Rafting Up

There are a few topics within boating circles that are guaranteed to spark lively debate between different groups of boat owners. Rafting up, or mooring two or more boats alongside each other, seems to be one of them.

Depending on your cruising ground, rafting up may be part of your boat owning experience. It is most prolific in coastal harbours where you are expected to raft alongside, but is also common practice on river moorings. This is due to the fact that unlike on canals, where British Waterways own the land adjacent the canal, on rivers the landowners own the river bank as well. This results in there being very few areas, other than specified visitor moorings, where craft can legally moor to the bankside on river navigations.

Those who cruise mainly on canal navigations seem to have almost a fear of rafting their craft against those already moored up. It is almost as though they are scared of talking to other boat owners and socialising. They seem to view rafting up as an invasion of privacy, when in reality if you choose; you can have very little contact with the boat and owners you are moored alongside.

Regardless of the views of others, we view rafting up as a way to meet new people and forge new friendships. Find out about areas you have not visited before and generally socialise with others around you. Hardly a weekend goes by where we have not rafted at some point, usually outside the pub for a few hours but often over night. On cruisers such as ours, there is no invasion of privacy once down below as there are very few windows in the cabin sides. Sitting in the cockpit is a more social affair and exchanging morning pleasantries over freshly brewed coffee and the morning paper is all part of the boating experience for us as is enjoying a drink on a fine warm evening with our new found neighbours and friends. Maybe we like to socialise more than the average boat owner.

I don’t see the problem but obviously a large proportion of the (mainly) narrowboat owning fraternity do. Strange really when you consider that during the day of the working narrowboats, they were often seen breasted together whilst working.

I don’t know if this is another part of the boating world that is gradually changing as the years go by, whereby people are afraid to talk to others or to socialise with others. But on a waterways system where congestion is becoming an ever growing problem should we really be afraid or unwilling to share some of our time and mooring space with others around us? Maybe it is a minority of boaters who dislike sharing but if it is they are a very vocal minority. Still the time will come one day when they have little choice but to raft up, let us just hope that on that day they find another one of their no thanks group, and maybe then they will see the error of their ways...