There are different types of boaters (people on boats; not hats!) just like there are different types of road users.
Just like road users, boaters can be prone to a little tribalism, and bit ‘us and them’. Think about how many people complain about Audi or BMW drivers, or ‘White Van Man’. Or how people view drivers of eco cars or the 4×4 driver on the school run. Sometimes people belong to more than one road using group (maybe a lorry driver who gets cross with performance car drivers but enjoys taking the Porsche out at a weekend). Boaters are no different.
River boats come in a variety of styles. From big commercial barges (not too many of them around in the UK) to tiny inflatable boats. On the River Great Ouse we mainly have variations of Cruisers and Narrow Boats. And rowers – the river equivalent of bikes!
Cruisers are generally made of fibreglass, and they vary from roughly 20 feet to around 40 feet in length. They are generally white or cream with an accent colour. Cruisers are usually steered from a steering wheel which is either at the front, back or in the middle!
Narrowboats are the long thin, colourful metal boats that people associate with canals. Most narrowboats are 6’10” (2.08 m) wide and in a variety of lengths, from 20′ (6m) to 80 ‘ (24m). They are generally made of steel and are driven from a pole at the back, called a tiler. A popular choice of narrowboat on a river is a widebeam narrow boat. These have a similar variety of lengths to narrow boats but are wider. Generally, widebeams are between 10’ and 14 ‘ wide which allows more living area. Some widebeams are steered with a tiller, some have a steering wheel. The Big Blue Boat is a 60’x10’ widebeam. (Surely a widebeam narrowboat should be called a medium boat!)
People who have cruisers generally use them for holidays, sometimes very long holidays, but they don’t tend to live on the boat. Narrowboats (and widebeams) are used both as homes and as a holiday boats. Most people who live on their boat have a home mooring, usually in a marina. That makes it easier to get to work and get the kids to school. Others live aboard boaters travel around the canal and river system and don’t have a regular mooring. They are called continuous cruisers.
Boaters are a very friendly bunch and are happy to help each other out and share a drink. But we can still be quite tribal. Cruisers will call narrow boats sewer pipes or baked bean tins! Narrow boaters will call cruisers Tupperware boats or yoghurt pots! This is usually good natured and we use the terms about ourselves (‘I’m on the big blue sewer pipe over there!’ or ‘Mine’s the little Tupperware with the mad dog on board!’). Sewer pipes and Tupperwares need to be careful near each other because a 20-ton steel boat can easily damage the fibreglass. But this is usually totally fine. We all help each other.
The biggest tribalism comes with the liveaboard boaters. I have had people tell me that certain restrictions (mooring limits etc) are designed to put off the liveaboard boaters. I am a liveaboard boater. Why do they want to put me off? I use the pubs/cafes/shops. I only stay at the moorings for the allotted time (48 hrs in a lot of them).
I put my rubbish in a bin- I even recycle! Why don’t they want me? My boat takes up a lot of room- but I don’t travel as much during the school holidays, so there isn’t a problem of space.
On further investigations, it turns out that they don’t mean liveaboards. They mean continuous cruisers. And they don’t seem to have a lot of evidence that continuous cruisers are actually causing a problem.
The rules for continuous cruising are a bit vague.
You must move neighbourhood every 14 days and be travelling to different areas. The Canal and River Trust state that “you must use the boat to genuinely cruise (A to B to C to D rather than A to B to B to A) from place to place and must not stop for more than 14 days in any one place”. It is a bit nomadic, or gypsy like! It is actually quite hard to follow the rules for a long period. It makes it hard to maintain friendships, have a regular GP and work. Continuous cruisers save money because they don’t pay for a mooring, although they have to spend more on diesel because they travel more.
I think people don’t like the idea of someone else getting something for free. The negative view of continuous cruisers stems from a sense that they are getting something for nothing and therefore they aren’t doing things ‘properly’. I also think it has something to do with a lack of understanding. If you (in a house) want clean washing- you pop it in the machine? You jump in the shower to get clean? Get your groceries delivered to the house, or pop to the supermarket?
In a marina, it’s not that different. You have a home base for deliveries- the marina is ‘home’. You can do washing there, shower there, go to work from there.
Although you might be out on your boat most of the time, you still have a home base. If you continuously cruise you don’t have a ‘home’.
You have to find the shops, you can’t go to work- how can life be possible. These people must, therefore, be good for nothing layabouts who want to overstay at moorings and have no respect for anything?
Not so- a lot of continuous cruisers work from home (IT, writers, artists…) or are retired. They don’t need a home mooring and enjoy the variety of moving regularly. In all other respects, they are the same as anyone else! How would you know if a narrow boat is traveling from a home mooring or is continuously cruising? You wouldn’t, unless you asked them!
That brings me to a neat conclusion. Never assume! People are nearly always nice, so talk-ask them! Help each other (especially at locks and moorings). Talk to each other. Respect each other. Don’t assume things about people- lose the preconceptions. And we’ll all be better off for it!
Maybe this would work on the roads, too?
Interesting stuff, especially the parallels between Continuous Cruisers and land-based gypsies/ travellers (or more accurately the perceptions of those groups). I think it is definitely the idea that they are ‘getting something for nothing’ and once people have latched onto that idea they tend not to examine it much more deeply.
I hear a lot of similar sentiments about cyclists too, to which I often say “if you think they’re onto such a good thing why aren’t you doing it?” Answer (I suspect): because they don’t like to break a sweat, and they like to travel in their work clothes and to listen to Galaxy FM while they’re doing it. Actually I don’t often get an answer beyond “don’t be silly” or something similar.
The perception seems to be that the right and honourable thing to do is to ‘put aside childish things’ and saddle oneself with a mortgage, or a daily half-hour traffic jam or whatever, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to these values is to be regarded with suspicion.
There must be a phrase for that, that kind of self-martyrdom followed by expectation that others follow suit? It’s one of my least favourite strands of the British psyche whatever it is!