A Guide to Safe Navigation for Small Craft and Notes for River Bank Users


The safety of your vessel and those aboard it is your responsibility. Familiarity with the chart of the river, an understanding of the uses of the aids to navigation and times and heights of tide is essential for the production of a meaningful passage plan. This will help you avoid the situations pictured below.

On neap tides keep to the main channel and be aware of the draft of your vessel and the heights of sandbanks and other obstructions such as the Oldbury reservoir wall.
On spring tides keep to the main channel and time your transit when inbound to avoid the risk of being overturned on the sandbanks or arriving at Sharpness too early.
Keep off the buoys and beacons - this narrowboat was presented with a large bill for recovery work and repairs.

 

 

The Trustees have produced a small booklet intended to provide basic information to help boaters wishing to navigate in the Severn Estuary.

This may be downloaded in two versions – both are .pdf files, one of which contains a number of images and is suitable for download by those with faster internet connections; the other is a smaller text-only file.

 

Download the complete document (with images)

 

Download the text-only document