Man's surprise after pulling ‘sunken’ canal boat out himself

A boat, reported to be ‘sunken’ by the Canal & River Trust, has seen navigation stopped on sections of the Rochdale canal since last Tuesday, September 19. 

One boater impacted by the closure was John Secker. The 67-year-old retiree has spent the summer cruising the country’s canals with his wife Loulie on their boat ‘Eileen Dover’, named after John’s mother.

After travelling through Leeds, Liverpool, York, and Sheffield on the network throughout June and July, the duo had to abandon their attempt at returning the boat home to its mooring at Preston Brook Marina, near Warrington, after a problem with a Manchester city centre lock left the route home impossible.John Secker (Image: John Secker)

‘Oh sh**, we’re not going to be able to get home’

After leaving their boat in Sowerby Bridge for six weeks, John and Loulie returned to finish their journey following the lock’s repair.

After travelling down the canal for just two days, the pair reached the River Irk Aqueduct in Chadderton – where they moored up.

It was then that they received notice that the canal had been closed due to a sunken boat, potentially scuppering their return plans once more.

John said: “We thought oh sh**, we’re not going to be able to get home. One of the problems is we can sit there forever, you start to run out of water apart from anything else, we had a few days’ supply.”

After cycling five miles downstream to take a look at the obstruction, John asked the Canal & River Trust if he could try to get through himself.

He explained: “It’s a double lock, so big enough to take two narrowboats, and I thought ‘I think I can squeeze past that’. So I rang the Canal & River Trust on the Thursday and I said ‘I think I can get past that, will you let me try’.

“I thought ‘they’re not going to let me, health and safety, corporate, etc. But, very much to my surprise on Friday morning I got a call early on to say ‘Yes we’ll unlock the padlocks at lock 66 and we’ll let you have a go, entirely at your risk’.”

John and Loulie's narrowboat Eileen Dover (Image: John Secker)

A 10-hour ‘epic’ journey

After organising staff to unlock the locks, John and Loulie raced towards the obstruction, where John started to pull debris from the sunken boat.

He said: “I had to pull a load of debris out, all bits of wood and plastic that have come out of this boat just floated out of it, there was a chair. I pulled that all out with my boat hook.”

John then began to let water down from the previous lock to raise the water level in the section of canal with the obstruction. It was then that he discovered that the ‘sunken’ boat was not sunken at all – it was floating, albeit waterlogged.

The sunken boat after it was pulled to the side (Image: John Secker)

He continued: “I hooked it with my boat hook and pulled it, and it just floated across. I pulled it around, out of the way of the lock and down the side of the canal. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tie it up because I didn’t have any ropes and there were no ropes on the boat.”

The feat meant John and Loulie could continue on to New Islington Marina, in Manchester city centre.

Legs ‘just stopped aching’

By the time they reached their destination, the 6.8-mile journey from Chadderton had taken them a whopping 10 hours to complete, which John described as ‘epic’.

John said his legs had ‘just stopped aching’.

An update on the Canal & River Trust website on Monday afternoon confirmed his efforts had paid off, stating: "Please be advised, the sunken craft has been moved from Lock 74 and navigation has resumed between Lock 66 and Lock 80 on the Rochdale Canal.

"Contractors will be onsite later this week to remove the craft from the navigation and an update will be provided by Thursday 28 September."