Heavy winds Tuesday night and into Wednesday put two sailboats in dire straits on Port Townsend Bay; one was blown free of its moorings and pushed ashore, and the other sank beside Union Wharf.

Eric Toews, deputy director for the Port of Port Townsend, said Thursday morning that crews with Global Diving & Salvage were working to refloat the 27-foot Catalina next to Union Wharf.

"It's a vessel that tied up, I believe overnight [Sept. 21],” Toews explained. "It was facing stern to the weather during that pretty decent little blow that we had yesterday."

Port staff arrived at the wharf in downtown Port Townsend a little after 7 a.m. Wednesday to find the boat taking on water.

"We got some fenders deployed to try to protect the handling float at Union Wharf," Toews said. "The vessel had sustained some damage to the port side aft, and was taking on water."

Toews said Port staff quickly consulted with the state Department of Natural Resource’s derelict vessel program, and also reached out to salvage companies, as the boat was sinking, but little could be done to prevent it from going down.

"Unfortunately we couldn't mobilize a salvage crew until this morning, and yesterday morning around 8:25, it finally went under and was kind of beneath and beside the handling float at Union Wharf."

Another casualty came in the form of a 22-foot sailboat anchored out on Port Townsend Bay.

The owner of the boat remains a mystery.

"No registration, no name on the vessel, stripped without a mast," Toews described the washed-up boat. "It had been anchored just off of port tidelands and in the storm it drug anchor and it's kind of high and dry right now."

The sailboat is located to the west of the breakwater at Boat Haven Marina, south of the Larry Scott Trail. Toews noted that Global Diving & Salvage has been tapped to orchestrate the salvage of the grounded vessel.

Eron Berg, executive director for the Port, reported that no fuel had leaked into the water in either of the incidents.

A "nearly empty" fuel container was recovered from the 27-foot Catalina prior to it going down.