Severn Unit Set Buoys to Warn Boaters of Underwater Hazard

The Severn Unit was called into action to put out warning buoys after a 60ft narrowboat failed to rise on her mooring poles and sank upriver from Tewkesbury after the River Avon came into flood during March.

HOU Nic Price said, “First of all we had to locate exactly where the stricken vessel lay and then our team had to use great ingenuity to set a row of marker buoys attached to weights around the sunken boat which had slipped a good 12 feet out into the river.

Nothing at all was showing above the water and it was a hazard to navigation so the area needed to be marked and protected quickly.”

Avon Navigation Trust (ANT) Volunteer Director Paul Cronin passed on the thanks of the Trust’s Chief Executive Clive Matthews and the ANT Council to Severn Unit for doing this job and said, “At the time the ANT workforce was in the middle of vital major repair work further up the Avon so the MVS saved us having to  deploy some  much needed staff to do this job.”

Pictured are Severn Unit MVS Members Will Fish and Chris Adcock in one of the Unit’s boats setting some of the warning buoys around the submerged narrowboat.