boat or mooring first

[solitude2]

Hi there.

Just starting looking into buying a boat after several hire boat holidays.Probably want to go for a marina mooring to start with.Advice in books seems to be to find a mooring first. Marinas need name of boat and insurance details etc before taking reservation! how do you get round this? Which comes first?

Also if you buy second hand boat is it common place to change the name and how do you go about that ?

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Tony

( on Solitude2, my virtual boat !)

[carlt]

Hi there.

Just starting looking into buying a boat after several hire boat holidays.Probably want to go for a marina mooring to start with.Advice in books seems to be to find a mooring first. Marinas need name of boat and insurance details etc before taking reservation! how do you get round this? Which comes first?

Also if you buy second hand boat is it common place to change the name and how do you go about that ?

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Tony

( on Solitude2, my virtual boat !)

It depends on the marina (and boat). If you book a space in a marina, then turn up with one of my boats, you won't be welcomed (with a few exceptions, of course).

 

To change the boat name, inform BW and that's that. Unless you choose to perform some of the bizarre rituals mentioned elsewhere on this forum (first find a virgin....).

[alan_fincher]

Many of the major brokerages operate from marinas or have online moorings.

 

Many will say "buy a boat from us, and we guarantee you a mooring".

 

OK, perhaps not a lot of help, as the boat you want to buy may well not be where you want to moor it.

 

But it is one way people get moorings.

 

Many marinas, although claiming being full, do sometimes have a bit of capacity.

 

Obviously where several new ones have recently opened, they may well not be full.

 

I can't see many marinas having a problem if you want to pay for a mooring for the boat you don't yet have!

[bargeeboy]

Hi there.

Just starting looking into buying a boat after several hire boat holidays.Probably want to go for a marina mooring to start with.Advice in books seems to be to find a mooring first. Marinas need name of boat and insurance details etc before taking reservation! how do you get round this? Which comes first?

Also if you buy second hand boat is it common place to change the name and how do you go about that ?

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Tony

( on Solitude2, my virtual boat !)

 

Yes Blackrose this is an Advert

 

Yes I can answer to all questions plus we can dock the boat to change the name whilst the bum is dry !

[Idunhoe]

From experience I would say mooring first - one of the questions on the BW licence application form is where is the boat to be moored, so if a marina need boat details before taking your hard earned cash then you are faced with going round in ever decreasing circles. (you seem to do that a lot when dealing with BW anyway . Name change is just a case of reporting the new name to BW - they even have a form for it.

Good luck

[John Orentas]

Most people would advise, try to book a mooring on the marina of your choice first, you will find most marina owners will say "We have just got one empty berth but there are a few people after it, if I were you I would make a firm booking and start paying now".

 

Most advisable to separate the two issues, there have been a few people on the forum who have become embroiled in a tangled mess involving boat purchase and mooring.

[Machpoint005]

The quick answer is 'well it depends' but I'd suggest sussing out the availablility of moorings where you want to be. There's no substitute for leg work, whether it's looking for a boat or a mooring. I reckon you will always be able to find a mooring somewhere, even if it's in the wrong place.

We bought our boat dahn sarf a coup'e of years back, overwintered it at the brokers, then repatriated in springtime. To reserve the mooring we ended up paying for about 6 weeks we couldn't use, because the boat was still 200 miles away - but that was where we wanted to be, so worth it.

 

Best of luck: enjoy the process and don't give up!

 

Edited for fat finger guidance errors

Edited June 14, 2008 by Machpoint005

[Stonker]

Hi there.

Just starting looking into buying a boat after several hire boat holidays.Probably want to go for a marina mooring to start with.Advice in books seems to be to find a mooring first. Marinas need name of boat and insurance details etc before taking reservation! how do you get round this? Which comes first?

Also if you buy second hand boat is it common place to change the name and how do you go about that ?

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Tony

( on Solitude2, my virtual boat !)

 

I would say that it depends on how flexible you are in terms of where you want to moor your boat. If you are looking to moor in a small geographical area in the more populated (with boats) locations then it might be sensible to make sure you secure a mooring first. However it can take a long time to find your boat, it took us a year to find our first narrowboat, and you might not want to pay for a mooring you can't use.

 

If you provide some idea of where in the country and what type and size of boat you intend to buy it might be easier for people to advise you.

 

Good Luck

 

Stewart

[Chickadee]

We recently got our mooring in a marina. We reserved it before the marina opened and paid a deposit. We were lucky enough to find our perfect boat just before the marina opened so we didnt have to pay anything other than a deposit. I love our plot so much now though i would have paid a good few months to keep it.

 

Like others have said, go visit the marinas see what they say. It'll give you a chance to have a nosy at there services and amenaties too.

[churchward]

As others have said I think it depends. One main factor could be the area you want to moor your boat. Is there a shortage or surplus of moorings? For example not long ago it was hard to get a mooring on the Grand Union/ Oxford canal in South Warwickshire or Northamptonshire, since three or more large Marinas or extensions to existing ones have sprung up there seems to be a surplus. Well, except for Braunston that is.

 

My tactic was to buy the boat first after all I am going to have that for longer than I need keep a mooring hopefully! Then moor it wherever I could get in the general area. I thought that I could always then have much more time to get a mooring that was better or cheaper later.

 

Brokerages often sell boats with moorings.

[solitude2]

Thanks everyone for all your help! Think I'll start looking around marinas and trying to suss em out re availability!

[FadeToScarlet]

It will also depend upon how you're going to finance the boat- a marine mortgage requires a mooring. Our marina didn't require anything other than the boat's name and length so they could calculate the prices, we've had (and been paying for!) a mooring since May but haven't got the boat yet!

[StoneHenge]

We got the mooring first, in a marina. We didn't need anything other than the intention to purchase a boat of abon approximate length, and we were paying for the mooring for 3 months before we got the boat, which we ended up buying from them quite by accident when a sale fell through and this boat just happened to have come up for sale.

 

I'd get the mooring first, as you have the knowledge of having somewhere safe to put the boat when you do get it. You can then shop at leisure if you decide it is not the right place or something else comes up. Might mean doubling paying for a month or two but it is worth it to get the place the want , and to save having to worry about where you can moor.

[Dekazer]

It's so difficult isn't it?! We're planning on moving onto a boat in the New Year, and trying to plan everything to coincide is really hard.

 

I think that, so long as you have a roof over your head that you can afford, the mooring's more important. Well, for us anyway. I'm reasonably tied to my local area because of my job, so the location is more important to secure. I'd rather not pay double rent for long, but it wouldn't kill us for 2 or 3 months. I guess the price of the available moorings will influence this decision! However, I would have thought that if you're more flexible about location it'd be easier to find the perfect boat and then cruise until a suitable mooring came along. Horses for courses I guess.

 

Also, maybe I'm being overconfident, but I'm reasonably happy that we'll be able to find a boat we like within a few months (Fingers Xed!), whereas moorings don't come up very often where we live (London). We're heading up to Daventry next weekend for the Braunston festival (any maybe a nosy round the marina) so hopefully we'll learn a bit more then!

 

I've been scouring the forum for tips though, so I'll be keeping an eye on more posts in this thread!

 

Deks xx

[Chertsey]

Which are you more fussy about? Getting exactly the right boat, or getting a mooring in a particular place? I'd say prioritise that one. If your boat requirements are very specific, then it might take you a while to find the right one - and very often it will come with at least a temporary mooring. If on the other hand you're after a very specific type or place of mooring but are less fussy about the boat, go for that first.

 

And no, I wouldn't say it was common practice to rename a boat - but as others have pointed out, it's perfectly simple if you want to. We had a name in mind when we were looking, but when we found Warrior the name was so obviously right for the boat that we couldn't possibly have changed it. If it had been called Foxy Lady (for example) it would have been changed before the ink was dry on the bill of sale.

[PeterG]

When we got our last boat we read all the advice and thought we would get a mooring first but not worry straight away as we wanted to wait until we could decide what builder length etc in the spring.

 

Then what did we do but find something that was already built so needed a mooring a bit quick before the winter stoppages kicked in.

 

So best made plans out of the window but still found a temporary mooring ok in time for getting the boat. Just be prepared to look around and ask for help.