Nameless and adrift, she finally hit bottom sometime in January.

Now, it was really time for her to go.

“She” was a Catalina 27 sailboat, no name on the transom, known only by the vessel registration number WN 7877NE. The boat, nearly beached, was stranded on private tidelands near the Indian Island Bridge. 

The abandoned boat was sighted near the bridge about a month ago. Battered by the recent windstorm and king tides, it started to take on water and local mariners and residents worried it could damage the support columns to the bridge or pose an environmental threat from spilled fuel or other fluids.

But during a stormy Saturday three weeks ago, in an O-Dark-Thirty rescue in sideways rain, a team led by TowBoatUS/Marine Assist of Port Hadlock worked to recover the hazardous vessel and remove it from the water.

“It was awesome,” said County Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour of the effort. 

“We have amazing professional mariners in our community. And it was the right team of people and the right moment. And nasty weather — but they didn’t care,” she said.

Eisenhour recalled how a subcommittee of the Jefferson Marine Resources Committee had been tracking the issue of derelict vessels in local waters, with hopes of using funding from the Northwest Straits Commission to get at-risk boats out of the water.

The Marine Resources Committee group had already taken notice of 14 other problematic boats, with six listed for removal in Jefferson County and eight more on a watch list.

“We started to develop our own back-of-the-napkin list of vessels that we knew were sitting on the beach or sunk in shallow water or had been on their mooring for five years. And who owns them, and do we know anything about them, and were concerned they might become derelict,” Eisenhour said.

The Catalina 27 quickly got noticed by others after it started its partially submerged snuggle with the Indian Island Bridge.

A member of the Marine Resources Committee who lives on Marrowstone noticed the boat, as did the owner of the shoreline property where the boat was offshore. The white sailboat, covered with blue tarps, had earlier been seen anchored in Hadlock offshore from the Ajax Café.

After the sailboat became stranded on private tidelands on the Indian Island side of Portage Canal, however, a new boat sank to the top of the wanted list. Battered by king tides and rough weather, the sailboat posed a chance of damaging the bridge and breaking apart.

Eisenhour recalled how fast action was needed, and she contacted the Washington State Department of Natural Resources’ Derelict Vessel Removal Program to see what removal options existed.

The speediest step to getting the boat out of the water was for the Jefferson County to take action itself.

The county took emergency possession of the boat Jan. 14, and Eisenhour obtained authorization from DNR to spend up to $30,000 to take the boat out, with Jefferson County’s costs to be eventually reimbursed by the state.

Eisenhour then turned to Roger Slade of TowBoatUS Port Hadlock, the owner of a vessel assist company that also handles salvage operations. She still had his number from her days as chief operations officer at the Northwest Maritime Center.

“I said, ‘Roger, are you retired yet?’,” Eisenhour recalled. “He was like, ‘Not quite.’

“I said, ‘Well we got a boat under the bridge.’ He said, ‘I know. We’ve been looking at that one for a month.’

“I’m like, ‘I got to get it out of there.’ I said, ‘Can you help?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I can do this one.’”

Slade said the sailboat wasn’t taking on water when it was first spotted a few months ago. The Coast Guard and DNR were notified, he said, and the owner of the boat was contacted and talks began about what to do with the boat.

A tentative agreement was made to have it turned over to the state’s Derelict Vessel Removal Program.

Still, there was a rub. The boat had to be floating, and the owner was responsible for delivering it to a haul-out facility. In this case, Boat Haven.

The owner had no resources to deal with the problem, though, and was living on another boat anchored in the harbor.

Then came the damaging windstorm and king tides at year’s end.

“It was just getting worse and worse and the boat was breaking up,” Slade said.

“It was sunk, but it was still moving in the water. So we were concerned it was going to move out into the channel or hit the bridge uprights,” Eisenhour said.

With a barge, salvage vessel, and a tugboat, a team started working to raise the sailboat Jan. 14. Due to the swift currents of the canal, divers worked during a 15-minute window in the early morning slack tide to put straps around the sailboat, put a bridle between the straps, and pull the boat alongside a barge, slowly hoisting it partially out of the water.

With the boat filled with water, Slade estimated the vessel weighed about 5 tons.

Eisenhour said there were huge holes in the boat’s hull from it resting sunken on the shore for a month, through the king tides and the storm.

The owner of the sailboat came out when the divers were in the water, Eisenhour said, and was warned by the tow boat to stay away because of the danger to the divers in the water and the movement of the boat.

“He wanted one of his fenders,” she said.

“Someone said it was probably the only thing he paid for on the boat,” she recalled.

With the sailboat stabilized, the rescue team headed back to the dock in Hadlock by Star Marine. Eisenhour followed in the salvage boat Timber Wolf. 

It was a moment of relief. 

“My point of stress: People were putting their lives at risk to do this. Those divers were in the cold water for hours,” Eisenhour said.

With the barge, tug, and derelict boat alongside and going to Hadlock, Eisenhour said, “I finally took this deep breath, and I was like, everyone’s safe. We got this.”

The sailboat was put on the hard at Star Marine, and a notice was posted on the boat that said Jefferson County was taking emergency possession.

The notice declared the vessel would remain at Star Marine for 60 days. The owner of the sailboat was notified via certified letter Jan. 19 of his right to reclaim the vessel, but must cover the costs of paying for the removal. The county will maintain custody for 30 days, and an appeal period of another month will follow.

There’s a sense that the number of boats that are derelict or nearly so seems to be growing. 

“The more people who live here, the more boats there are. Everything’s more, right?” Eisenhour said.

Slade agreed. 

“I’m very pleased that Heidi Eisenhour stepped up to the plate as a county commissioner,” Slade said.

More needs to be done, he added.

“Just in Port Townsend Bay there are other derelicts that have been sitting around waiting to be dealt with,” he said. “Derelict vessels have been a problem for a long time and it just seems like it gets worse.”

For her part, Eisenhour said she could only take credit for making the call to Slade.

It’s the community of skilled mariners who deserve praise, she said.

“It was one of those moments in your life where you’re like, as
I said, it takes a village. And we live in the exact right village to make this happen quickly,” Eisenhour added.