How much of a pain is a swing mooring or detached pontoon? (with a young family...)

[jac]

I did the maths re moving to a mid river or even mooring bouy in the hamble. By the time I have either joined a club or paid a marina for dinghy storage, factored in an outboard and running / insurance costs, the savings were about £100 per month. Put that against 24x7 access, walk ashore 52 weeks a year and in almost any conditions, power for tools, heating and winter dehumidifier, then it was a no-brainer.

Of course it helps if you have the £100 a month available!

After trying a couple of different options, I've moved to ocean Village because its right next to my office, its cheaper than the Hamble but quite a bit and I can motor or sail against the tide, which is something I cannot do on the Hamble, so i can now do shorter morning or afternoon trips as well as longer, more planned trips.

PhilM makes good point re access.
We only really use ours at the weekend as we both work and both girls are in school. We are about an hour away so a sail is an all day thing if we're going.
If your use age pattern is lots of shirt trips - an afternoon here, an evening there then walk ashore every time. If it's weekends or weeks at a time then the advantages are less so.

I do miss having easy access but we intend to lay up ashore for 3 months over the winter with electricity for dehumidifies and heating and power tools. It costs only a couple of hundred more than our usual 4 weeks out. If we need access to shore power at another time then visitors berths are fine. The £3400 p.a. Saving in fees covers a hell of a lot of nights in a visitor berth, even at Hamble prices.