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An ongoing series of a Skippers view on navigating a 38m Dutch Barge through the bridges on the River Wye from Chepstow to Hereford

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Monmouth Bridge

Sunday 9th April, we had 2 goes at going through the Bridge again, both failed and we then moved to Plan B - that was to moor Wye Invader downstream of the second arch on the Port side near to the Town, I then phoned City Spares in Hereford and asked them to come down to the Rowing Club in Monmouth with their recovery truck, this they did and I used the small boat we had on board with 100 metres of rope and set off downstream, through the second arch towing the rope astern to the Wye invader, this was secured to the recovery truck’s winch and then to the Wye Invader. It was now getting dark, half an hour later we were moored up above the Bridge reassembling the cabin.
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Sunday 9th April till Sunday 23 April. Over the next 2 weeks, with the help of Jim Simpson we acquired a 30 inch pitch propeller and replaced the one that was too small on the Wye invader, the larger propeller would give us more power when going through the rest of the bridges upstream to Hereford.

April 23rd Sunday afternoon, we set of for Symonds Yat then ran out of water on the bed by Dixton Embankment where stayed until Saturday 21st October. When the rain that had fallen in Wales the week before raised the water level to 1.5 meters this ended the 6 months of drought and allowed us to move the 4 miles up river as far as Symonds Yat and winch ourself up and over the rapids.
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