Paid the rip off licence fee for my boat, nearly £600 for about 42 miles of water. After 28 years it will be my last year on that river and the boat may need to go into storage next year.
I love being on the water, it’s the licence costs. It used to be less than half that and it will go up 16 percent every year now and for such a short stretch of water, the bad state of the locks, lack of maintenance etc it’s not worth it. I will try to get the boat on another waterway but finding a mooring is difficult so it may have to go into storage until I can move it elsewhere. Another greedy charity unfortunately.
The trouble is @Zeus, you'll still need to pay insurance if you want it covered for theft and/or damage, and storage is likely to be equivalent to the £600, or more. It costs me roughly that to keep my 6.5M RIB on it's trailer at a local caravan Storage place, and that's discounted as I've been there years. And I assume in your case, just paying storage costs means you can't even use it if you want to.
My insurance is £150 a year, the mooring fees are £1000 and the river licence is £600. If I dry store it at my marina it will be the same as the mooring fee and it will have to be insured, I’ll still save the £600 as it’s not in the water. No i can’t use it as it needs to be craned but I can use it as a caravan on site still! Hopefully I’ll find another waterway to sail it to.
