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River Thames Boat Licencing Questions


Jennifer

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Hello I wonder if there is anybody on here that lives on the thames we are thinking about moving to the thames early next year and for a few months may have mooring there at a friends garden mooring if we do go we understand boat names cannot be the same is that true or false have no idea and if it is true that boat names cant be the same for licencing does anyone know where to check names as was looking for it today and could not find a list anywhere and if no boats can be the same name I guess it is a matter of adding something to the boat name ?

 

Would be really grateful if anybody has some info on what to do with licensing as we don't want to go on the thames for a few months unlicensed as it is probably enforced there

 

thanks 

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If you intend to use the Thames and the canals then a Gold licence is the way to go. if you buy that while still on CRT waters your registration remains with CRT and the name doesn't matter. If you are going on the Thames full time you need to register with them.

 

Just reading your other thread, Isn't the boat registered already if you are on the Thames at Staines?  

Edited by ditchcrawler
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Actually officially the boat name with a gold license becomes "boat name" + "license number"  so it is unique but no one ever seem to bother abut that.

 

The Thames also requires a minimum name letter size but most NB names easily comply.

 

Be aware that overnight moorings on the Thames usually cost you apart from a few EA 24 hour moorings and the odd local authority ones.

 

Yes lock keepers note the boats passing and no license will probably get you reported but lock keepers seem to be getting fewer by the year. .

I agree with Brian that if you want to cruise CaRT water stay registered with CaRT and get a Gold license but I am not so sure giving CaRT a Thames mooring woudl not cause them to reject your application. Best talk to them.

 

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16 minutes ago, Jennifer said:

Hello I wonder if there is anybody on here that lives on the thames we are thinking about moving to the thames early next year and for a few months may have mooring there at a friends garden mooring if we do go we understand boat names cannot be the same is that true or false have no idea and if it is true that boat names cant be the same for licencing does anyone know where to check names as was looking for it today and could not find a list anywhere and if no boats can be the same name I guess it is a matter of adding something to the boat name ?

 

Would be really grateful if anybody has some info on what to do with licensing as we don't want to go on the thames for a few months unlicensed as it is probably enforced there

 

thanks 

 

Have you ever considered using some punctuation? I don't really understand your question as I'm finding your post difficult to read, but on the garden end mooring you may need to check whether it's a safe mooring when the river is in flood.

 

I was moored on a Thames garden end mooring for 3 years and had to make my own arrangements in terms of scaffold poles and a 60kg concrete anchor. People thought I'd gone mad until the river flooded badly. It may never be needed but it's like an insurance policy.

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12 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

Have you ever considered using some punctuation? I don't really understand your question as I'm finding your post difficult to read, but on the garden end mooring you may need to check whether it's a safe mooring when the river is in flood.

 

I was moored on a Thames garden end mooring for 3 years and had to make my own arrangements in terms of scaffold poles and a 60kg concrete anchor. People thought I'd gone mad until the river flooded badly. It may never be needed but it's like an insurance policy.

 A very good point. To explain:

 

Depending upon location the Thames can regularly flood by several feet most winters (as do most rivers). The scaffold poles are either to drive into the bed to stop your boat floating over the bank or to secure to the bank horizontally to hold your boat away from the bank. Th 60 Kg weight is to act as a sort of anchor in flood conditions, especially when a tree or similar comes down on the flood and hits the font of the boat.

 

Personally I would rig long flood lines from the bow of the boat to a substantial tree or soemsuch during the winter. I would not trust a welded on T stud and instead fit a dedicated bolt through one with a large heavy duty plate on the underside to spread the load..

Edited by Tony Brooks
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27 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I still cant work out if this boat is already on the Thames, If it is  how could you live aboard for a year and not know the water level goes up and down?

It is on the grand union currently I said near staines as we shop there quite a bit apologies for the confusion, it is on the grand union at the moment and registered with the canal and river trust 

22 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 A very good point. To explain:

 

Depending upon location the Thames can regularly flood by several feet most winters (as do most rivers). The scaffold poles are either to drive into the bed to stop your boat floating over the bank or to secure to the bank horizontally to hold your boat away from the bank. Th 60 Kg weight is to act as a sort of anchor in flood conditions, especially when a tree or similar comes down on the flood and hits the font of the boat.

 

Personally I would rig long flood lines from the bow of the boat to a substantial tree or soemsuch during the winter. I would not trust a welded on T stud and instead fit a dedicated bolt through one with a large heavy duty plate on the underside to spread the load..

Sorry I must brush up on my English !

 

I was just asking about licences on the thames and boat names as I cant seem to find a list of where they are registered and understand you cant have the same name as another boat on the thames however it appears a gold licence may be the way to go did not know they existed until now

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3 minutes ago, Jennifer said:

It is on the grand union currently I said near staines as we shop there quite a bit apologies for the confusion, it is on the grand union at the moment and registered with the canal and river trust 

OK Ta. I thought at first you were on the canal but then started  wondering. In that case the Gold Licences is the way to go, but they run from January until December, so CRT refund the unused bit of your canal licence if your licence is due at a different time so something to think about over Christmas

Edited by ditchcrawler
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The extent of flooding depends on the reach and how near the next lock upstream is. 

 

Wraysbury where blackrose was is bad because it is subject to the discharge of the Windsor and Maidenhead flood channel. 

 

On the other hand areas around Bray are protected. 

 

 

Edited by magnetman
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As usual often happens this thread has gone astray quite quickly.....

To answer your question - which I take as primarily being one of licensing -

Your cheapes option is to buy a Gold licence. For folks normally on CaRT waters it's incredibly good value. You have unrestricted use of both the canals and the Thames (because BW negotiated fantastic terms and that hasn't changed over the years) Contrarywise for a Thames 'resident' visiting the canals it's a poor deal. A short term Thames licence registration for more than a week or so is astranomically expensive.

 

The Gold runs from January to December (get your skates on) and CaRT will credit you with any unexpired portion of your existing licence if you swap.

End of Garden moorings are OK - but 'whoever' must check the mooring lines regularly. Depending on where the mooring is - the River levels don't change hugely in terms of height. Last time we had sustained flow conditions was at least 4 years ago, but with reasonable planning it's  manageable.

 

Trust me I'm a local 

Edited by OldGoat
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Having worked for a number of years between Boulters lock and Maidenhead bridge I can not agree with Alan's statement about height change.

 

Magnetman has it about right the closer you are to  lock (actually a weir) downstream the more the height varies so taking about Bray without specifying where is a bit misleading. Monkey Island and the M4 bridge are subject to larger rises than say Bray Marina and further downstream.

 

Near Stains could be anywhere from just below Bell Weir to below Laleham. It could even be above Bell Weir.

 

Edited to add: You can usually get an idea about how heigh the water is likely to rise by looking at the relative position of the summer water level and the tow path. The greater the distance the higher the flood is likely to be.

47 minutes ago, Jennifer said:

I was just asking about licences on the thames and boat names as I cant seem to find a list of where they are registered and understand you cant have the same name as another boat on the thames however it appears a gold licence may be the way to go did not know they existed until now

 

The reason that you have been given extra advice that you may or may not want is because your question is so fundamental that I certainly felt you had little experience of year round mooring on a river and would not want you to have your boat swept away or stranded on dry land as the floods fall. River boating the year round is rather different from canal boating. Its a bit disconcerting to be trying to navigate the channel when all you can see are the trees poking out of the water or having to go through bridges backwards in case you have to power back out because of lack of headroom. Unless you have an excellent reason any sane person would stay tied up in those conditions but very occasionally a boat has to  moved (like if it breaks its moorings).

 

Edited by Tony Brooks
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2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Post some of your photo's.

 

I was moored at the head of a small island so the bow rope could only go about 5m forward of the boat. That's why I made a concrete anchor and put that in upriver on the port side which helped to keep the weight of the boat off the poles when the river rose. The centre rope I used went forward by about 20ft which isn't obvious from the pictures.

 

Looking towards the stern

Windsor and Maidenhead-20121128-00087.jpg

 

Looking upstream towards the bow. The highest I saw it go was the top of that brown brick wall, but I left in the spring of 2013 and it flooded really badly the next winter.

Windsor and Maidenhead-20121128-00091.jpg

 

There was a stone path alongside this side of the white wall - about 2ft below the water 

Windsor and Maidenhead-20121128-00095.jpg

 

Edited by blackrose
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1 hour ago, OldGoat said:

As usual often happens this thread has gone astray quite quickly.....

 

 

And that's often a beneficial and unappreciated aspect of the forum.

 

In this case if the OP's mooring isn't or can't be made flood safe then there might not be a lot of point discussing river licencing.

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Another good guide is the flood marks shown on a lot of the lock cottages.

Like Bell Weir for example 

5247295_d7f1506b.jpg

 

These are old but at the end of the day there is always a chance of another big flood. Some locks have marks from 2003 as well. 2014 was the last big one. 

Last week the Thames at Henley where one of my boats is moored was shifting about 150 cumecs or five hundred thousand tonnes of water an hour. And that was nowhere near flooding. records show flows over 3 times that have occurred. That's some serious water and reminds you why the flood plains are so large. 

 

There are plans to do another flood channel to look after Staines Upon Thames but it's a while away yet. 

Another factor is that technically if you install hardware into the river bed you are meant to license it as structure. 

 

We had a jetty in our Riverside garden when I was a kid and that had a Thames water / NRA (now EA) license plate on it. 

 

 

 

Edited by magnetman
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2 hours ago, Jennifer said:

It is on the grand union currently I said near staines as we shop there quite a bit apologies for the confusion, it is on the grand union at the moment and registered with the canal and river trust 

...

This puzzles me, as if you're on the Grand Union, to get to Staines by water you need to get down to Brentford, up the tidal river to Teddington, then some miles and locks up river from there. There are plenty of places near the GU for you to shop in west London, but perhaps you mean you're currently living somewhere on land near Staines?

But your boat on the GU (e.g. its Slough Arm) might not be very far from Staines as the crow flies. Or as the green ring necked parakeet flies. Those are common in SW London and Surrey and I've observed they tend to fly in straight lines too!

 

As others have suggested, in the circumstances you should probably consider getting a CRT Gold licence. As I remember it he EA do indeed like each boat on the Thames to have a unique name, but I expect they'll work something out. You could perhaps opt to change your boat name first when you get the licence?

 

By the way, technically the EA don't use the term "licence", but any leisure boat without a CRT Gold licence going onto the non tidal river must "register" (various periods of time are possible) and pay them for the privilege. Different complicated rules apply to commercial boats, let's not go off topic into that!

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27 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

Well, you can spell 'licence' correctly (unlike some others), even though you blobbed with the present participle of the verb (which s 'licensing').  

Best I leave now then if spelling is a requirement 

11 minutes ago, Peter X said:

 

 

As others have suggested, in the circumstances you should probably consider getting a CRT Gold licence. As I remember it he EA do indeed like each boat on the Thames to have a unique name, but I expect they'll work something out. You could perhaps opt to change your boat name first when you get the licence?

 

 

Not necessary with a CRT Gold licence

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On 23/11/2019 at 14:27, Scholar Gypsy said:

To answer a question above:  It's perfectly possible to buy a gold licence from CRT and to nominate your home mooring on EA waterways.  I've done that for the last five years 

Hi thanks I have been in contact with them though annoyingly have to start it from January as that is when the year starts but will be doing that in January and getting a temporary EA licence.

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On 23/11/2019 at 12:11, blackrose said:

 

I was moored at the head of a small island so the bow rope could only go about 5m forward of the boat. That's why I made a concrete anchor and put that in upriver on the port side which helped to keep the weight of the boat off the poles when the river rose. The centre rope I used went forward by about 20ft which isn't obvious from the pictures.

 

Looking towards the stern

Windsor and Maidenhead-20121128-00087.jpg

 

Looking upstream towards the bow. The highest I saw it go was the top of that brown brick wall, but I left in the spring of 2013 and it flooded really badly the next winter.

Windsor and Maidenhead-20121128-00091.jpg

 

There was a stone path alongside this side of the white wall - about 2ft below the water 

Windsor and Maidenhead-20121128-00095.jpg

 

Hi thanks so much for providing those pictures in fact I was just about to ask a question on using scaffold poles for exactly this sort of protection that you have as the mooring will be similar to yours.  When you say you made a concrete anchor is that what the poles are attached to or what your boat is attached to very interested into how you have set this up.

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27 minutes ago, Jennifer said:

Hi thanks I have been in contact with them though annoyingly have to start it from January as that is when the year starts but will be doing that in January and getting a temporary EA licence.

I think this is because of the rather complex arrangements for sharing the income between EA and CRT, which do depend on where your home mooring is. Also, a gold licence (unusually) transfers when a boat is sold to a new owner. 

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1 hour ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

I think this is because of the rather complex arrangements for sharing the income between EA and CRT, which do depend on where your home mooring is. Also, a gold licence (unusually) transfers when a boat is sold to a new owner. 

Yes agree I do think however they should have better systems really as to get a licence in early December means you have to pay a whole year for one month so no choice but to wait until January and get temporary licences from the EA until then.  Good to know we can transfer the licence if we sell in the future thanks for that.

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