Your Personal Experiences Re. Air Draft, Beam and Draft When Cruising

[AllenC]

I'm particularly interested in hearing from moboers with boats upwards of 17 meters as eventually I hope to work my way up to one, preferably with a fly-bridge, so your answers are info that I can consider over the years while I save up and slowly make my way up the boating ladder. Your input would certainly help in shaping my goals.

For those of you who have read my other thread, you'll know that exploring the inland waterways is on my bucket list. What I'm wondering is, for those of you with big fly-bridge boats, how much has the size affected where you go? How far inland have you managed to get? Has beam and draft been as much of an issue as air draft? The thought occurred to me that in some of our smaller rivers, having a fly-bridge might not be an issue because, say with a 17+ meter boat, you might be too wide and have too deep a draft to get down it anyway.

So, thoughts? Experiences?

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

We started our boating life on the Thames and now after more than 20yrs boating, we have a 53 foot (17m) flybridge cruiser in the Med. During that 20+ yrs, we have also explored the inland waterways of Holland and cruised the Seine upto Paris. I have to say that I would not consider trying to cruise our existing boat on the Thames or the Seine with the main problem being bridge heights. For example, we struggled to get a 36 foot flybridge boat (Turbo 36) under Windsor bridge on the Thames so there's no way we'd get our 53 footer underneath. Then there are other issues with big boats on inland waterways such as getting it into locks, finding bankside mooring spaces with sufficient draft not to go aground and finding long enough pontoons in the marinas. The Dutch waterways would be less of a problem as they are designed for larger vessels
Overall though, if I was considering a 17m+ boat for a mix of inland and coastal cruising, I would not be looking at flybridge boats at all but boats with an aft command position/aft cabin from the likes of Broom (eg Broom 530) or possibly a Dutch steel/aluminium aft cabin cruiser which would resist knocks and scrapes better. Also, I would be looking at boats with a substantial keel that protected the props and, if possible, a folding radar arch to reduce the height further

 

[kashurst]

You will struggle with anything over 15m in length on UK rivers (I've done the Trent, Ouse, Norfolk broads and bits of the Thames and avon). Longer than 15m and you won't go far before you will find turning around can be tricky. Mooring will also be harder to do. River pontoons are not always very long. Lots of steel canal boats travel the rivers 60feet and longer but they happily moor up next to other steel canal style boats - this can be tricky for plastic boats, a big canal boat can seriously damage a plastic boat. Be very careful with airdraft - you need to be less than 4.5m or you will struggle to get anywhere. Water draft - it can get challenging if you draw more than 1.5m and you will see < 2m of water in quite a few places. A flybridge has to have a folding radar arch or if a sealine a radar mast that will hinge backwards. Brooms/Haines/Westwoods all work well as they have command bridge designs. Also Targa style boats can be good as they have good height clearance and the stern design give lots of options for getting on and off as the heights of the mooring places varies a lot. Be prepared for a bent prop or two - you will almost certainly catch something sooner or later (straight forward to fix but can take a while). Contact the River and Canal trust in the UK and they can give typical bridge clearances. I investigated the River Siene a few years ago - its easy to Paris but after you get similar issues to UK - the canals are silting up and the bridge clearances are low.

 

[rafiki_]

You can get quite a long way up the river Severn with a largish fly. The locks are industrial size, and the Gloucs/Sharpness canal has swing and lifting bridges. No problem getting up to Worcester and beyond with airdraft of 5 or so meters.