Flooded Soar sinks boat

THE recently flooded Soar claimed another victim as a 60ft narrowboat sank at Thurmaston when the water receded.

Carolan and Trevor Foreman moved their boat, Merlot, into Thurmaston Marina on the Soar in the late summer of last year, splitting their time between the boat and a cottage in Wales, Alan Tilbury reveals.

Bow on bank

Whilst in Wales they had been told that the flood took the moored boats up, but it seems their boat went forward with its bow resting on the bank, and sank as the water receded allowing ingress into its stern.

The interior and the couple's possession are ruined by the river water, with them all but a few feet under the surface.  When the water level recedes the boat will be pumped-out and raised.

Warn people

The couple are anxious to warn people, so they can prevent the same thing happening to their boats.  The solution  of course is a spring preventing the boat going either forward or backward towards the bank, that holds the boat away from the bank as the water recedes.

The photograph shows the spring (with yellow tape) that is secured to a jetty upright, that will hold our own boat from coming back on to the bank when the flood water that is over the jetty, recedes.  Yet there are many boats in the marina with no such simple safety device...