Are continuous cruisers to become outcasts of the system?

I really hope it is not a sign of things to come that on the day of the launch of the Canal and River Trust a senior IWA man was making vague threats and allegations about the minority of boaters who are continuous cruisers.

Tweeting after the champagne launch Jo Gilbertson of the IWA reported: “Much mutual muttering about need to sort out overstaying moorers in IWA , NABO and BMF camps over coffee - will be following this up.”

He went on to assert in a Twitter conversation about CCers with continuous cruiser Peter MacDonald, that: “I'll wager its 80% not making any attempt at a continuous journey.”

When challenged by me and asked how he proposed to prove his assertion, he admitted that, “.. it’s not for me to prove it but for anyone else taking up the wager to agree with me how to measure it with me ...”

It is disturbing that this kind of prejudice appears endemic amongst those who now have tremendous influence over our waterways. Don’t forget that the boater positions on the CRT council are overwhelmingly held by IWA people and that the CRT senior management, in the days when they had BW hats on, have attempted on several occasions to attack CCers, usually financially.

Over the years we too have been hobby boaters, rushing down to our moorings at weekends and holidays, determined to get out and explore the waterways. We have also been static liveaboards in marinas and boatyards, working during the week and getting out whenever we can. We have had a GRP, commissioned a shiny boat and owned a novelty boat.

Now we continuously cruise, covering a thousand or two lock miles each year, along with several thousand other boaters.

When we were hobby boater’s we looked on CCers with some envy. They had the freedom to carry on doing what we loved after we had had to return to work. We did not regard them with resentment, as some do these days.

When we started living aboard nearly nine years ago we knew we were part of a minority of boaters and when we began continuously cruising (although we technically have a mooring we never use it) we knew we were becoming part of a smaller minority – but we always saw ourselves as part of the jigsaw of boating types that use the waterways.

We were IWA members from the start of our boating, nearly 20 years ago, but that ended three years ago when we attended a National Festival and found ourselves denigrated and looked down upon as liveaboard, continuous cruisers by the largely middle-class, well heeled membership of the IWA.

We have always regarded that as unfortunate, but we are unwilling to be patronised by those who may have spent more on their boat than us, but have forgotten the campaigning past of the very organisation of which they are now part.

We are now very concerned that the arrogance of the IWA, symbolised by Mr Gilbertson’s attitude to continuous cruisers will permeate the new charity, despite assurances given to the supporters of the Boaters’ Manifesto by CRT trustees, that they were not going to conduct a witch-hunt against CCers and liveaboards.

Assertions like “I bet 80 per cent of CCers are over-stayers,” made without proof, or even any concern for proof, too easily become the propaganda of a hate campaign with CCers as the target.”

Mr Gilbertson is anxious to portray CCers as attacking his style of boater. When I described those who do not live on their boats as ‘hobby boaters’ he declared that was pejorative – as opposed to simply factual, I assume.

Well, I have news for the IWA, the CRT and anyone else who thinks they can isolate CCers and develop any sort of institutional discrimination against us – we are boaters, just like you. It is just that we do more of it at this stage in our boating lives.

Many of us have been hobby boaters and hire boaters - that is where we learned to love the lifestyle.

As we get older many of us may become marina moorers again or even return to a little light hobby boating if health and age forces us ashore.

We are boaters and you demonise us and exclude us at your detriment because we spend more time on the system, know more about the obscure corners and problems and often already do our bit to keep our backyard – even if it is only a temporary backyard as we pass through – clean, tidy and cared for.

And, no, we have not lost our sense of reality about those who over-stay, we know they exist although our full-time perspective is probably more realistic than a hobby boater who only sees a particular mooring spot at a weekend.

We know boat owners, especially in and around London who use every other weekend to move their boat from one location to another rather than pay for mooring. They are not liveaboards or continuous cruisers and numbers are growing in these times.

We know ourselves that we can be seen on the same moorings three weeks apart. In the last three months boaters will have seen us in Nantwich on four or five occasions as we pass through to Ellesmere Port, the Peak Forest, Chester and then Manchester before a final stop on our way to Birmingham.

We rarely stay very long but we could easily be the target of a hobby boaters wrath if they failed to find an Nantwich weekend mooring and saw us there on several occasions.

Some areas have acknowledged problems – central London and the K&A for example – but the problem is not the liveaboards who attempt to work within whatever CC rules the authorities are working to that particular month. The problem is the failure of BW, although hopefully not the CRT, to provide affordable, basic online moorings for those boats. Do so and they cease to become a problem in hotspot areas.

Those people are not CCers, except by default, and I suspect that much of the hatred directed at them is to do with the fact that their boats are often older and untidier than most.

Get over your prejudices, there is room on the cut for all types of boater, rich and poor. I sometimes get the feeling that some boaters would be part of the pack attacking working boat families for their poverty-stricken lifestyles if hobby boaters had been on the water a century ago.

When Robin Evans was interviewed on Radio Four on the same day as Mr Gilberston launched his attack on CCers, he mentioned the importance of the canals for walkers, cyclists and anglers but failed to mention boats or navigation once.

The IWA and its representatives would do better to worry about that and the importance that is going to be given to all boaters, including CCers, under the new CRT regime, unchanged at an everyday level from British Waterways.

Demonising continuous cruisers will divide the boating community, but it is all too easy to pick targets and criticise. I have now try to stop referring to ‘shiny boaters’ as shorthand for those who have spent loads on a new boat and think they own the canal as a result. It is, I recognise, divisive, so I avoid it.

There are many who attack hire boaters and even some who poke fun at historic boat owners and their obsession with ‘the oldest rivet on the Cut’.

It may be a natural part of such a mixed community, but it is a nasty habit and anyone indulging in it – including me – deserves to have their hands slapped by the rest.