with the uncertainty of supply, and short or cancelled deliveries being the normal for some retailers. We don’t think that Calor is doing enough to use the available bottles in circulation, and it is abusing its self-created monopoly position on the inland waterways.
We have written to Calor asking them to prioritise the supply of bottled gas to inland waterway stockists, but they have chosen not to reply. We have therefore asked the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate Calor Gas, and its imposed dominance of the waterways market. Calor has an effective monopoly because many boaters do not have transport to find alternatives. The CMA has found it necessary to investigate Calor in the past.
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