It's time for a little cathartic moan, I think.
The subject is mooring. The Cam Conservancy have thoughtfully provided mooring bollards, which are a 1" bar on a couple of uprights, at Clayhithe at the visitor moorings. They are very useful, and certainly much more secure than banging pins into the ground.
However, the problem is that they dictate the number of boats that can moor- and people tend not to moor as close together as they otherwise could.
The rings are 20' or so apart, but when I arrived at Clayhithe last night, there were 5 boats, and none of them were sharing rings. This meant that there were a number of 30' gaps between the boats (because everyone has their lines going back at an angle) which was annoying to say the least; you could have fitted two or three more boats on the moorings if everyone had shared rings and moved up.
As it is, I managed to sneak the Duck into a gap, with about six inches between the stern fender and the bow of the boat behind, and about 2' between our bows and the boat ahead. But if my boat had been longer, I wouldn't have been able to moor at all.
It's human nature to not get too close to other people, I suppose, but I really wish that people would share rings, or move up when boats leave, so that everyone who wants to can moor.
Moan over; normal service to be resumed shortly!
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I remember noticing the same thing last year (http://nbkestrel.blogspot.com/2008/06/mooring-mores.html), although cruisers moan about long narrowboats taking up moorings they often occupy the same space as a narrowboat because they invariably moor in the middle of gaps.
ReplyDeleteIt will get worse in summer when all the seasonal boaters get back on the water.
30' gaps, you say? suits me. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI know it's not the done thing (but perhaps it should be), but very occasionally (twice, I think) I've re-moored a boat to make space, moving them down a ring. I tell myself they're not really selfish, but it's that other boats have come & gone, leaving the gap.
In both cases I also left a note admitting guult, btw. ;-)
Oh how I agree with you, what a waste of mooring space! Often when we moor I 'gently encourage' :-) my husband to pull up nice and close to the boat in front. I do wish I were as brave as you Simon, I have often wanted to move a boat along, perhaps I will next time.
ReplyDeleteKath (nb Herbie)