MtB

I never had any in the first place...

And that was only the legal fees. Over the 12 years it took them to achive the eviction, he perhaps swerved paying a high five figure sum in accumulated licencing and mooring fees over that period.

Not really. They charged for the tonnage transited along their waterways AIUI, not time spent on them.

How unspeakably CRUEL!!!! Making boaters have trackers fitted to their boats...

Oh perlease!!!!!

These two points are the core of the problems. Make enforcement quick and easy and the piss takers will instantly fall into line. Most if not all of the problems only arise because of the inordinate amount of time it takes to hold non-compliant and/or unlicenced boats to account.

I have also seen a welded-in waste stub ready to fall out of the hull due to a ring of severe corrosion in the hull itself, around the outside edge of the welding. Odd.

When though?

I'd agree with all the above comments from Tony and Wafi. And I'd add that how close you can get the car or van to the boat has a large impact on whether any given task takes 3 times longer than you thought or 5 times longer. A great deal of time fitting out a boat is spent tramping back and forth between boat, van, home (and B&Q) getting stuff from one place that needs to be in another e.g. get home to make something and dammit, the jigsaw (or something else important) is back in the boat. And living on a sailaway whilst fitting it out must be borderline impossible.

Its not an extreme. For extreme CRT mooring prices check the London sites such as Engineer's Wharf. £15k a year is cheap!

Isn't the term "abstraction"?

The CRT un-serviced moorings on the K&A at Aldermaston seem to go for £6k-£7k nowadays.

Clueless as ever.

Well sinking is the risk according to Alan is scaremongering about, and I am trying to counter: E.G. "It was 1st found in the bilges of sea going vessels in the 60s and examples showing it to be capable of 'eating thru' in 22mm of steel hull per annum" https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/120117-rust-patches-or-microbial-mic/page/2/#findComment-3178519 So that's yer average narrowboat sunk in six months or less.

Eastern K&A.

Surely it didn't sell because £70k is a ridiculous price for a mostly unconverted grand union...?

I'm pretty sure they don't. But I notice their prices spiralling. Seven years ago I took a mooring at £3k a year. The boat next to me gave me a right mouthful as they were paying £1,600 and feared me 'over-bidding' would lead to CRT putting theirs up the same amount. (I dunno if they ever did.) Three years later they'd ramped mine up to £3,900 and I gave it up. They re-let it for £5.5k according to another boater there who I know well.

Frankly, I suspect you have never owned such a boat (or even steered one with an open, uninsulated engine in the back cabin of a trad stern boat), I put it to you that your opinion is worthless! And on a point of order, a JD3 hardly counts as a classic!

And now I think Will Prowse must have been reading this thread. YouTube has just pushed at me a new video of Will's making the exact same point!!

Point of Order M'Lud... Being a three cylinder tractor engine it doesn't go "put put", it goes "boppety-boppety-boppety-boppety"...

Cobblers!

You could have said that in the first place!!

Yes. The interior was stripped out and the hull pulled in to 7ft and about 1/2 an inch. New footings and baseplate constructed and the interior put back in. Also the rather tired old Gleniffer twin removed for renovation and a hot bulb semi-diesel installed.

Or my boat did, rather than me

Yep!