After travelling through York by narrowboat, two keen boaters managed to narrowly avoid sinking after river levels rose through the night.
YouTuber’s Jo and Michael spent their day successfully sailing the River Foss in York before mooring up on the waterway to get some sleep.
They said the Foss journey hadn’t been done by narrowboat in years, and the pair recently uploaded a video of their experience.
The journey took place on 9 October 2024, and it was also being filmed for series three of Channel 4’s ‘Narrow Escapes’.
Once the boat was moored on the Ouse for the evening, Jo took their dog George out before heading to bed.
Then she noticed the water had risen. Jo said, “we were exhausted and wanted to get some sleep, but I discovered that the river had come up maybe four inches in four hours”.
Their narrowboat was moored to a solid concrete wharf, so if the water continued to rise, they ran the risk of floating over the concrete.
Michael and Jo researched the predicted water level, only to find that the water was estimated to rise over a metre by the following morning.
“That would mean we’d either have to stay up all night adjusting the ropes and trying to keep the boat safe, or moving the boat in the flood.”
They decided on the latter, relocating their narrowboat in complete darkness.
A race against time
They immediately got to work, operating against the clock in their pyjamas.
The first step was to fill up with water at the tap nearby, as they knew if the river continued to flood, it would be too difficult to travel back up.
“We left George on the boat, I took the bow line and Michael took the stern line, and we dragged the boat back. There were no other narrow boats, because all the other narrow boat owners were sensible enough not to be on a flooding river,” Jo says on the video.
They manoeuvred the boat back a few hundred metres along the moorings to the water point, all whilst river water was lapping up over onto the concrete.
With their water refilled, Jo then set out on foot to locate another mooring they could sail to.
“I walked through York at half nine at night on a Wednesday, with all the drunks and students and people out having a good time, practically in my pyjamas with the dog,” Jo said.
She found the moorings, and radioed Michael that, luckily, there was enough room for them to relocate.
Michael turned the narrowboat around to face downstream, and set sail.
It was pitch black, with the only light sources to guide them being torches and the blue hue of Slug and Lettuce’s glowing sign.
Michael said: “It was interesting for me, because my night vision was just blown away by all of these street lights.
“So I really couldn’t make out anything other than the brightest reflections on the water, all the bridges were essentially just black holes. I couldn’t see anything of the actual structures.”
After a stressful journey with poor visibility, Michael sailed to safety and they tied up the Narrowboat at the second, much higher, mooring point.
“If anybody wants to volunteer to send me a pair of military spec night vision goggles, I’m not going to complain, because I realised in this whole maneuver that they would actually come in useful,” Michael joked.
Sure enough, the pair woke up the next morning to the river level a metre higher.
Michael added: “I’m glad we made the move. It’s something you have to be prepared for when you’re in York, the river can change.”
Travelling around Britain
Michael and Jo, along with their Springer Spaniel George, have been living aboard their narrowboat full time since 2017.
Their days are spent completing their quest to travel on each integrated waterway of England and Wales.
The River Foss was their penultimate route before completing the Silver Propellor challenge, so it was an essential journey for the couple.
Silver Propellor locations are places on waterways which see very few visiting boats, and are often located at the end of a waterway.
The pair returned to York last Autumn to complete their River Foss leg, after initially failing to do so back in 2020.
This was due to a bridge on the route being covered in scaffolding at the time, so although the boat could have made it under, officials had closed the loch.
After initially documenting their trips to share with friends and family, they soon realised a lot more people were also interested in their videos.
Their channel now has over 600 videos and 26k followers, their Instagram stands at almost 4k followers, and their Facebook page 5.7k.