You've had a letter from CRT about your cruising. What happens next?

Receiving one of these is frightening, particularly if the boat is your home. It is worth being clear about what the letter actually is. In most cases it is an early warning: the Trust's records of where your boat has been sighted do not yet show what it expects, and it is telling you so before your licence comes up for renewal.

That distinction matters, because at this stage the picture is still built from the Trust's data alone — and you are entitled to add to it.

How the Trust builds its picture

Licensing rangers record boat index numbers as they patrol the network, and you can see your own sightings in your online licence account (apart from the most recent 28 days). Those sightings are assembled into a movement history, and when a licence without a home mooring comes up for renewal, that history is what gets assessed — overall range, pattern of movement, and any overstaying.

The weakness is obvious once stated: a sighting record is only as complete as the patrols that produced it. A boat that moved twice between visits looks identical to one that never moved at all. Boaters' organisations have documented cases where incomplete sighting data led to enforcement against boats that had in fact been cruising.

What evidence helps

The Trust says a boater's own cruising log should be backed up by:

• —Photographs with date and location data — most phones record both inside the image file
• —Invoices or receipts that put the boat in a place at a time, such as mooring invoices, boatyard receipts or receipts for large fuel fills

Boaters' groups such as the National Bargee Travellers Association also suggest keeping a GPS log of your moorings, and some boaters keep statements from people who saw the boat where they say it was. The Trust does not list those, so treat them as extra support.

A record kept at the time carries considerably more weight than one assembled after a letter arrives. That is not a technicality — it is the difference between a contemporaneous account and a reconstruction, and anyone assessing evidence will read it that way.

What to do this week

• —Read what the letter actually asks for, and note any deadline
• —Gather what you already have — photos on your phone carry dates and often locations in the file itself
• —Write down the moorings you remember, with dates, while they are fresh
• —Start logging every mooring from today, so the record from here on is contemporaneous
• —If enforcement is already under way, get advice — the National Bargee Travellers Association runs volunteer caseworkers for exactly this

CruiseProof is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. If your licence or your home is genuinely at risk, speak to someone who can advise on your specific case.