BLUEMOMENT

If you think sailing should be commercialised and run for profit then this is for you. I see it as a path towards a dystopian future and am grateful that I am probably old enough never to see it.

It's a a bit heavy reading but it affects us all and you do get a chance to have your views ignored with the add-on survey. The "consultation" runs until January 2015. Enjoy!

http://scottishtourismalliance.co.uk/wp ... tation.pdf
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/marinetourismstrat

Thanks for signposting this.
I think its far too full of jargon to be understandable. I didn't recognise many specific actions, but saw a lot of plattitude. Who will actually do something as a result of this?
What is an "Authentic Experience". (are there fakes ones)
Does "Customer Journey" mean something other than the route a customer's boat takes?
What are "stepping stones"? is this a part of the giants causeway?

It seems to be a suggestion that there should be more marinas, more shops, more industry?
Visitors I've met sailing here from Europe etc remark that what makes Scottish waters attractive is the lack of these things. But there are improvements that could be made - for example more visitor moorings in west coast locations.

I think the language used will cause a lot of this to fly overhead or many (including me).

One of those charts looks identical to something I have seen @ work. It smacks of Shingo and Lean, obviously some management consultant is being paid £500K to earn £100k extra tax income and a boat load of cash for a mate of some politico.

Sailors know where Scotland is and where are the best bits to sail, even southern sailors.

I suspect that divers and kayakers do too so who are they expecting to fleece to grow the income by 50%?

I think a lot of the impetus behind documents like this is down to the assumption that anybody with a boat is loaded and ready for fleecing...

Having worked and sailed in Norway this year, the sea and it's use are considered mainstream activities for much of the population. Not "the well off" but almost anybody.
Consequently public facilities- quays etc are widespread, the atmosphere is friendly and maritime.
Just what Scotland needs. NOT COSTLY COMMERCIALISATION OF EVERYWHERE!

Kick this kind of stuff into touch (or out the park!)

Full to bursting point with marketing speak - but pleased to read we enjoy a high quality offer.

Agree with pagoda, any initiatives need to be small scale and community based. If I was given a pile of cash to develop leisure boating on the west coast I would spend it all on making a short series of films about typical sailing holidays and then making sure they were shown in yacht clubs throughout Europe on their club nights. If more people knew how fantastic the sailing was then visitor numbers would outstrip the number of charter yachts available imo.

Although it is natural that we want to preserve the beauty of sailing here which to a large extent is about the lack of boats and being able to easily find anchorages where you can be alone, the local communities need the cash that more visitors bring. If it becomes a lot busier then some of the attraction will dissappear but maybe it is selfish to want it to stay the same. As it stands we are just so lucky to be able to enjoy sailing here and sometimes I pinch myself as I cannot believe we can be on our own in some beautiful spot.

My initial reaction was probably driven by selfishness. Like Storyline I quite often wonder how I got to be so lucky to get so much pleasure in a world that often seems to be mine alone.
The language of the document makes me fear, probably quite irrationally, being compulsorily herded into approved ports - places like Tobermory or Dunstaffnage to have cash shaken from me for simply being there - and restrictions on wild anchoring like those being applied to wild camping in National Parks.
I need to consider my response to the survey but wonder whether a joint effort by the forum might not carry more weight - that is if we could ever agree on the answers. After all we and our ilk are the target demographic using our disposable income in search of "authentic experiences".

That is a really good idea Marisca as the users here probably represent a broad cross section of the type of people who are actually sailing in these waters. The only significant difference is that we are mainly boat owners and not charterers. In the language of the consultation document we are stakeholders.

In some ways we have a duty to those who will follow in the future to make sure that they are able to enjoy the wilderness areas that we do and any developments take into account our views.

How we would express one voice through this forum I don't know but there may be a way.

.
When I first mooted doing the BlueMoment moorings page the guy then currently running Sail Scotland tried to stop me by warning me very strongly that I would be sued if anyone followed my information and came to harm as a result.

That was twelve years ago. So far so good.

Since then I have had a dim view of Sail Scotland as a self-serving quango hoovering up taxpayers' money.

Sounds to me as if Sail Scotland had some other motive (than protecting your position) in warning you like that.
There's plenty of examples of people publishing information with sufficient riders warning about the use and misuse of that info. eg Antares, Visit my harbours, even Sail Scotland themselves in their annual magazine etc.

Nick wrote:.
When I first mooted doing the BlueMoment moorings page the guy then currently running Sail Scotland tried to stop me by warning me very strongly that I would be sued if anyone followed my information and came to harm as a result.

Probably frightened that you would do their job better than they do.

Come to think of it, if folk on YBW seek advice on sailing Scottish waters they get sent here and not to Sail Scotland, I presume they have a WWW site. QED.

If you consider that they (SS) failed to find anyone or any money to take over the HIDB moorings scheme which was a very sensible initiative to boost west coast sailing then they do not seem to have been doing a very good job imo.

mm5aho wrote:Thanks for signposting this.
I think its far too full of jargon to be understandable. I didn't recognise many specific actions, but saw a lot of plattitude. Who will actually do something as a result of this?
What is an "Authentic Experience". (are there fakes ones)
Does "Customer Journey" mean something other than the route a customer's boat takes?
What are "stepping stones"? is this a part of the giants causeway?

I concur entirely. I thought it was a load of meaningless marketing-speak, empty of specific plans or proposals.

Green Boat wrote:I concur entirely. I thought it was a load of meaningless marketing-speak, empty of specific plans or proposals.

You can be sure it will be providing a few well-paid jobs for the boys at our expense.

Just don't get me started on local enterprise agencies.

We are suffering a plague of quangoids.

Nick wrote:We are suffering a plague of quangoids.

A minor subset of the cronyist, toadyist, safe pair of hands, jobs-for-the-boys establishment that has sucked the heart out of our society for centuries. I can't imagine what has delayed the revolution this long unless it's the drip-feed of crumbs from the top table handed down to carefully selected segments of the masses.

I feel much better now thanks.

May I suggest that the grey-spinnakered one, in his role as heid bummer of the Chentleman's Cruise, approaches the sponsors of this fascinating document and seeks funding. The Chentleman's Cruise obviously falls perfectly into the "Authentic Experience", would benefit from "Improving the Customer Journey" and is perfectly described as one of the "recreational activities which involve travel away from one’s place of residence and have the marine environment or inland waters/waterways as their host or focus." The economic benefit to the nation as a whole could be stressed (reduced life expectancy of pensioners due to alcohol and saturated fat intake) together with the huge influx of "home turf" visitors (Claymore is not exactly sylphlike!) and "near neighbours".

I still think their growth plan is to suck another 45% out of the existing sailing population simply by upping prices.