PORT TOWNSEND — After more than a week of being impaled on a breakwater, the schooner Phoenix has been floated into Boat Haven for repairs.
“We made quite a few tries to get it off the rocks and weren’t successful,” said Libby Garcia, whose fiancee, Jim Kruse, owns the vessel.
“For a while we thought we’d have to take her off in pieces, but a lot of people pitched in and we were able to get her off the rocks. It was quite amazing.”
The boat was moved into Boat Haven on Sunday.
The Phoenix, a gaff-rigged tops’l schooner 60 feet long and weighing 51 tons, was anchored outside the breakwater Oct. 9 when heavy winds and high tides pushed the boat onto the rock wall and pierced its hull, according to Capt. Roger Slade of Vessel Assist Port Hadlock.
The Phoenix is made of ferro-cement, a durable compound used in boatbuilding, but the force of its contact with the breakwater tore a large hole in its port side and several smaller ones in both the port and starboard sides, according to Slade.
Kruse was not in Port Townsend when the incident took place.
Slade said he was initially involved in the rescue until Kruse decided to go with another contractor because the cost estimate for removal was too high.
Kruse recruited Craftsmen United to finish the rescue, and the effort used five divers and six crew members to dislodge the boat from the rocks, attach flotation devices and tow it into the harbor, according to Dennis Pettitt, a member of the team.
Pettitt said that a previous estimate for the job was upward of $100,000, but his crew was able to complete the job for one fifth that amount.
“They were going to bring in a large crane with a crew of divers,” Pettitt said.
“We used word of mouth to assemble the crew. We know everyone in the local marine industry, where everyone knows everyone else and works together.”
‘Different’ job
Pettitt said the job was “more fun and a little different” than a standard rescue operation.
Once they dislodged the vessel from the rocks, it was hauled out into the water with large and small flotation devices used to keep it stable.
It is now in the Boat Yard where it will remain through the winter, Garcia said.
The inside was flooded, she said, which added considerably to its weight and required the use of a 300-ton lift rather than the 75-ton lift that was used to relaunch the vessel two weeks ago following repair work.
She hopes to repair the boat enough to make it seaworthy in the next three months, then bring it to its home port of Friday Harbor to finish inside repairs.
When divers boarded the vessel during the rescue attempt, they found sea life had already partially reclaimed the inside, with algae, jellyfish and a variety of marine animals on board, she said.
Both Garcia and Kruse were still “sleep deprived and really freaked out,” she said, and would probably soon return to Friday Harbor where she works as an emergency room nurse.
The medical training gave her the idea to patch up some of the holes on the hull with pieces of paper designed to look like Band Aids.
“A lot of people want to see this,” she said of the vessel. “I’m putting a Band Aid on her because she has an ‘owie.’ You might as well have a sense of humor.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
