How far does a continuous cruiser actually have to move?

This is the most asked question on the network and the least satisfyingly answered, because the honest answer is that no fixed distance exists in law.

The requirement comes from the British Waterways Act 1995: a boat without a home mooring must be used for 'bona fide navigation'. Parliament did not attach a number to that phrase, and the Trust has consistently declined to publish one.

The two figures that do exist

The first is the 14-day limit. You should not remain in one place beyond 14 days unless you have a genuine reason such as a breakdown, in which case you are expected to tell the Trust.

The second is guidance rather than a rule: the Trust has said it is very unlikely someone could satisfy it that they had been genuinely cruising with a range of movement under roughly 20 miles over the period of their licence.

Range is not distance travelled

This is the part people most often get wrong, and it is worth being precise about. Range means how far apart the extremes of your journey are — not how many miles you covered.

A boat shuttling back and forth between two moorings two miles apart can cover hundreds of miles in a year and still have a range of two miles. That pattern is exactly what an assessment of range is designed to identify, and covering ground is no defence against it.

What counts as moving to a different place

Moving a few boat lengths, or to the other side of a bridge, is not moving to a new place. The expectation is a genuine change of neighbourhood. The Trust has not defined this numerically either, which is uncomfortable, but the underlying test is whether an ordinary person would say you had moved somewhere else.

Because the Trust publishes no fixed distance, CruiseProof shows you how your movement looks against its stated guidance. It cannot tell you that you are compliant, and no tool honestly can.