Riverside mooring electric hook ups for visiting boat owners being considered
Visiting pleasure boat owners may soon be able to use the installed electric hook-ups when mooring up at Boston on the River Witham.
Boat owner Stewart Green has been keen to see the hook-ups at the visitor moorings maintained by the Canal and Rivers Trust near the Sluice Bridge lock made available to all users, not just local paid-up members who store their boats there all the time.
The electric hook-ups enable water craft users to charge up batteries and power appliances on their boats are accessed by a keypad locking system.
Mr Green said: “To extend the keypad/power access to visiting boats would be a really significant draw and facility for the Witham visiting boating community, and, of course, an associated boost to footfall and spending in Boston itself.”
He added: “I, and my boating colleagues, often range from Boston, through Bardney and Lincoln's Brayford, up to Lincoln's Burton Waters.
“My boat is based at Chapel Hill, others who I regularly boat with have boats based at Kirkstead, Tattershall, Anton's Gowt, and Langrick.”
He explained: “There are electric posts already at the Boston CRT visitors' moorings, but the input panel won't accept my CRT MeterMacs Visitors account pin number.”
Ryan Cook, Mooring Sales and Customer Service Manager for CRT in the East Midlands explained further: “Our new smart meters, all being well, will be installed at Bardney, Cromwell and outside our Kiln Office in Newark, sometime time this year.
“We have smart meters already at Boston, but they were not set up for our visitor customers and only work for residential/permanent moorers who already have an account with us. This has caused quite a bit of frustration as they are on visitor moorings.
“Once the new smart meters are in at Bardney, Cromwell and the Kiln and we know how it all works to set them to be used by our visitors, we will re-assess Boston and aim to make these available to visitors as well. There is no time scale for this and is very much in the discussion stage.
“There is no date for this to take place at the moment but it is open for consideration at a later date.”
Mr Green said there needs to be a planned commitment from management for the Boston moorings to make the electric hook ups available within a year. “I don't think that a year would be an unreasonable target for any management to take on. It would be a real coup, and excellent PR for the C.R.T., and would be hugely appreciated by all the visiting license payers.”