Select to expand quote
Angryant said...Gents,
I am a boatie and wish to make the following points:
"Or maybe the boaties should get boat club memberships and pay for the special rights the feel they deserve. heres a link www.mbtbc.com/club-membership/"Splendid idea however there is an important issue that is forgotten here -
Boaties actually pay for these car/trailer parks through our boat registration. Therefore the parks are an entitlement not a priviledge. Dave made the point that we are trying to be reasonable in this issue. There is nothing more frustrating paying ever-increasing rego fees only to be denied access to a car park on an excellent day for boating. FWIW I am also a member of the MBTBC.
Or maybe timed parking - sometimes those boaties use those spaces for 10 hours or more!! 4 hour parking sounds fair to meThat would be fine except some boaties go offshore - to get there may take up to 4 hours. That would make a return trip 8 hours without doing any activity at your destination. 4 hours is unrealistic. Some boaties also do overnight trips. Again, I refer to my point above. We pay for these spaces in our rego.
All we ask is that when the weather is good for boating, Council enforces the restricted parking bays. The vast majority of us do not care about windy days (whuich you guys would salivate over). We are more than happy for the identified car/trailer parks to be used when the weather is not suitable for most boaties. The key to this issue is determining at what point (wind speed) the enforcement of parking in these bays should cease.
Are we being unreasonable? If so, please write a letter to Transport and Main Roads demanding a reduction in our boat registration fees.
Andrew
Hi Angryant,
The last thing windsurfers want is to exclude the boaties from their parking. A lot of us are also boaties and there is nothing worse than not being able to park the trailer when the boat is flapping about on the dock.
My point to the council was that they have made the area so family friendly that they are getting a lot of cars there from families having a picknic at the back park and therefore there is more traffic.
What I find is that if you are going to go for a trip in the boat you normally leave early in the morning or before noon at least before the seabreeze kicks in. Most other users will arrive around noon when they may want lunch or a windsurf/kite (when the wind is up). My suggestion was to make it a shared zone after 11.00am so that there were not empty spaces there when the weather isn't suitable for boaties. If you are out in your boat it doesn't affect you because you will already have a spot. I guess it would only be an issue if it was a really dead calm day and you had decided to go out late in the day but from experience this is a rare occurance.
It won't be windsurfers causing the issue because we only go out in numbers when it is really windy and what we find on days like this there are stacks of free spots and we can't park in them because the council fine us.