Malish
Well-Known Member
Presumably sailors for West Mersea will now be making a donation of £10/£15 every time they take up a free mooring at Marconi / Medway YC / Deben etc????
West Mersea - visitor moorings
- Thread starter Cantata
- Start date
chinita
Well-Known Member
I know nothing about this but, what is to stop someone from setting up a private Water Taxi Service in WM? In addition to peak hours this service would cover the hours that WMYC Taxi does not.
Presumably there could be no objection to a license on the grounds of 'There is already a Service' - as there is not.
It is not even like Brightlingsea where the excellent Harbourmasters' Assistants cover the Water Taxi when not running.
Presumably there could be no objection to a license on the grounds of 'There is already a Service' - as there is not.
It is not even like Brightlingsea where the excellent Harbourmasters' Assistants cover the Water Taxi when not running.
Cobra
Well-Known Member
PERISH THE THOUGHT!! Those rules only apply on their ditch!
Cobra
Well-Known Member
Agree wholeheartedly Jim! £5 to hang off something that is already there overnight seems quite reasonable to me...assume that one empty mooring was used say 115 times through the period start April to end September...at a fiver a shot that puts an additional £575 into the coffers over an above whatever is being charged already for the mooring. Now I am sure that there are more than 115 deluded souls who seem to feel that Mersea is actually worth visiting each season...Brightlingsea will see more than that on a busy Bank Holiday weekend alone!!
The promises of facilities to come just don't justify a tenner a night in Mersea...still Mersea's loss will be Brightlingsea's gain...we have a fuel berth, a proud boast that a visitor has never been told 'sorry we have no space for you', we have a pump out station, we have a water taxi that runs into the small hours at weekends and we have a Harbour team reckoned to be one of the best on the East Coast!
TimfromMersea
Well-Known Member
As you can see from my user name I may have an interest here....!
Let's bring some reality back to this debate. Firstly let us have no illusions that Brightlingsea (to take one example) is free for a mooring. It wasn't last time I was there and the harbourmaster was alongside in milliseconds to collect the money.
Secondly it isn't a 'WMYC water taxi'. It's a club launch paid for by the members of the West Mersea Yacht Club and so provided for the use of members. It costs the Club an eye-watering amount of money to provide 2 launches and 2 full time launchmen, plus several part time launchmen, to run the service 7 days a week from March through to November. The members shoulder all this cost through their subscriptions. We're pleased to make it available to visiting yachtsmen when we can but we ask for a modest contribution to the huge costs involved in running it. I genuinely can't see that this is an unreasonable attitude. When I asked the Felixstowe harbour ferry to take me ashore from my boat to go to the Ferry Boat Inn I had to pay, that's the way the world goes round. If you spend money in the Club bar or restaurant you get the launch charge back but I really can't see why the Club should pay to bring people ashore so that they can eat in competitors' restaurants. If I'm missing something here please someone say so.
The Club would desperately like to run the launch service until later on in the evenings. It's one of the main things our members ask us to do. However whenever we have looked at the numbers, they simply don't stack up in view of the demand. The 'Working Time Directive' prevents us from just getting our existing launchmen to work overtime to do it (leaving aside whether they would want to or not!) and so extra part timers would be needed. What would you want to get paid to commit to every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening, unsocial hours, rain or shine? and of course as the launches are 'commercial vessels' they need to be suitably qualified, we can't simply get people off the street.
I suppose there is indeed no reason why someone couldn't set up a 'private water taxi service' in Mersea, provided that they could get a licence from Colchester Council. All I would say is 'go on then, let's see you do it and make money out of it'. There is a reason why no-one has done it before............
West Mersea is unique (I think) in having no harbour authority, no harbour master, and moorings owned by a kaleidoscope of different individual and corporate owners and with no central controlling or licensing authority. The Yacht Club has 'seized the initiative' and had agreed with the other various 'majority moorings operators' that a modest charge will be made, not to pay the various owners for the moorings, but to put into a pot to improve Mersea's facilities for the benefit of all. This will include the replacement of the navigation marks into Mersea, Trinity House having been insistent that the 'green cans' that have served us well for so many years are needing to be replaced with 'green conicals' instead.
As for the Yacht Club being unwelcoming, all I can say is that I don't know when you visited or what you expected. We have like all clubs a number of 'lovable old eccentrics' that are likely to expect visitors to wear a tie etc. but that's the same anywhere. I have personally taken visiting yachtsmen in my own car to the garage in the village centre for them to collect diesel, as someone said sadly it's not available on the waterfront any more. We have a full meal service at lunchtimes seven days a week and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings in the summer, where visitors are always welcome (although and like anywhere else we may on occasions be fully booked, but then we say the same to members too). There's also the Dabchicks Sailing Club along the road where there is a very welcoming and well stocked bar, showers etc, all of which are available to visiting yachtsmen.
I really can't see a reason why anyone would object to a charge for use of a mooring or use of the Club launch. There's no compulsion to use either. Anchoring in the Quarters remains free, using a dinghy to the jetty remains free, and the Clubs will still welcome you or you can go to any one of the other renowned 'eating and drinking houses' in Mersea, it's your choice. All we ask is that if you use the facilities for which we pay, you help us pay for them. I'm struggling to see that's unfair or unreasonable in any way.
Let's bring some reality back to this debate. Firstly let us have no illusions that Brightlingsea (to take one example) is free for a mooring. It wasn't last time I was there and the harbourmaster was alongside in milliseconds to collect the money.
Secondly it isn't a 'WMYC water taxi'. It's a club launch paid for by the members of the West Mersea Yacht Club and so provided for the use of members. It costs the Club an eye-watering amount of money to provide 2 launches and 2 full time launchmen, plus several part time launchmen, to run the service 7 days a week from March through to November. The members shoulder all this cost through their subscriptions. We're pleased to make it available to visiting yachtsmen when we can but we ask for a modest contribution to the huge costs involved in running it. I genuinely can't see that this is an unreasonable attitude. When I asked the Felixstowe harbour ferry to take me ashore from my boat to go to the Ferry Boat Inn I had to pay, that's the way the world goes round. If you spend money in the Club bar or restaurant you get the launch charge back but I really can't see why the Club should pay to bring people ashore so that they can eat in competitors' restaurants. If I'm missing something here please someone say so.
The Club would desperately like to run the launch service until later on in the evenings. It's one of the main things our members ask us to do. However whenever we have looked at the numbers, they simply don't stack up in view of the demand. The 'Working Time Directive' prevents us from just getting our existing launchmen to work overtime to do it (leaving aside whether they would want to or not!) and so extra part timers would be needed. What would you want to get paid to commit to every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening, unsocial hours, rain or shine? and of course as the launches are 'commercial vessels' they need to be suitably qualified, we can't simply get people off the street.
I suppose there is indeed no reason why someone couldn't set up a 'private water taxi service' in Mersea, provided that they could get a licence from Colchester Council. All I would say is 'go on then, let's see you do it and make money out of it'. There is a reason why no-one has done it before............
West Mersea is unique (I think) in having no harbour authority, no harbour master, and moorings owned by a kaleidoscope of different individual and corporate owners and with no central controlling or licensing authority. The Yacht Club has 'seized the initiative' and had agreed with the other various 'majority moorings operators' that a modest charge will be made, not to pay the various owners for the moorings, but to put into a pot to improve Mersea's facilities for the benefit of all. This will include the replacement of the navigation marks into Mersea, Trinity House having been insistent that the 'green cans' that have served us well for so many years are needing to be replaced with 'green conicals' instead.
As for the Yacht Club being unwelcoming, all I can say is that I don't know when you visited or what you expected. We have like all clubs a number of 'lovable old eccentrics' that are likely to expect visitors to wear a tie etc. but that's the same anywhere. I have personally taken visiting yachtsmen in my own car to the garage in the village centre for them to collect diesel, as someone said sadly it's not available on the waterfront any more. We have a full meal service at lunchtimes seven days a week and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings in the summer, where visitors are always welcome (although and like anywhere else we may on occasions be fully booked, but then we say the same to members too). There's also the Dabchicks Sailing Club along the road where there is a very welcoming and well stocked bar, showers etc, all of which are available to visiting yachtsmen.
I really can't see a reason why anyone would object to a charge for use of a mooring or use of the Club launch. There's no compulsion to use either. Anchoring in the Quarters remains free, using a dinghy to the jetty remains free, and the Clubs will still welcome you or you can go to any one of the other renowned 'eating and drinking houses' in Mersea, it's your choice. All we ask is that if you use the facilities for which we pay, you help us pay for them. I'm struggling to see that's unfair or unreasonable in any way.
Lucky Duck
Well-Known Member
I don't think anybody was expecting the club launch to be available free of charge (although formal charges were only introduced a couple of years back), there was an earlier question whether the cost of a mooring now included a trip ashore which is not IMHO unreasonable to ask.
The problem is that £10 or £15 is not a modest charge by East Coast standards and as a result people may choose not to visit as often so the total revenue through visitors fees and bar takings will be less than had, say, £5 been chosen.
Leighb
Well-Known Member
As someone who has used the moorings at West Mersea on a number of occasions I have a different point of view from most others who have posted. I have always been - pleasantly - suprised that there was no charge for mooring overnight, especially as we always had a helpful person to advise on which mooring to pick up. Many other places on the East Coast do charge for overnight mooring.
I would still visit Mersea on the couple of occasions I am likely to this year. Whether the charge should be £5-00 or £10-00, is not really of much consequence unless of course it was someone who used to visit most weekends?
TimfromMersea makes some very reasonable points, in my opinion, but I have one query that he may be able to answer . He says "using a dinghy to the jetty remains free", this is true, but we had the impression that we could not leave a dinghy there while we went ashore which seems to defeat the object of the exercise.
We asked a local fisherman, and he said just tuck it round the corner, and it should be OK, but seemed to confirm that strictly we were not allowed to leave a dinghy at the pontoon.
Is this correct and if so how is one supposed to get ashore?
I would still visit Mersea on the couple of occasions I am likely to this year. Whether the charge should be £5-00 or £10-00, is not really of much consequence unless of course it was someone who used to visit most weekends?
TimfromMersea makes some very reasonable points, in my opinion, but I have one query that he may be able to answer . He says "using a dinghy to the jetty remains free", this is true, but we had the impression that we could not leave a dinghy there while we went ashore which seems to defeat the object of the exercise.
We asked a local fisherman, and he said just tuck it round the corner, and it should be OK, but seemed to confirm that strictly we were not allowed to leave a dinghy at the pontoon.
Is this correct and if so how is one supposed to get ashore?
Bru
Well-Known Member
TimfromMersea
Well-Known Member
The floating pontoon is operated by the Council and so it's their rules and in theory there are to be 'no unattended boats left on the jetty'. However like many rules it's 'honoured more in the breach than the observance' and there is no problem with leaving a dinghy moored to the jetty other than on the hammerhead itself which must be left clear for boats to come alongside. Moor it to one of the sides and no-one will mind, unless it's for a tide turn when moored dinghies can get washed by the tide under the jetty, get trapped and damage the jetty as they lift to the tide.
Again where is this supposed Elysium where one can leave boats moored up to a floating pontoon unattended as one likes? I haven't been to a single place that allows this. My own inflatable dinghy has lowerable wheels and when I go somewhere in it, I land on the foreshore and run it up above high tide mark. I can't see Brightlingsea being cool about boats left unattended on either the public jetty or the Colne YC pontoon.
Again where is this supposed Elysium where one can leave boats moored up to a floating pontoon unattended as one likes? I haven't been to a single place that allows this. My own inflatable dinghy has lowerable wheels and when I go somewhere in it, I land on the foreshore and run it up above high tide mark. I can't see Brightlingsea being cool about boats left unattended on either the public jetty or the Colne YC pontoon.
FullCircle
Well-Known Member
4.5m boat eh?
Fambridge visitor charges are £1.10 per metre on a swinging mooring.
Yep. In fact, we had Full Circle and White Magic on one mooring rafted for free last Saturday evening at Fambridge.
To Tim: Quite happy to pay a taxi/launch fee, but others are right in saying the parking of dinghies at the jetty is prohibited officially.
So, I am happy to pay a fiver return for the taxi, and a fiver for a mooring. But I also want a lasso post to hitch my dinghy to, or is that in the promised facilities?
Cobra
Well-Known Member
Tim, I don't think that anyone has ventured that a visitors mooring (ie hanging off a mooring bouy with properly serviced ground tackle) should be free! As you quite rightly point out mooring in Brightlingsea is NOT free nor should it be free...we have the facilities!!!
This is more a question of what is a sensible charge for hanging off a mooring overnight on the East Coast, and quite frankly I would resent paying £10 for mooring in what is at its very best only a moderately pleasant stretch of water!
Makes you wonder really...if it costs so much to run TWO launches, why not just run the one? It would cause no real inconvenience to people waiting to come ashore other than maybe a 15 minute wait until he comes past your mooring on his next trip. Running costs would be immediately reduced, AND the benefit of only needing two part time launchmen and maybe a couple of reserves in the wings? Again no one has any issue with paying for this service...you have to pay for a water taxi everywhere else after all! It seems to operate on a commercial basis in Brightlingsea without any major issues, so why should a properly managed club launch not turn a profit in Mersea? Just a thought...
TimfromMersea
Well-Known Member
A round trip to the YC moorings at the top of Salcott takes 45 minutes at low tide, it isn't just a case of a 15 minute wait. The demand from our own members made us supply 2 launches some years ago and in fact at one time we used to charter one from the local boat yard as well on summer Sundays, so there were three launches, and even then that wasn't enough.
I don't know how Brightlingsea water taxi runs but he's unopposed; as far as I know none of the clubs provide a service. If you think that a commercial operation would be a success, off you go then - we won't stand in your way at all. We're happy with providing a facility for our members, if visitors don't like it, then we're sorry but not that sorry if you see what I mean.
FullCircle
Well-Known Member
I knew the truth would out eventually.
Change the sign outside to say 'Paying Visiting Yachtsmen Welcome'.
Tim, I don't suggest you follow a career in PR.
TimfromMersea
Well-Known Member
and be like everywhere else then......
I am yet to come across this promised land where everything is free, no-one charges anyone for anything, and there's always a warm welcome to those who want to use the facilities and not pay anything. Do tip me off where it is.
For the record- arrive by your own dinghy at WMYC or DSC, wander in, sign the visitors book, and use the showers, go to the loo - no charge. Buy drink at the bar - a charge. Buy a meal - a charge. If you use our launch - a charge, but if you patronise our bar and restaurant you get it back. We don't provide free transport to people using competitors premises.
Cobra
Well-Known Member
Oh dear...again Tim I think you are missing the point. On the one hand you are complaining bitterly about the "eye-watering amount of money to provide 2 launches and 2 full time launchmen, plus several part time launchmen, to run the service 7 days a week from March through to November." a simple suggestion as to how to reduce the cost which face it could EASILY be reduced (why do you need to provide a 7 day a week service with two launches in March and November anyway?) is met with a well off you go and launch a commercial venture. If I was a) Retired (which I am not) and b) had the inclination to do so I (which I haven't), I would look for a far more lucrative area than West Mersea to launch such a service!
Still no compelling reasons for visiting Mersea this season!!
chinita
Well-Known Member
Tim
Two, perhaps three, Club Launches and associated full time boatmen - and even that is not enough to meet the demands of Members! No wonder the cost is eyewatering.
Surely there is more than one way to skin a cat.
How about the launches moving on a prescribed time schedule? How about Member pre-booking with the launch? It is not like they are off on a circumnavigation and don't know when they will be back! Tides are tides.
Just opening another can of launches is not the answer.
Alternatively, perhaps Members should just be a little more patient and put up with just one launch?
I obviously do not know the figures, but I suspect the Brightlingsea Taxi makes far more money between 6pm and 11.30pm on a Friday and Saturday night than the rest of the week put together and that the equivalent income in WM would be a massive subsidy to the WMYC.
Two, perhaps three, Club Launches and associated full time boatmen - and even that is not enough to meet the demands of Members! No wonder the cost is eyewatering.
Surely there is more than one way to skin a cat.
How about the launches moving on a prescribed time schedule? How about Member pre-booking with the launch? It is not like they are off on a circumnavigation and don't know when they will be back! Tides are tides.
Just opening another can of launches is not the answer.
Alternatively, perhaps Members should just be a little more patient and put up with just one launch?
I obviously do not know the figures, but I suspect the Brightlingsea Taxi makes far more money between 6pm and 11.30pm on a Friday and Saturday night than the rest of the week put together and that the equivalent income in WM would be a massive subsidy to the WMYC.
Leighb
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the clarification, we will not worry about leaving our dinghy alongside the pontoon if we visit this year. Re other pontoons, AFAIK there is no notice at Brightlingsea stating that dinghies must not be left unattended. If there is we have never noticed it.
johnalison
Well-Known Member
I have left my dinghy unattended at numerous yacht club jetties, well, several actually, including Helford, Brixham, Newton Ferrers and Brightlingsea. Of course, many of them can get congested and I'm sure that no-one minds local rules about what visitors can do to avoid obstructing legitimate traffic.
As an occasional visitor, I have no complaint about W Mersea charging for mooring. It's just that £15/night for me is just going to mean that I won't be going there. Royal Harwich charge what I assume is a commercial rate for their pontoons, and that is only a bit more than I would be charged at Mersea. I wish the club well financially, and indeed all clubs because of what they bring to the sport, but I'm afraid that I will be the judge of what the experience visiting the place is worth to me personally.
There seems to be a general feeling that W Mersea has priced itself wrongly and will lose out as a result. This is a pity, as it has overcome its deserved reputation in past years as being unfriendly to visitors (I'm thinking about the 1970s).
As an occasional visitor, I have no complaint about W Mersea charging for mooring. It's just that £15/night for me is just going to mean that I won't be going there. Royal Harwich charge what I assume is a commercial rate for their pontoons, and that is only a bit more than I would be charged at Mersea. I wish the club well financially, and indeed all clubs because of what they bring to the sport, but I'm afraid that I will be the judge of what the experience visiting the place is worth to me personally.
There seems to be a general feeling that W Mersea has priced itself wrongly and will lose out as a result. This is a pity, as it has overcome its deserved reputation in past years as being unfriendly to visitors (I'm thinking about the 1970s).
sailorman
Well-Known Member
i have never used the club launch as it stops too early in the evening.
The launches are mainly there to serve club members interests.
if the club members require the services of 2 launches + crew that is solely their financial problem,if the club cant afford the cost then they have financial decisions to make & apply.
By all means take visitors ashore for a reasonable charge thats only fair & helps the club funds too.
I can go into Bradwell for a few more £s than the proposed £15 & for that i can walk ashore,have power & take a shower ( without a boat ride)
Free Moorings are available on the East Coast BUT,if you charge,YOU have made a Contract take on responsible for the moorings condition & the boats safety whilst using it.
The launches are mainly there to serve club members interests.
if the club members require the services of 2 launches + crew that is solely their financial problem,if the club cant afford the cost then they have financial decisions to make & apply.
By all means take visitors ashore for a reasonable charge thats only fair & helps the club funds too.
I can go into Bradwell for a few more £s than the proposed £15 & for that i can walk ashore,have power & take a shower ( without a boat ride
)Free Moorings are available on the East Coast BUT,if you charge,YOU have made a Contract take on responsible for the moorings condition & the boats safety whilst using it.
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chinita
Well-Known Member
That surprises me as it is the HM (or his staff) who allocate your mooring after you contact them on Ch68.
When they have safely escorted you to your mooring is it unreasonable to expect to have to pay the fee to them? Would you rather drop everything and go ashore - by Taxi or tender - to pay?
However, you may have arrived when the HM staff were off duty and you found a mooring by your own devices. If this were the case I am puzzled how an off duty HM could be alongside in milliseconds.
