pillingslock

Can I detect that many boaters have trouble coming across a Towpath Talk then? - we have 100 delivered and usually have a dozen or so left by the time the next issue is out.

Dear All! Firstly - all respect to the forum, as I know there are guidelines on promoting products etc, but I'd really like to ask forum members what publications they are reading regularly? Whether they buy them or borrow them - I think the forum can give a good guide on which waterways publications actually circulate and get read or pay lip-service to the industry. My personal feeling is that many of our punters pop into the office specifically to grab the "Freebie" waterways monthly but we also sell 20-30 copies of the supposed No.2 selling glossy. We don't stock the No.1 glossy as we can't afford to advertise in there...it's 50% more expensive than where we do currently, but do double the people read it? Or are we all now reading things on-line more than buying the glossies? Your feedback is appreciated! Paul

Just to let all you guys know, we are happy that this matter is simply a domestic dispute. I would like to make it clear that nothing has been stolen from Pilling's Lock - least of all a whole narrowboat! - and the current captain in charge of Bengal had paid all his mooring dues for many months before leaving us in a very honorable way. I had advised Mr Jones many weeks ago that if he seeks possession of the vessel under any ownership dispute then he needs to contact the local authorities and take the matter further in accordance with the law. We have not had any visits from the Police to support the fact this action may have been taken. Regards Paul.

The Brown Calculator is pure genius! PMSL!!!!!

We're OK with that. But on a Part-River/Part-Canal section of navigation, should a new marina on an non-flooding canal section get the full wrath of the NAA and it's charges when a marina only a few miles away gets off scot free because it's on a river section? Especially when the EA has spent millions on flood relief. These NAA charges on the "Canal Based" marina do have to be passed on to it's customers and it's debatable whether the river-fed navigation requires much more than mother nature to keep it topped up - be it dug or natural? The Navvies dug the canals years ago for companies that are no longer in existence...and they don't get any dosh for it all. What we're getting at is that surely ALL boats on ANY navigation should be licensed all year round whilst in the water - regardless of it's origin or making? The current NAA seems to be a very hefty cause of debate - talk to the BMF and they think it's not as it should be, possibly because of these examples. But also because historic agreements with older marinas puts some individuals in a favoured position. Surely everyone should contribute in an equal way - boat owners and marinas alike?

We wish everyone who exhibits and attends this years show the very best of luck & lets hope the sun does shine for once! It's been a tough year for so many businesses and they all deserve support for finding the time to fit this into their diaries and the funds to pay for the stands and show material. We're going as punters this year as we only took one deposit for a berth last year and we then gave that back to the customers when their house sale fell through!

You could look at it from the point of view that cyclists and walkers don't pay license fees to BW so this can be their way of putting something back into the system?

Dear Forum, Here's something we just can't seem to get our head around and your expert opinions are appreciated. Example Number 1 - Farmers wanting to diversify contact BW, obtain a Network Access Agreement and plan a new marina for 150 boats which will need them to pay 9% of all gross capacity mooring fees to BW and all boats kept there will have to be licensed 365 days per year. Example Number 2 - Existing marina/caravan park on a river section not far away decides to build another pond for about 100 boats, needs no NAA, pays none of revenue to BW and boats moored there only have to be licensed if they are taken onto the navigation (which is never for some!) All boats use the roughly same section of waterway but only the marina(s) who are on the sections of canal get stung for NAA fees and they obviously have to be passed on to their clients (on top of VAT). Only the boat owners at the regulated marinas have to pay licenses all year round too. This isn't an issue when the whole navigation is a canal but on part-river sections it's looking like a free for all that BW has no control over. However, if new NAA's are to be given for future new regulated marinas, the "Unregulated" berths have to be taken into account. Many of you may know about all this and some government bill passed in 1962 stops BW having jurisdictions on the latter marina. Whilst is it nice that "Budget" berths are made available with less taxes on them, in most cases the "Unrestricted" marina operator prices themselves at just under the regulated businesses. Over to you guys!

I have to say that the reaction since the site was launched in November 2008 has been truly exceptional and the supporter and private members lists are growing daily. Please help spread the word as much as you can. Steve Vaughan Hi Steve! Great site and we have posted a link on our site too - this is really useful winter reading for many of the new boaters we have here. Keep up the good work! Paul

Well, I do feel better that the fields used for our development were used for breeding Shetland Ponies (native?!) prior to development - also that a few million tons of aggregates were taken away to build new roads/houses/offices before we got there too! Hundreds of metres of new soft edges have attracted many waterfoul, the fish population don't seem too unhappy either - there can be a positive effect to digging up a few fields and packing a few hundred boats in the middle! Apart from raising donations to Peter Le Marchant Trust and other charities, I'm also keen that when we do eventually get some spare time, we start investigating how much of the Melton Arm we can assist in restoration to help develop the local network. If anyone's involved with the trust, I'd like to speak to them as soon as we get this credit-crunch-recession thingy out of the way. Time will tell, but it's something good to aim for! And I'd happily support smaller "No-Frills" marinas being developed locally too - it could mean in time that we can create a full-time job selling Gas/Coal/Diesel and doing service work rather me & Dad than changing hats every half hour!

Before undertaking developments at Pilling's Lock, we had numerous meetings with Leicester City Council about re-developing the old Leicester Marina site. We had a lot of money to spend and the determination to make things happen and put a boating destination back within Leicester City Limits. Unfortunately, the Environment Agency vetoed any re-developemnt as they didn't want any building in the flood plain. We suggested using floating pontoons and a floating office and working with accommodating the anglers who currently lease the basins for a peppercorn rent - providing toilets and diabled access facilies too! No one responded, so we moved on to build Pilling's Lock Marina. It's a great shame as it would have created a really nice marina for mixed use and uplifted the area. We are still very interested and have all the kit and knowledge to make it a good base and service area for boaters. If anyone gets a lead, let us know!

This is a really interesting line of discussion for us that has covered broad angles and some very localised specifics. We can sypmathise entirely with reductions in on-line moorings as we were the first marina to be labelled with the "New Berths = 10% Less On-line Berths" policy by BW...and they didn't tell us they were doing it leaving us seeming to be the greedy developer with a captive market. In reality, it's incredibly difficult embarking on a new marina build and hats off to any developer that tackles this as opposed to building some residential property! There can't really be any hard and fast rules applied to new marina's, how much they cost and what they include as there is almost no consistency amongst local planning authorities, a massive variance in costs of land and even great differences in availability and prices of financing and construction costs! The resulting "Project Cost" for each marina then has to depict the market rate for the berths...otherwise they would go bust! What I can say is over 70% of boats that came to us in our first 20 months of trading have been the first boat owned by each individual customer - either brand new, sailaway/DIY fit or second hand - and it's this growth in boat numbers that has to be supported by new marinas. Otherwise who would buy your old boat when you want to trade up to a new one or move on? and who would will be contributing to rising maintence costs by adding additional license fees into the national budget? In recent years, houses (which people do need to live!) have become completely unaffordable to many more people than the number of boat owners experiencing increases in ownership costs (which are essentially a luxury/hobby for most). Low cost housing being sought after on the waterways has increased too - having knock-on effects in pricing and demand, but don't forget that economies of scale mean that larger marinas can offer a better range of services and hopefully better prices in time...after we've paid our huge mortgages off (and believe me, we have some pretty eye-watering, sphincter-clenching sized mortages!) The price of petrol used to be around 40p per litre and now it's over 85p - but people still use cars (more than ever!) and have adapted to increases in costs very rapidly indeed. Generally most boaters have accepted that boating has to increase in cost too and I'm sure the majority of people do understand this. But running a new marina, where we have continually requested that people help us keep costs down by not running taps into the marina basin or filling our septic tank with fresh-water, taking their old TV sets to the tip instead of filling our wheelie bins & paying their bills promptly without 2 or 3 reminders, it does get to the point where we think "sod it" we're going to have to charge a bit extra and cover these costs ourselves. This is a little unfair of customers who are less of a burden and cost to us as a business, but none of us can afford to discriminate as it's bad for the industry as a whole. I like to think that us boaters are a pretty friendly bunch, we help out "Rookies" at locks or on the cut and encourage new blood into the waterways. This has to keep on happening and there's much more that's right about inland boating than is wrong with it, or it wouldn't be so popular! There are enough doubters being "anti-new marinas" at the minute outside the waterways, without waterway enthusiasts also adding to the burden of potential new developers willing to invest time and effort into the network. Progress is the name of the game - look at all those institutions who didn't change with the times and what the long-term effects were! Think about the bigger picture, our waterways are an amazing assett but they do need to move with the times if they want to survive or develop and it's very sad but there has to be a few sacrifices along the way. It's also true there are many 'suits in office's that don't understand what the true impact of their actions or policies are but approaching changes with an alternative solutions is the only way to deal with these matters.

Just to let you know I have just spoken to Vanda at Newark BW and she confirmed the Trent and Mersey navigation is now open. As the last thread has got so long with the usual babble, I thought I'd place a new one for people to get information from.

Good point - we've been scared by Loughborough Cab firms who seem to charge the earth so far for coming 4 miles out of town, but thinking about it - there must be some local independent firms who'd relish booked-in, daytime work for railway station runs. I'm glad people on the forum seem to think this would be useful as feedback here is positive too - we're always looking after car keys for the friend or relative that will be along to pick them up. Many boaters don't always want to rely on someone else's goodwill.

Not to spoil the party, but this thread was intended to get some feedback from the boating public - you guys - about costs in boating and what you concerns are. The thread seems to have deteriorated into a "Chatroom" which kind of makes a mockery of trying to do anything to help & understand boaters.

I think the "Cotton Wool" society we're living in has to be blamed for many price increases and businesses not succeeding. What happened to the good old fashioned "Do you need a lift?"

Great feedback - it's something a large marina (with company vehicles to nip to the train station) could do to provide a temporary summer base. There are often many moorings vacated for long-term cruising in the spring so the berths are definately vacant. Smaller yards could do it if they liaise with their moorers and know the local transport links too.

Thanks for that Tony - Agriculture is where we were hoping to get some expertise from actually! I hope we're heading in the right direction. That's a very good point...and sometimes a very obvious one. But off at a tangent slightly, don't you think? One thing we were thinking about was a "Pick-up" service for people who want to leave their boat mid-cruise and go back to it at a later date. With the way public transport is these days, it could be a valuable service - but would people use it? and what should it cost?

OK. I've been rumbled. I do drive a kind of Porsche...but it was only £3,500 when I bought it. It leaks in the rain and the battery is always going flat...it's not all glamour! ANYWAY! back to the program...what do you think services should cost? we have some ideas on Moorings (End of Garden at £550, or £1600 to £2000 has been mentioned on here), what you've been paying for slipways (£90 upwards) and blacking (£220 to £500+) ...pump-outs seem to be about £15 each too. Do you think there should be other services included in your mooring fees? if so...what?

I'm genuinely interested in what the perception is out there of what a service should cost. You will notice I have not said what we charge here but I have enlightened the forum on what it costs to a new business to buy the equipement needed to keep you guys afloat. I see this as an educational thread for all who read it - marina operators included! - but I do also want to keep to the point of what you guys expect to pay for 'X,Y or Z' services and see how they stack up with modern day costs. I can see that Hull-Blacking is an issue for some on here, but hopefully explaining what the plant has costed us helps you guys understand that it's not a cash-cow and we're not all driving Porsches on the back of your hard earned!

That's a nice idea to run a loss-leader - but we're not Tesco or Asda! we have costed our slip to recover all costs over 4-6 years and then we can upgrade to new plant if necessary. That's business I'm afraid. But clients aren't forced to use our slipway - they can go elsewhere and that's the key benefit of yards and marinas - more choice. Many places do DIY blacking at weekends though - so if people want to save money, they can get their overalls on themselves. (I know I'd rather pay the £400+ to let someone else get dirty!!!) Given that a narrowboat costs anything between £15,000 and £100,000+, spending £400 on a hull-black seems reasonable. If you had an £18k VW GOLF you wouldn't NOT service it every year or so would you? I know that costs over £400 most times! "What the market will bear" is a great point. What you're actually saying is it's what local customers are willing to pay. But I guess the yards in Birmingham can be kept busier too with far more boats there...economies of scale play a big part!

Very true, they don't come cheap. I can tell you all about a slip-way and plant to run it. Cost of building a slipway capable of holding a trolley for narrowboats is just over £30,000. The trolley has cost almost £20,000 and a 2nd hand tractor capable of pulling it (4WD and heavy enough) also nearly £20,000 (Would have been over £60k new). Also cost in the salary of someone who has to look after it at least part-time of say £5,000 and a jet wash (self designed and made) £1,500. £76,500 total to get running. Bear in mind this doesn't include land purchased or use either. (By the way, the first quotes we had for a trolley were £40k plus and a jetwash £7k!!! - needless to say we made our own instead) Divide this £76,500 total cost by 252 working days per year and we have a daily cost of £304. Over 4 years with interest still costs out at over £100 per day to the business - plus we still haven't costed in land cost/rent or the admin lady's salary who sends and chases the bills - or any profit at all for the business who has built it!!! So to me, £90 - £125 for half a day on a slipway sounds OK. But I'd be interested if that changes the perception of forum members? Have a little look at the costing above Tom... : - also, I'd value your comments on where you think businesses should advertise at the minute? as still to this day most of our expanding trade come in from word of mouth referral. We haven't had a single bite from monthly adverts in the industry's 'premier' magazine for over 6 months now! - that's over £400 for ad's that have driven no revenue at all.

Engine servicing does seem to be something we could all work towards reducing the costs of. Recent chats with Business Link and BMIF tell us that there is a skills shortage within parts of the industry that results in higher prices and not always a better quality of workmanship. One avenue that has been continually mentioned is the "Train to Gain" scheme as a way of getting more skills into the industry - for example getting a skilled worker who has been made redundant in another area, re-trained as a skilled marine engineer using grants available. We're looking into this one ourselves. It's a shame there's not a 'Kwik Fit' for boats, where economies of scale can be applied to components and labour to reduce costs to the customer and business. It's also a shame that more youngsters aren't getting into boating at an early age to forge a career, but I don't know what we can do to change this short-term. What has been very nice to see in some instances recently is other boat owners helping each other and sharing skills on the DIY front. I hope this continues to happen as it's great for the boating community. Just been told someting else though about rental/property. There is a formula of 144 that is used for housing i.e. 144 times the monthly rental value should be what the property is worth with current interest rates. This actually works for my terraced house I bought in March this year to live in. I have looked at the rental value already. If you apply this upwards from a monthly mooring cost, £134 per month would mean a 100 berth marina would cost around £1.9m to buy the land, design and build it and this looks very realistic from a developers perspective (having just built one) and this average monthly fee is almost spot on for the sizes and variety of boats and fees. It does make the farmers field look very expensive though! but I guess that if the customer is happy that is the only thing that matters.

It would be interesting to see if an increasing number of boats on the network could reduce the license fee increases. But £700 per year is less than £2 per day - is that value for money? £2k per year seems about average for a 60ft-ish mooring - and don't forget the VAT man takes nearly 20% of that so if you cost it out to the providers cut, it's comparable to band C or D council tax in many areas and I think that's kind of what a marina does - act as the local authority in a mini way. As for the diesel price increases, how could we save the extra money we're all going spend? Tricky one that. PS! original question slightly avoided though...you own a 62ft boat, so what do you think it should cost you to run and use the services available? I'm really interested in this avenue of discussion. Let's even think about it a different way...say you own a £50k motor car...what does it cost you to own this car? servicing, petrol, insurance, depreciation etc. And then say you use your boat as a residence? should it cost you anything different? should your costs be linked to property costs? or what benefits should you have instead?

RE GARY's REPLY - Very true, I couldn't agree more. But I also think the Boat Sales industry could be in for some better news with the property prices crashing though. Let's face it, Narrowboat prices aren't so vollatile and associated costs of boat ownership have risen, but not like house prices, utility and mortgage costs. Already we have sold a boat & rented mooring to a very affluent proffessional relocating to this area as they didn't want to speculate on property, rent property or sell their existing flat at the wrong time. With people's perception of what things should cost, housing wise, is the boating industry (with all the technology, improvements and new ideas) potentially on to a winner now with low-cost residential requirements that actually give a better quality of lifestyle? Quite exciting I think...