24th August: “Operation Blue Barrels”!

The barrels in my garden

Approaching the record high tide of 8th/9th April there were 2 blue barrels floating in the area between my jetty and no 78 Priory Road.  I was worried that if they got trapped under the jetty or the shed, their buoyancy would be capable of lifting boards and doing serious damage so I managed to get them out of the water and into my back garden.

Being empty chemical containers, the barrels posed a problem. I didn’t want to cut them up without knowing what they had contained, and I strongly suspected that the Council tip would not accept them.

Source of the barrels

But I knew where they had come from – part of the raft assembled by the “river gypsy” whose boat had previously dragged on 28th March.  On 25th April I started to go across to his boat in the Seafly, but as I got near the Torqeedo outboard went to low power and I aborted the trip while I could still get into line to drift/scull back to the jetty.  After that the barrels stayed in my garden and I attempted to pretend they weren’t there!

The barrels cleaned up.

While I was refitting the Spray Hood on Seatern on 17th August I saw an orange “safety boat” coming along the jetties and guessed, correctly, it was Steve Collins and ex-watchkeeper at NCI Calshot Tower, who is now running a unit of the  maritime Volunteer Service.  I asked if they could try contacting the guy about the barrels and a few days later got a message that they had, and the guy would like to have them back.  Steve suggested arranging it as an MVS exercise on the 24th.  I cleaned the, now dead, barnacles and tube worm off the barrels and moved them to the shed staging.

The barrels were put in the Seafly and Steve used an along-side tow to take us to the “live-aboard”.  Having transferred the barrels across the guy offered us a reward, £10, which was donated to MVS funds.