Stranded boat refloated weeks after canal collapse

"She saved our life that day by not tipping up and going down into the hole, so we think she deserves a second life."

Paul Stowe believes he and his family owe it to their canal boat, The Pacemaker, to get it back on the water - the vessel was left teetering on the edge of a giant hole when a stretch of the Llangollen Canal in Whitchurch, Shropshire, collapsed on 22 December. Two vessels went into the chasm which emerged in the canal bed as water gushed away.

Two days after the breach, the cause of which is still unknown, the boat was pulled to safety. On Tuesday it was refloated.

Stowe told the BBC he hoped The Pacemaker was "as good as she was before", but there were assessments to be done.

Stowe, from Solihull, West Midlands, previously feared he may never get back on the boat again following the incident, and confirmed watching the operation - by the Canal and River Trust - to refloat his home had made him worried.

"It's been quite a traumatic experience for the boat, it's been dragged over a lot of material that was washed down when the breach happened, so the actual integrity of the hull [was] the main concern and the engine bay area," he said.

An inspection, however, has since followed.

After the boat was on the water again, Stowe was able to go inside for the first time since stepping off it on the day of the incident, which happened in the early hours.

"At one point the boat was almost at 45 degrees as it was pulled out, so anything that was on the one side of the boat is now on the other side of the boat or on the floor," he explained.

"There's a lot of mess and clean-up to be done, broken crockery and plates and food and things like that. We were preparing for Christmas - as you can imagine, all those Christmas things are all over the place."

The next step, he said, was to get the boat out of the water again.

"It'll go out into a dry dock area where it'll be fully inspected… and repaired and replaced as required, before we can even think about cruising down the cut again," he explained.

"I have to be hopeful."

Nobody was hurt in the events of December.

Julie Sharman, chief operating officer for the Canal and River Trust, said making sure the boat was saved was important to her.

"I promised [the owner] I would do what I could to save his boat, and so being able to see it floated again today is a joy," she said.

"Paul's boat is in a much better condition than the two that ended up in the hole, so it's great news to see him away, but we've got much more to do here and the next job is to get the two boats out of the hole."

She said engineers created a dry basin with metal frames, and pulled The Pacemaker using winching equipment.

Water was then poured back into the basin to refloat the craft.

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