.
There was some correspondence on here a couple of years ago about the greatly inflated prices charged for the previously free HIE moorings in Arinagour when Neil Smith took them over. He was alleged to be charging up to £25 while providing no facilities. I attempted to contact him at the time, but with no success.
The BM Moorings page has not been updated since 2007 and reads:
£15 for mooring on the visitor moorings. No receipt, no leaving of rubbish ashore. Showers at hotel, £3. All bouys now have strops and pickup bouys - although one correspondent has reported buoys and pickups as being in 'dubious condition'. There is room to anchor.
Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd apparently contacted Neil Smith in January to express concern regarding the condition of the moorings in Arinagour and asked for records detailing insurance policies and maintenance. This company claims to have responsibility for the safety of the waters of Loch Eatharna. They allegedly warned Smith that failure to produce proof of maintenance and insurance would result in them 'taking over' the facility and installing their own moorings.
Smith apparently insists his morings are safe, and that CMAL's interest is the result of a personal grudge. He ahs refused to hand over any records and has sunk all six moorings to prevent CMAL from removing them. He claims that CMAL have no authority over Loch Eatharna. CMAL has now applied to the Crown Estates for permission to take over the seabed leases covering the site of the moorings.
Thanks for the info Nick; I'm very pleased that CMAL has made an application to take over the moorings. The charges were quite scandalous in my view, but, more importantly, there had been doubts expressed for some time as to whether the moorings were being properly maintained.
Loch Eatharna is pretty exposed, even from the NW, where the low lay of the land ensures that the wind hits the loch at full strength. The CMAL statement fully recognises the economic impact of doubts about the security of the moorings, and I think that in making the application they are fulfilling a common good that goes beyond the interests of leisure sailors.
One final thought; if and when CMAL relay the moorings, I hope that they will continue to be in the deeper water, and that the existing anchoring area is preserved for that purpose.
Shard wrote:
One final thought; if and when CMAL relay the moorings, I hope that they will continue to be in the deeper water, and that the existing anchoring area is preserved for that purpose.
It might be a good idea if a few people independently e-mailed or wrote to CMAL making this point.
I emailed CMAL in support of their proposals, also expressing the hope that the existing anchoring area will be maintained. I've had a very encouraging response from Lorna Spencer, CMAL's Director of Harbours and Piers;
"When we install the new moorings we will be on site with the Crown Estates Marine officer and will be taking a look at all the moorings in the bay with respect to safety and licencing; We fully appreciate your comments with respect to retention of a suitable anchorage area as mentioned in your email and will ensure this is maintained."
With respect to anchorages in the Clyde - and further north and west - The Clyde Cruising Club has an active interest in retaining existing anchorages - we have a member who sits on the Clyde Yacht Club's Association mooring committee and they are specifically looking at cases where moorings have/are being laid to the detriment of safe anchoring. More info from their excellent website at http://www.cyca-online.org.uk/cruising.asp
Honestly, you lot are quite pathetic. You appear to know precisely nothing about the situation and sit there pontificating and making judgements about individuals with a set of misguided assumptions and nothing else. I have known Neil Smith for 20 years. He has been sailing for nearly 60 years and when he moved to Coll the HIDB moorings were unmaintained and adandoned. As a keen sailor he bought them and since then he has had them dived and maintained annually by the local commodore of the RYA sailing club, who incidentally used to be responsible for moorings maintenance for the CCC before he moved to Coll. Mr Smith charges £15 per night and after considering the time spent collecting the fees from yachties who are too tight fisted to use the honesty box the 'business' makes no profit. Mr Smith didn't take the moorings over to make a profit, he took them over because he wanted to see them maintained for the benefit of the island. If anyone should have taken them over it's the Coll Hotel, who are really the only beneficiaries of the moorings, but they weren't interested at the time and are only now making a fuss to CMAL because they've realised how much business they were getting from someone else's effort. It should be noted that one Sunday morning at 8am Mr Smith collected a mooring fee from a crabbit, possibly hungover individual who was in a very bad mood at being woken up. This was none other than Lorna Spencer of CMAL, who subsequently made enquires to the CALMAC clerk at the Coll pier regarding who owned the moorings. Then, the next thing he knew Neil Smith receives a formal communication making demands of him that seem to be none of CMAL's business or jurisdiction. So, there you go, perhaps you know enough now to be able to make a considered judgement. With regard to £15 being scandalous....why don't you go somewhere else instead? Most people on Coll are, at best, totally ambivalent to seeing yachties on the island. After all, all you lot seem to bring in is complaints about the state of this and the state of that. If you don't like paying £15, learn to anchor. I've never met such a bunch of mean-spirited cretins. Grow up.
Surfing and came across your Bluemoment post on Neils Smith's moorings at Arinagour. You may be interested to know that we picked up one of his 6 moorings in (yacht name) last July and had a rude awakening when were woken at 04:30 by a change in the boats motion and some horrible noises. Went on deck to find ourselves pinned to another yacht. After some initial confusion, thinking this yacht had dragged onto us, we realised that we were still attached to our mooring but the mooring had failed. We were saved from ending up on the rocks by being blown onto this yacht. The sea was lumpy at the time and we sustained £2000 damage when our cap rail was ripped off.
According to Neil Smith he had the moorings checked by diver every year and offered to give me the divers contact details. Told him it was his responsibility whereon he told me he had no insurance. Eventually he agreed to pay my £350 excess and I had repairs done at Kilmelford, claiming on my insurance. Later it transpired that the mooring chain had failed inside the can.
If you want more details, let me know. Will never go back to Coll!
Burt Toast wrote: It should be noted that one Sunday morning at 8am Mr Smith collected a mooring fee from a crabbit, possibly hungover individual who was in a very bad mood at being woken up
As would most people be. 8am on a Sunday morning is not a time respectable people do business.
Your faith in the inspection process carried out on the moorings is not born out by the experience of my friend above. Operating moorings for hire with no insurance was extremely foolish, and Mr. Smith is lucky that he has got away with it. I think we can trust CMAL to behave a little more professionally.
Mr. Toast - if indeed that is your real name - I find it very unlikely that you (or Neil Smith) represent the majority of people on Coll. Hopefully your rather acerbic post will not turn sailors away.
There are 6 new moorings in the shelter of Arinagour bay arriving soon, we hear the week commencing 13th June but will update if this changes. they will be owned by CalMac. The cost will be £10 per night payable in an honesty box on the middle pier or at the hotel.
Yes, the incident occurring last July was very unfortunate, and I heard about it from Neil Smith and it's the first time it has happened. I advised him to go back to the moorings inspector employed to do this job and take it up with him on a more formal basis, but on an island of 200 people where island politics play a huge role in peoples' lives (whether they like it or not) it is very difficult to do anything by way of legal process without causing a huge amount of trouble. Situations like this, if carried through to a legal conclusion, are divisive and that's why Mr Smith paid the yacht excess and ended up re-employing the same individual to repair and re-inspect. If the scenario had been more serious than it was, you can be sure Mr Smith would have taken legal proceedings, but as it happened he didn't need to. He was extremely sorry for this event and also worried. The additional inspection and repair work he had done meant costs to him far outweighed any income. In effect, Mr Smith ended up subsidising the moorings last year to keep them operational. You might ask yourself why he just didn't look upon this event as a perfectly justifiable reason to remove the moorings for becoming a financial liability. I certainly would have, but I have no sentimental feelings for the situation. I couldn't care less if Arinagour has moorings or not, whereas Neil Smith does. Your suspicions that Neil Smith 'is no friend to the yachtman' should be considered in light of this fact.
On the subject of early calls for fees, he wouldn't have to wake anyone up at 8am if they didn't disappear without putting money in an honesty box, so it's their own fault. Yachts are given instructions to put their fee in the box with the yacht name on the envelope, hence he doesn't call on any yachts who have paid. Experience with yachts leaving without paying is, I'm afraid, all too common on Coll so yachties bring this set of circumstances upon themselves.
Should CMAL install the new moorings when they say they will, it would be interesting to see just how many tenners go into an honesty box where no one is policing this. I think CMAL should lower their expectations based on the evidence to date.
Visitors to Coll have to remember that the size of the island means the level of amenities and facilities islanders have access to is extremely poor. Most people have no mains water, the council's rubbish collection service is terrible and often the recycling points are overflowing, never mind bins in public areas which also never seem to be emptied. The roads are cracking up. The local shop can sometimes have no basic provisions like bread or milk, this can be a result of visitors stocking up on provisions in the summer season. In addition, the level of sycophancy deployed by the local hotel to people spending lavish amounts on what is (in my experience) very disappointing food (although prices have gone up), means that locals are treated like second class citizens for 4 months of the year. Then you see yacht forums with complaining comments like 'nowhere to put your rubbish, showers for £3 at the hotel etc etc'! Well, welcome to the club folks, for a few days anyway.....Argyll and Bute Council are the most inept and unprofessional organisation I've ever come across. We have to deal with a bunch of what appear to be mentally compromised public servants on a daily basis, you lot have to put up with it for a few days so you'll excuse me for not giving two hoots about your lack of facilities or whether you come to Coll or not.
