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Mooring near home - or not?


bmp

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3 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

I can't imagine either of the couple in your avatar living on a boat.

I agree. They are probably like most people who just go with the flow and consider it " Not the done thing " it doesnt conform to the strict rules of compliance with societies beliefs in what is " Doing well "  Sad isnt it.

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14 hours ago, Neil2 said:

It's a real danger..!  We met up with a couple last week who had a canalside house with a mooring at the bottom of the garden, the ultimate fantasy I said to my wife but she replied no way you would be constantly working on the thing and we'd never go anywhere - she's right I think..

 

I am fortunate to have a canalside house with a boat moored at the bottom of the garden.  

 

I find it fairly easy to strike a balance between fettling and cruising, but then again I am quite lazy. ?

 

It helps if the boat is in reasonable condition when you buy it. Much easier to keep a boat like that than to get a boat that needs a lot of work to bring it up to a reasonable condition. Most people underestimate how long even simple jobs can take on boats.

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Being able to get to your boat easily is great for your mental wellbeing  especially if you have a stressful job and need to relax. Many atime after stressful negotiations etc I took off to our moorings for a few hours R&R, often grabbing a few hours kip before getting back to the madness.  My ideal if one isn't actually living onboard, would be to moor it within an hours travel.

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2 minutes ago, Clodi said:

Being able to get to your boat easily is great for your mental wellbeing  especially if you have a stressful job and need to relax. Many atime after stressful negotiations etc I took off to our moorings for a few hours R&R, often grabbing a few hours kip before getting back to the madness.  My ideal if one isn't actually living onboard, would be to moor it within an hours travel.

 

Ah but you have a lovely idyllic, quiet on-line countryside mooring.

 

Would you find it as relaxing if your mooring was on a pontoon in a busy marina on finger moorings, with boats moored moored parallel to yours on both sides and looking straight in your windows? 

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2 hours ago, cuthound said:

 

I am fortunate to have a canalside house with a boat moored at the bottom of the garden.  

 

I find it fairly easy to strike a balance between fettling and cruising, but then again I am quite lazy. ?

 

It helps if the boat is in reasonable condition when you buy it. Much easier to keep a boat like that than to get a boat that needs a lot of work to bring it up to a reasonable condition. Most people underestimate how long even simple jobs can take on boats.

With every respect, the words "simple job" and "boat" do not belong in the same sentence.

 

A bit like "Reality TV" and "Star".

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Our house is about half an hours drive from our mooring, near enough that we can pop over Friday afternoon and even in the winter months potter round to a pub in another forty minutes and get away from it all for a weekend. 

 

We find it good that when we go to the boat we are away from home, even if we are fettling we are out on our boat not at home which we decided would be the thing if we moored near home, i.e. we would go do the job and go back home, as it is we go do the job and then cruise off somewhere for the evening, we are however close enough to do this any day we are free.

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20 hours ago, Cheshire cat said:

We live in Manchester and moor in Stone. I'm often asked why we moor the boat so far from home. 

The answer is simple. The weather. often is miserable in Manchester but an hours drive south and the weather is much drier. 

 

Scarisbrick may be OK because it's away from the hills so may work for you

I think it will be very similar weather to where I live now. We are quite sheltered here and dont get any extremes of the weather so not really an issue - but as someone else has pointed out it is often warmer in the midlands than it is here.

20 hours ago, StephenA said:

We used to keep our boat at Crooke when we were in Wigan and it did mean the boat got used a lot all the year round because if it was a nice sunny winters day you could just go out on it.

 

then we moved it to Braunston and the unplanned usage dropped off and we also got fed up of basically being stuck in boat jams over any holiday weekend.

 

Then we had it in Upton when we were in Cheltenham - again it got a lot of unplanned weekend usage.

 

Now we keep it at Market Drayton and its a 2 hour drive there and we don't get to the boat as much as we used to.

 

There is a trade off between distance and the location.

 

 

The trade off bit is exactly it....  Just trying to way up the good and bad points of each location.

What I am looking at here is only for the short term while I am still working. Once I retire the distance  won't be as much as an issue.

 

 

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13 hours ago, Timx said:

Try Mersey motorboat club, they have linear moorings, outside scarisbrick marina, also by the ship in haskayne, and in Maghull, they are nearly half the cost of the marina, but you do have to join the club, join in things and do the odd job, mowing grass or painting something etc. I think they have moorings available now if you contact them.

Will take a look at that option. Was preferring a marina because of the facilities etc but this could be an option. All those places are actually nearer too. Maghull is 10 minutes from where I live.

11 hours ago, pearley said:

We are currently moored just up from Scarisbrick,  temperature today forecast to get up to 17. Driving off to West Midlands later, temperature forecast 24.

That is a good point !!

 

What do you think of Scarisbrick Marina and the area around about it?  

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5 hours ago, Clodi said:

Being able to get to your boat easily is great for your mental wellbeing  especially if you have a stressful job and need to relax. Many atime after stressful negotiations etc I took off to our moorings for a few hours R&R, often grabbing a few hours kip before getting back to the madness.  My ideal if one isn't actually living onboard, would be to moor it within an hours travel.

I think while I am still working this would be an ideal solution and probably one that is making me consider my options. When I retire it could be further away.

There has been a few days this week when the weather has been ok and when I finished work and was at home about 6 o'clock it would have been lovely to pop over to the boat.

But then at the weekend it is not such an issue....

 

Maybe I need 2 boats !!  (Only joking !!)

 

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On ‎04‎/‎07‎/‎2019 at 20:56, bmp said:

I have considered some of the other marinas in Cheshire etc but most of them take over an hour to get to anyway.

I wonder if this is worth reconsidering. We've cruised past Tattenhall, Barbridge and Venetian today, any of which should be under an hour's drive from Liverpool, and I've always thought the range of cruising options on your doorstep here is really pretty impressive - Chester and Llangollen, the Four Counties and Cheshire Rings, the River Weaver. Although as has been pointed out, a lot of that (as well as the Lancaster) is very accessible from the western L&L anyway. 

 

My hunch is that you'll get most pleasure over the next couple of years from just having the boat close enough to home that you can just pop along to see it on evenings and weekends, even if it's not strictly the best spot from a cruising point of view.

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We are over 2hrs from home to marina but we find this means we go to the boat and use it which even if just for a weekend gives that feeling of getting away from everything. For a weekend we generally do about 6hrs cruising out on Saturday and then back on Sunday. Some Friday nights in the summer the traffic on the M5 and M6 can be terrible so we have a few places where we go to eat and arrive at the boat later.

We did moor about 30 mins from home which just meant we went out for a day, the only advantage of being near home was we could take friends and family out for a lunch cruise.

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2 minutes ago, magictime said:

I wonder if this is worth reconsidering. We've cruised past Tattenhall, Barbridge and Venetian today, any of which should be under an hour's drive from Liverpool, and I've always thought the range of cruising options on your doorstep here is really pretty impressive - Chester and Llangollen, the Four Counties and Cheshire Rings, the River Weaver. Although as has been pointed out, a lot of that (as well as the Lancaster) is very accessible from the western L&L anyway. 

 

My hunch is that you'll get most pleasure over the next couple of years from just having the boat close enough to home that you can just pop along to see it on evenings and weekends, even if it's not strictly the best spot from a cruising point of view.

Yes I think you are right. I have been to Tattenhall Marina a few times and it takes about an hour from here so could be a good compromise.

 

 

5 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

We are over 2hrs from home to marina but we find this means we go to the boat and use it which even if just for a weekend gives that feeling of getting away from everything. For a weekend we generally do about 6hrs cruising out on Saturday and then back on Sunday. Some Friday nights in the summer the traffic on the M5 and M6 can be terrible so we have a few places where we go to eat and arrive at the boat later.

We did moor about 30 mins from home which just meant we went out for a day, the only advantage of being near home was we could take friends and family out for a lunch cruise.

Hi Rob ...  What you have described is what I have now - the 2 hour bit and maybe what I think I want in the short term - somewhere nearer to pop to in the evenings and maybe take family etc out.  I think I want the best of both worlds !! As I said in one of other replies I think I need 2 boats !!

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Well we live in Suffolk right the north east edge of it and the boat is at Park Farm near Anderton. On a good day its a four and a half hour drive. But I would rather boat the T&M, SU Weaver and Bridgewater than the Norfolk Suffolk broads

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2 hours ago, bmp said:

I think while I am still working this would be an ideal solution and probably one that is making me consider my options. When I retire it could be further away.

There has been a few days this week when the weather has been ok and when I finished work and was at home about 6 o'clock it would have been lovely to pop over to the boat.

But then at the weekend it is not such an issue....

 

Maybe I need 2 boats !!  (Only joking !!)

 

It is. When I was fitting out VS I was working. It was moored 6 miles/ 20 minutes away from home. At the end of a working day I could get to the boat for an hour and, in the modern idium ? 'Chill'. I could also work on the boat without having to completly clear up at the end of a day. When I retired I moved the boat onto the Oxford canal which involves a 75 -90 minute drive. So far it''s been really good but I still miss the opportunity to pop down to the boat for an hour or so. Ideally I should (and did plan) to move back closer to home as I got older. Unfortunatly whilst I could get a marina berth where I was tomorrow there's nowhere to day cruise to anymore. Everywhere is taken up by continuous moorers.

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This year we managed to get a month in a marina close to home to catch up on a 2-3 year backlog of fettling. Then back to our canalside mooring which is a better location for cruising. Best of both worlds and worth the not huge additional cost.

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Mersey mbc has the same facilities as a marina, hook up, water, pump out, diesel, just it's cheaper and has a club house and you don't have two boats moored either side of you. The boats are offside behind locked gates.

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I moor a mile from home, east end of Rochdale canal Summit. We often go out for short trips to get away, but leave the boat, while complying with the act and my responsibility as a boat with a home mooring. We are on a train line, so can go further afield and still get back home easily. I'd say the L&L is the same for you, eg Tarleton, or up towards Wigan and beyond. 

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11 hours ago, Slim said:

It is. When I was fitting out VS I was working. It was moored 6 miles/ 20 minutes away from home. At the end of a working day I could get to the boat for an hour and, in the modern idium ? 'Chill'. I could also work on the boat without having to completly clear up at the end of a day. When I retired I moved the boat onto the Oxford canal which involves a 75 -90 minute drive. So far it''s been really good but I still miss the opportunity to pop down to the boat for an hour or so. Ideally I should (and did plan) to move back closer to home as I got older. Unfortunatly whilst I could get a marina berth where I was tomorrow there's nowhere to day cruise to anymore. Everywhere is taken up by continuous moorers.

My boat is fairly new and not much needed yet in the way of repairs or changing anything. It is probably just the “chill” bit I am looking for. Once retired the distance won’t be an issue.  

1 hour ago, Timx said:

Mersey mbc has the same facilities as a marina, hook up, water, pump out, diesel, just it's cheaper and has a club house and you don't have two boats moored either side of you. The boats are offside behind locked gates.

I need to visit there and have a look. It appears to be a good option. Thanks for the update. 

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1 hour ago, Jim Riley said:

I moor a mile from home, east end of Rochdale canal Summit. We often go out for short trips to get away, but leave the boat, while complying with the act and my responsibility as a boat with a home mooring. We are on a train line, so can go further afield and still get back home easily. I'd say the L&L is the same for you, eg Tarleton, or up towards Wigan and beyond. 

Hi Jim. All my trips are short at the moment anyway so short trips up and down the L&L should be fine. 

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20 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Ah but you have a lovely idyllic, quiet on-line countryside mooring.

 

Would you find it as relaxing if your mooring was on a pontoon in a busy marina on finger moorings, with boats moored moored parallel to yours on both sides and looking straight in your windows? 

Very true Mike, I've only spent time on pontoon moorings in largish 'Yogurt Pots' or overnight stops. Marina life is not for me I'm afraid.

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8 minutes ago, Clodi said:

Very true Mike, I've only spent time on pontoon moorings in largish 'Yogurt Pots' or overnight stops. Marina life is not for me I'm afraid.

They are truly orrible places to moor but ok for short periods of time. Nothing beats an online offside mooring but online towpath is still way better than marina.

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