CaRT prevent sunken boat removal

I FIND it amazing that a boat that has sunk in a lock (Drunk hirers sank boat) has been left to block navigation for so long, ten days and counting, particularly so when it could be putting boaters waiting on a flooding river at risk, writes Pam Pickett.

As I understand it Anglo-Welsh has been doing its best to get the boat removed from lock 10 at Bath on the Kennet & Avon, but has unfortunately come up against the Trust in attempting to do so.

Little experience of waterways

CaRT's engineer, Tony Simms, responsible for the area has I'm told been in post for just six months, and has little experience of waterways, much less of removing sunken boats.

With the Trust advising it can spare no-one to remove this boat Anglo-Welsh has been left at its wits end as to how to do so. Hardly surprising when Anglo-Welsh had been told to approach a crane company and to prepare method statements only to then have the Trust refuse to allow the use of the (unnecessary) crane that would have necessitated a gantry to be built above the lock. The unwilling led by the unknowing has to come to mind here!

No expertise

It is truly worrying that there is a rapidly reducing amount of expertise within the Trust, with those at the top certainly lacking it. However, following Tony Dunkley advising on how the job should be done, this advice warmly welcomed by Anglo-Welsh and CaRT's engineer yesterday, CaRT certainly seems to have been galvanised into action! At Director level no less it seems the Trust's favoured Commercial Boat Services are now to be brought in from Chester.

Strangely Commercial Boat Services are now putting forward the identical method of recovery suggested by Tony Dunkley, the boater that CaRT sought to remove from its waters 'to enable it to indulge in safe and efficient management of its waterways'! The question is why weren't CaRT's Commercial Boat Services called in before?

Safe and efficient?

Surely leaving a sunken boat in a lock whilst boaters wait on a river prone to flooding can hardly be considered 'safe and efficient management'?

Experience counts CaRT—and we boaters need it!