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Continuous Cruising in Reading/Oxford


dharryman

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Hello!

 

This is my first post to this forum, I've been reading a few guides for what I'm looking for, but thought it best to just ask the canal community. 

 

Myself and my wife are looking at getting a live aboard narrow boat (approx 50ft or so). My wife works in Oxford, and my time is split between Oxford, Didcot, and Egham. As such I was wondering how hard it would be for us to be continuous cruisers going between oxford, didcot and perhaps reading? Is it difficult to find places we can find 2 week mooring. Essentially I'm trying to work out if this would be a feasible lifestyle for us? 

 

Alternatively, how much do permanent moorings costs in these areas, I've seen some that are up to around £500 a month. This is out of our price range, but I was wondering if the moorings that are further away from a city are any cheaper? 

 

Any help or advice any of you could give will be greatly appreciated, all in all, we'd love to become members of the boating community, but just want to make sure we know what we're signing up for first. 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

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Most of the public river moorings are 48 hours, I believe. Access to transport may also be an issue (train or car?). So I think you've set yourself a pretty tough target, I'm afraid.  There is a Thames liveaboard group on Facebook that might be more useful?  

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10 minutes ago, carlt said:

There's a 42 foot Agenda 21 mooring up for auction at Oxford at the moment...

 

https://www.watersidemooring.com/519-agenda-21-l1/Vacancies

Hi Carlt, 

 

This could work! The bid runs out pretty soon though and we're still in quite early stages, it's only 42ft long so we'd have to get a smaller boat than we had planned, but as these don't come up that often we could just just go for it. One thing if you can though, they say it has a "Starting Price of £1,729.98 (inc. VAT) per year" do they typically go for this or is it a bit/lot more than that? 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

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30 minutes ago, dharryman said:

Hi Carlt, 

 

This could work! The bid runs out pretty soon though and we're still in quite early stages, it's only 42ft long so we'd have to get a smaller boat than we had planned, but as these don't come up that often we could just just go for it. One thing if you can though, they say it has a "Starting Price of £1,729.98 (inc. VAT) per year" do they typically go for this or is it a bit/lot more than that? 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

A marina leisure mooring in a desirable area can cost £3000 pa, so if you get a full residential mooring with some security of tenure for £1700 then you are doing well.

 

............Dave

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49 minutes ago, dharryman said:

Hi Carlt, 

 

This could work! The bid runs out pretty soon though and we're still in quite early stages, it's only 42ft long so we'd have to get a smaller boat than we had planned, but as these don't come up that often we could just just go for it. One thing if you can though, they say it has a "Starting Price of £1,729.98 (inc. VAT) per year" do they typically go for this or is it a bit/lot more than that? 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

Sorry I'm the wrong person to ask.

 

The last time I had anything to do with the Agenda 21 moorings was back in the 90s when my hippy mates were being evicted from the moorings in an attempt to "gentrify" the stretch.

 

I think there is somewhere on the moorings site that says how much they went for though.

 

I searched a 20 mile radius of Oxford to find that mooring btw, you might be able to find more with a bigger search area.

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There was someone on here not so long ago (talking about refurbishing an existing boat on the Oxford moorings) and in the discussion a figure in the late £30k was mentioned as premium ....

I believe that Thames and Kennet are flexible about living aboard, provided that you go cruising  occasionally.

Otherwise there's nothing and getting worse as folks have bee abusing what little system there is

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18 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

There have been two A21 moorings up for SALE (not auction) recently. £30k and £90k iirc. Including a boat of little value on each. 

Am I correct in assuming the £xxK figures are the premium on the mooring - there's an annual fee to pay as well?

(If so, frightening....)

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1 minute ago, OldGoat said:

Am I correct in assuming the £xxK figures are the premium on the mooring - there's an annual fee to pay as well?

(If so, frightening....)

 

Yes correct. Low annual rent though. And full length moorings iirc. 

 

so if the 42ft mooring goes for £2k-ish, the buyer may get to make a five five profit flogging it on again. 

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43 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Yes correct. Low annual rent though. And full length moorings iirc. 

 

so if the 42ft mooring goes for £2k-ish, the buyer may get to make a five five profit flogging it on again. 

Guess that means I’d be silly not having a punt on a bid for it then?

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2 minutes ago, dharryman said:

I don’t think they look great, but where else can you stay close to Oxford hassle free? 

There are places, what you need to do is two things. One is stop asking on internet forums  and two is to visit boatyards etc personaly it realy is the way to find what you are looking for.

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40 minutes ago, Bewildered said:

I don't quite understand why the mooring is listed as 41' 12", why not just put up 42 foot?

 

I think it is a misprint for 41ft and 1/2in. This is exactly 12.5m concerted to imperial. 

 

Converted, even!

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4 hours ago, dharryman said:

Hello!

 

This is my first post to this forum, I've been reading a few guides for what I'm looking for, but thought it best to just ask the canal community. 

 

Myself and my wife are looking at getting a live aboard narrow boat (approx 50ft or so). My wife works in Oxford, and my time is split between Oxford, Didcot, and Egham. As such I was wondering how hard it would be for us to be continuous cruisers going between oxford, didcot and perhaps reading? Is it difficult to find places we can find 2 week mooring. Essentially I'm trying to work out if this would be a feasible lifestyle for us? 

 

Alternatively, how much do permanent moorings costs in these areas, I've seen some that are up to around £500 a month. This is out of our price range, but I was wondering if the moorings that are further away from a city are any cheaper? 

 

Any help or advice any of you could give will be greatly appreciated, all in all, we'd love to become members of the boating community, but just want to make sure we know what we're signing up for first. 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

I don’t think you can continuously cruise on an EA licence as you have to have a home mooring to register your boat, but, you can get a Gold Licence from CRT which covers CRT & EA waters so you can continuously cruise that way.

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7 minutes ago, F DRAYKE said:

I don’t think you can continuously cruise on an EA licence as you have to have a home mooring to register your boat,

 

Do you? 

 

I've often wondered about that. Whenever I was on the Thames, I always used to have a mooring anyway.

 

 

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11 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Do you? 

 

I've often wondered about that. Whenever I was on the Thames, I always used to have a mooring anyway.

 

 

There's no concept of CCing on the Thames and I suspect the 'where is the boat usually moored' question is for statistical purposes or for EA to know where to look for potentially unlicensed boats

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56 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

There's no concept of CCing on the Thames and I suspect the 'where is the boat usually moored' question is for statistical purposes or for EA to know where to look for potentially unlicensed boats

 

So would an EA licence be declined if that question was left unanswered?

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25 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

So would an EA licence be declined if that question was left unanswered?

I've no idea - try it!

I know I've put something like 'River Wey' on it many years ago and I was not asked for more details.

If you leave the question blank, they might query the omission as an error, but I suspect not otherwise.

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17 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

I've no idea - try it!

I know I've put something like 'River Wey' on it many years ago and I was not asked for more details.

If you leave the question blank, they might query the omission as an error, but I suspect not otherwise.

 

I can't, I don't have a Thames boat these days.

 

I wonder if 'Outside Tesco' would suffice!

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13 hours ago, F DRAYKE said:

I don’t think you can continuously cruise on an EA licence as you have to have a home mooring to register your boat, but, you can get a Gold Licence from CRT which covers CRT & EA waters so you can continuously cruise that way.

The cruising part is easy. It's the mooring that is difficult. The oft-quoted 14 day mooring rule doesn't apply on the Thames. And what would you do when the river is in flood, i.e. running at 5mph or more and a metre higher than normal?

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