So how are inland skippers doing?

Being a skipper, living and working on your barge, often with a partner and children, is a job like no other. To support inland skippers and their families, community organiser and non-profit organisation De Schroef has organised several activities in the past 40 years, to bring these people together. At their request, our Social Inclusion Research Centre reviewed their operations and attempted to identify the current needs and requirements of this sailing community. So how are these men and women doing and what do they need? The research centre made several recommendations.

Meeting place

"The fact that skippers indicate that they struggle to develop and maintain contacts and a social network was not exactly a big surprise," says researcher Vicky Lyssens-Danneboom. "This has always been the case. However, the problem has increased significantly in recent decades. The demise of the skippers' bourse – which, along with the surrounding cafés, was their preferred meeting place – has eroded many of the underlying contacts. While the rotation system definitely had its drawbacks, it did ensure that skippers often had to wait longer periods of time before it was their turn again, allowing them to establish and maintain social contacts."

Listening ear

Today, they need a drop-in centre, a community centre for their roaming community, a place where they can walk in and out freely, when possible and convenient, and where they can meet like-minded people, have a natter, and find a listening ear. In case of practical difficulties or problems with the ship or their finances, they can always fall back on family, friends, or services. "When it comes to relationship or parenting problems, however, 'nobody' is the most common answer in our survey. Obviously, the VHF radio, smartphones, Whatsapp and social media facilitate communication, but these means are not sufficient when dealing with deeply human problems. That’s when they often realise they are on their own. On the one hand, the living and working area of the ship is a cosy cocoon. On the other hand, it is very similar to a Faraday cage where any distress signals cannot find a way out. Hence the explicit request for a welfare worker they know and trust; a listening ear that can preferably also be reached online."

The community centre is also a great venue for events. De Schroef partners with several other inland navigation organisations to organise an annual party for Sinterklaas in which families with children and people of all ages participate. In fact, skippers have been known to mark the date on their calendars and sailing schedules because they don’t want to miss it. The respondents were unanimous that they wanted more of these events.

Alarm bells

Another challenge for this community is finding a healthcare provider, such as a doctor, dentist, psychologist or welfare worker. They work by appointment only ánd struggle with long waiting lists, whereas skippers can never predict where exactly they will be on a given date. The threshold has become even higher, to the extent that the community is adamantly sounding the alarm. Obviously, this problem also arises for less urgent but no less necessary services such as pedicures, manicures, and hairdressers.

Policy recommendations

1. Well-being. Skippers and their families are entitled to full participation in society and full-fledged community organisation. Support policies will be needed to remediate the problems we identified.
2. Recommendations to local and inland waterway authorities: a major concern among boaters is the scrapping of too many moorings which greatly complicates their contacts with the onshore world and their own community.
3. In addition, inland waterway authorities should realise that inland skippers are expected to make considerable sacrifices. Very few contacts and networking opportunities, inadequate health, welfare, cultural, sports and leisure frameworks all raise the pressing question of whether young people will still be willing to work in inland navigation.