Christmas demands planning, and despite Omicron, Delta and other Covid-associated variants, it looks like bubbles this year will be mainly alcoholic!
Living afloat Christmas demands decision making not just on what presents to make/buy, what shopping to do or who is cooking what. We’ve both had both our jabs and our boosters and our flu jabs. We now need to decide thanks to invitations, where we are spending Christmas, and that means making a decision on where we should moor our home. We’d love to stay on the boat but the pull to be with family is stronger.
Last Christmas the edicts said – stay overnight with family – don’t stay overnight with family – total confusion on the government’s rules if you remember. We were lucky to be invited for a lovely family Christmas by Daughter No. 2 and her partner so we moored up not too far from them and left the boat in the company of other boats on a Winter Mooring site. These are long stay temporary mooring sites allocated by Canal and Rivers Trust to allow people to stay for periods from a month to three months and they exist across the country. We didn’t want to stay for a month but stayed instead for nearly a fortnight as there was space on that particular stretch. There was a water point but no waste disposal, but there was parking nearby and we fetched the car. There were good walks but during the time we were there many of the footpaths flooded and the towpath turned into a quagmire – even the swans thought so but somehow they still stayed pristine (unlike the inside of the boat!).
This year Daughter No. 1 has invited us to spend 5 days of family celebrations. This means leaving our home, our floating home for 5 nights moored somewhere. We can’t moor up nearby as the closest waterway would be the River Soar and it has been subject to flood warnings regularly through the late Autumn/Winter which makes it difficult to navigate. As I write there is another warning that strong flows make navigation difficult and dangerous along the entire length of the canalised River Soar from Kings Lock near Aylestone to Redhill Lock close to the mouth of the Soar where it joins the River Trent near Sawley. In other words – it’s not safe on the Soar. So Plan A – to moor nearby and stay in our own home overnight is not feasible.
So what are the other options? For boaters leaving their boats for any length of time, there are two main choices:
- Plan B – Marina
- Plan C – Towpath mooring
| Marina pros | Marina cons |
| secure in terms of cctv, locked access | additional cost of mooring – usually pay by length of boat and duration of stay or a fixed fee |
| power hook up enables a low watt heater to be left on board in case of freezing weather | additional cost of electricity |
| water, electric, showers, car parking and sometimes a laundrette may be available. Electricity means batteries don’t get drained if you leave the fridge on and you don’t need to run the engine every day. Also means you can use power tools to get maintenance done. | static living |
| usually on a pontoon away from potentially wobbly trees that may fall in a storm | may have to navigate onto a mooring spot amid other boats and pontoons |
| neighbours | neighbours |
| pontoons which are mud free and sometimes de iced | pontoons are often slippery in ice, snow and rain |
| Towpath mooring pros | Towpath mooring cons |
| no additional cost – it’s covered by the licence | security – need to try and moor near other boats but can’t expect strangers to keep an eye on your boat to prevent break in etc., equally there may be other boats when you moor but they may move on before you return leaving your home alone (see what I did there?!) |
| you can moor wherever is easiest for your needs and stay for up to 14 days in many places | no electricity risking batteries running down as solar is limited at this time of year, and you’re not there to run the engine to top them up |
| need to moor on piling where you can attach mooring ropes to chains for security. | cold snaps can lead to frozen/burst pipes as no heating whist you’re off the boat |
| neighbours | neighbours |
Does this make us sound very untrusting or just paranoid about our home? We’ve never (fingers crossed) had a problem in the three and a half years we’ve had the boat. Some people have security cameras on board linked to their phones etc. That always seems to say to us as we pass (probably wrongly) “Look – there’s things worth stealing on here!”We don’t have security cameras and we don’t have anything on board worth stealing like a TV. The laptop will come with us as I shall need to do a little bit of work sometime during the festivities.
We accept that the chance of someone breaking in and trashing the boat which is really the concern is slight – whether they would be doing that from boredom or need to find food or somewhere to stay, we’d still like to go away feeling we’ve taken the necessary steps to keep our home safe.
We’ve weighed it up, spoken to many people and developed our own Plan B. The week of Christmas Preaux will be tucked up safe and secure in a marina so we can go and party with the family without worrying about will the boat still be there when we get back, will she have flooded because of burst pipes or been flattered by a falling tree.
Our chosen Plan B means we can enjoy Christmas with our fabulous family and return to a warm secure home that’s ready for us to move. It means all we have to think about is where shall we moor to celebrate the end of another year afloat together and the start of another somewhere new.
Glad that’s sorted so now we can concentrate on a rather more pressing need – sourcing more fuel for the fire which is running 24/7 and will do right up to the time we tuck up the boat for her Christmas break. We’re lower on supplies than we’ve ever been…eek!
Pickingupducks 