New channel for boat users

John Blaikie said the channel coming closer to land was going to cost more initially, but would be cheaper to maintain. Photo/Stuart Munro

Boaties should be safe from getting stuck in the mud after dredging being carried out at the port yesterday and today.

Harbour master John Blaikie met with the Coastguard on Friday to discuss the channel off the Wharf St boat ramp where a number of boats have been getting stuck.

An unnamed boatie said last week the problem was lack of dredging and the channel being too narrow.

He said the Coastguard was called out to a broken-down motor the weekend before and had to wait two hours to get going because of the conditions of the river.

If an emergency happened at low tide and the Coastguard had to go to Putiki to launch, "the delay could be the difference between life and death," he said.

Mr Blaikie said they had established at Friday's meeting that the channel was about half a metre too shallow, and not wide enough.

Over the next couple of days they would be deepening the channel with a digger.

They had redirected the channel to run closer to the land, so the digger was able to work from solid ground.

Previously they had put the digger on a barge so it could reach the channel, but Mr Blaikie said this was costing ratepayers about $20,000-$30,000 a year.

Coastguard Wanganui president Kevin McKenna there was not a problem with using Putiki and it probably only added 15 minutes to response time.