Marina - Choices, lock or not to lock

mjf

mjf

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Recently we have had some good debates here on Flybridge vs. Sport Boats, open and hardtops, planning semis and displacement hulls etc. Keep the boat at home (ish) or fly to Spain/SoF for w/e, half term, and summer hols.

Its all a compromise and you find your best fit.

What about Marinas?

It’s the same story again innit? You want somewhere safe, easy to reach, affordable (?), near to good cruising grounds, facilities both boaty and eaty/things to do.

I chose where I am as is about the fastest Home/Boat journey to where I want to cruise. Good facilities but…………big down side it has a lock which when busy is a regal pain in the lower reaches. I put up with this as with planning you can sort of circumvent a lot of hassle and the other benefits seem to me to out way the huge disadvantage of dealing with a lock.

What’s the view on this lock malarkey then?
 
I live in surrey but the boats at ramsgate which is a 1 hour drive (driving very fast /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif )

Security is 24 hour / toilets / showers / plenty of power / fresh water / good pubs / trendy jazz bars /

good atmosphere on a saturday and the community on the water is very good with people even meeting you after a day's run to help moor up! Not the cheapest in the world but the service is good.

A lot less busier than Brighton as well.
 
We chose our current marina because being new to boating at the time, didn't realy have a clue what to look for. We had bought the boat and were due to take delivery but hadn't arranged a mooring.
Phoned around a few south coast marina's which all said fully booked. Finally found somewhere with space so SWMBO and I rode down one freezing cold Feb evening, straight from work. The wind was howling, It was freezing cold and peeing down with rain. We looked at the available berths and met a local who tried to dis swayed us from the place because of the lock. (turns out he was also after the mooring we were looking at)

With the boat due we felt we didn't have a choice so went ahead and paid for the mooring.


4 years later we are still there with another boat and feel we were lucky enough to make the right decision.
The lock is no longer a problem as we have learnt to manage our time to coincide with either free flow or times when traffic is low.
Although the second biggest marina in the UK (I think) it's in the middle of a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a wetland of international importance, a Special Protection Area for wild birds and a candidate Special Area of Conservation and only a short boat ride from the Solent.

We could have ended up anywhere on the south coast but thankfully we chose Chichester Marina.
 
Our jury is out on this one. Until last year we always were "un-locked" but we are now in Chatham Maritime which is locked. Yes there is 24 hour access but it is an additional hassle. Used to go down the boat of an evening and if the weather was hot could just push off for an hour. Now have to book lock out on the hour or half hour. Then wait to come in. Not so easy if single handed (see old posts about Chatham Lock!).

They can only lock 6 or so boats at a time so on Sunday they were advising "there are 12 boats ahead of you" - that's a delay of 45 minutes easily. Also people fuss about whether they want port or starboard; people call up early to try to jump the queue etc. etc.

On the last bank hols we had a club visit with 40 boats so no locals could lock out for about 2 hours. People turning up for a morning cruise were being advised there was nothing available to 13.00.

On the plus side, whether we were locked or not was not a consideration. We wanted good facilities (showers, electricity, security and so on within easy reach of M25 Essex bit) and the choices were limited.

On balance we will stay for a couple of years.

Good question, mjf.
 
That port solent lock is a bit crap really with so many boats and v slow. They should get the dredger in and fire eveyone in the lock office , save loads of money in the long run althou tyou might need climbing gear to get up the pontoons at low tide. For the size of marina, it is too small a lock and anyone cdve worked out the likely delays.

Trouble is, altho the marina is laughably crap by civilised french or spanish standards, it's one of the best in the uk! Everywhere else in solent is a godawful crappiness with veneer of "tradition" (ie crap BUT old - the oldness always being a handy excuse for being crap) which applies to lymington, yarmouth cowes er well pretty much everywhere really.

At least the restaurants in port solent are honest when they are crap like the mexican place which is a nice place to be (cos u can't see the mexican place).

Otherwise it's back of beyond like flipping chichester which also has lock. Other option is we all rent a jet and fly out late evening from biggin hill to cannes, no locks and fab weather and much cheaper on fuel to find "somewhere nice".
 
Only have 12 boats in front of you, Pah!! At Chichester over the last bank holiday the queue number went above 140!!! not sure what number they were locking out at that time but you'd be wasting your time if you thought you were getting out before free flow.

We try to leave the marina late friday evening then moore somewhere in the harbour. When returning either plan to get there for free flow or late in the evening. The lock is 24hr and opens on request, I think the minimum depth is currently around 1 meter which helps motor boats with legs as most of the yachts can't get out at low water so no queues at these times.
 
Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

If you are lucky enough to be able to enjoy your boating during the week when everyone else is at work, then locking out/in is no problem. Then you have the advantage of a secure marina. (Unless someone messes up as in Hythe recently and let the water out, stranding several boats!)

If you have to work Monday to Friday/Saturday then leisure time is very precious. Too precious to be told " we will call you in about an hour " for either lockin or out. Then the advantage of 24 hour access overweighs the all the disadvantages.

Having experienced both and being in the latter categorey, the ability to depart the berth with little or no delay on a Saturday morning and get back in easily on Sunday evening outweighs the possibility of any freak tornado or tidal wave causing excessive damage.
 
Locks would be fine if they built them bigly enough, but they don't. Waiting 45mins or whatever on Sunday evening is too much of a PITA so I wouldn't choose to have a boat in a locked marina. We were based in Lymington when in Solent, fab place imho, much nicer than Chi because it has a walkable town behind it, and no lock
 
I'm in a locked marina... think jfm has hit the nail on the head... if the lock is big enough it doesn't cause a problem....

I'm in Neptune at Iopswich... its on demand, and tends to work quite well... it'll hold about 12 to 16 boats if really pushed... and a cycle at low water takes about 10 mins....

I noticed that Eastbourne has two largish locks....

Personally, if I had to wait 2 hours, then I wouldn't be in there... thats ridiculous....
 
Not to mention any marina but all the dredging in the world will not help a single chamber lock at low tide with bookings (250+) for the battle of
tr trafalgar celebrations that finish at 2200hrs, estimate 7 hours to get
everyone in.
I used to go to PS a lot untill fights broke out regarding lock waiting times.
 
Free flowing sewer or locked sewer

I've noticed that locked marinas are full of crap literally. Most marina operateors don't give a toss about users pumping black waste over board or insist on holding tanks /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
Re: Marina - Choices, lock or not to lock

Yes, that really is my point. Why build a newish (10yr old) marina with a small lock? I guess the issue is that when planned all the boats were smaller and easy to cram in. Now you get a couple of 60ft F/B's in and a cfew dory's /RIBS and its full.

TCM is right the low water lock cycle is too slow - what is needed is big pumps to bung in / chuck out some serious water, like sufficient to empty the lock of water completelyin 20/30 minutes.

Like I said with planning you can avoid a lot of the problems by avoiding what will clearly be busy times and using freeflow when available . However that restricts your fun time. Even the waiting pontoon is basically a non starter.

I like the security of a lock (both marine and physical). But listening, on the VHF, to people queue on a Sunday for 1.5/2.0 hrs to return 'home' does beg the question.....



Lymington - concur your thoughts but, getting there for me by car makes the lock seem like a blessing.

What made me ask views was a friend has just left PS to go to Royal Clarence nr Gosport. Yes, no lock, buggar all there, building site too, immediate access to the solent, saves a little dosh, deserted most of the time and.......and extra 30/45mins to get to the boat on a Friday. Sound judgement or what?

The trick, it seems to me, is to work a bit harder and have the SoF deal with a private plane just as tcm advocates.
 
[ QUOTE ]
a friend has just left PS to go to Royal Clarence nr Gosport. Yes, no lock, buggar all there, building site too, immediate access to the solent, saves a little dosh, deserted most of the time and.......and extra 30/45mins to get to the boat on a Friday. Sound judgement or what?

[/ QUOTE ]

Gosport marina is deffinitely not a nice place to stay. Nothing to do with the marina itself or the surounding area but all to do with the rocking of the boats.
Non stop very large ferry movements and all the port solent traffic zooming past a hundred yards away.

Stayed there Saturday night and the wake from a police launch going past at about 20 knots caused the yacht next to me to pull the cleat right out of the pontoon. I recon my moat must have rocked at least 4 feet from the mean horizontal.

Very bad idea to move there.
 
Yes, well we obviously plan, too, and don't aim to be waiting outside - and okay 12 is nothing in comparison with 140 but Chichester is a tad bigger than Chatham. Using our experience we calculate when traffic is likely to be bad and act accordingly. The point is it restricts your boating and the facilities have to be spot on to make it worthwhile.
 
Re: Free flowing sewer or locked sewer

Was in Port Solent for 3 months and couldn't get out fast enough because of the lock. Would never take an annual berth in a locked marina. Boating is supposed to be fun and waiting hours for a lock (whilst holding position in a narrow channel 'cos the scumsail yachts have filled the waiting pontoon) is the opposite of fun.

Currently in Lymington, its the crappy oldness of it I like, but we call it character.
 
I agree that 2 hours is ridiculous and if it happened every week we would be off. Would have been nice if MDL could have warned everyone of the need to get out early, though. Perhaps some innovation with text messaging berth holders if they wanted to know of locking problems? The lock from 07.00 to 09.00 had space.

We knew there would be a problem when checking our friday exit to be told they were locking the 40 boats in that afternoon. So we reckoned they would want to lock 'em all out again on Monday.
 
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