BOAT SINKING....................but not ours, thankfully!!!

Got up yesterday morning to walk to Riverside Park for Easter sunrise service, which by the way, was beautiful.

What a shock when I walked down the dock. A boat had sunk at the dock during the night! Everyone got off the boat unharmed – that is the upside. They had topped off their diesel tanks in preparation for leaving yesterday morning for the Abacos, so now there is diesel and oil everywhere. What a circus it was here, at least until it was determined that ‘they’ would wait til low tide this morning to try to raise the boat. We had Coast Guard, EPA, Boat US Tow Boat, and HAZMAT all here. And then word started traveling through town about the sinking so there were lots of gawkers showing up just to have a look see, plus it was Sunday and there were lots of people on their boats in the marina.

Today is a beautiful new day and all the players for the ‘boat raising’ are starting to show up. It should be interesting to see how this is done.

Well…………that didn’t work!!!!! All the same people that were here yesterday trying to raise the boat were here again. Boat US was the company hired to raise the boat – I guess because that is who the owners’ insurance is with. Three men showed up, one was the diver, who attempted to put a very long air pillow under the stern of the boat so they could inflate it and raise it enough so they could start pumping the water out. Instead of putting that in place yesterday when they were here, they waited til this morning and punctured a hole in it while putting it in place – no replacement, but it still helped. They did not check their pumps out before coming here and the largest and what would have been the one to use, would not prime. They tried using a small pump and appeared to be making headway but not for long. The boat started taking on water faster than they could pump it out and down it went again. The owner was less than pleased with their performance. He called a crane company, they showed up for a consultation and I guess that is the route he will take. Too bad we will not be here to watch, but we leave it in the trusty hands of our fellow dockmates.  It will be interesting to find out what caused the boat to sink.  We'll keep you posted.

On another note …………..we did get to watch the space shuttle take off this morning, right from the front of our boat. About 20 minutes before the scheduled launch we watched what appeared to be a very large, brightly lit plane go across the sky and wondered why the plane was traveling through airspace that I was sure should be closed to traffic. We found out after the launch that what we had seen was the space station and when the shuttle took off it followed the same path, as its mission was to hook up with the space station. Pretty cool!!!!! We haven’t seen a launch in so many years and forgot how spectacular that is!