PORT TOWNSEND — A sunken boat swamped by wind-whipped waves last weekend about 100 yards offshore of Port Townsend’s downtown has been towed from state Department of Natural Resources tidelands as a derelict boat.
The boat, which was towed Tuesday night, is scheduled to be hoisted out of the water today to be sold or destroyed, a Port of Port Townsend official said.
“This thing is going to cost the state about $5,000 to get rid of it,” said Jim Pivarnik, Port of Port Townsend deputy director.
DNR’s derelict vessel removal program manager, Melissa Ferris, asked Pivarnik to act as a state agent to remove the vessel.
The 26-foot 1948 Fairliner, the Gallivant, owned by Rick Strong, was anchored offshore of his home at Admiralty Apartments, at Taylor and Water streets downtown on Sunday night when a rainstorm with high winds created waves that sunk the boat.
Strong did not have the financial wherewithal to pay for Vessel Assist of Port Hadlock to tow the boat or for the port to haul it out, so he handed it over to the state derelict boat removal program, he said.
The boat had been anchored offshore of Taylor Street for about a month.
Ferris said Wednesday that her office was too busy dealing with a number of derelict vessels in the Tacoma area and could not respond to the Gallivant sinking.
Towed Tuesday night
Roger Slade’s Vessel Assist was called in to send a diver down Tuesday night to disconnect the Gallivant’s anchor and tow it to the beach near the entrance to the port’s Boat Haven marina at high tide.
At low tide Wednesday morning, it was righted so it could be floated at high tide and towed into the marina for haulout today.
The boat will be moved to the storage end of the boat yard, where the state will decide its fate.
“I used it for seven years and took it all over Puget Sound,” Strong said Wednesday morning, looking over the boat resting on its port side as he and others were righting it using ropes, a jack and wedges of driftwood before muscling it over.
“I got plenty of use out of it and have another boat lined up already.”
Strong said he lived aboard the boat for five years.
Boat destroyed
The derelict boat’s removal comes about two weeks after another boat, the Yankee Sundowner, was destroyed by an Anacortes contractor at the Port of Port Townsend’s boat yard.
DNR, which owns the tidelands where the 50-foot wooden boat was moored in Mystery Bay at Marrowstone Island near the tip of Griffith Point, took possession of the vessel owned by Robert Davis.
DNR hired Vessel Assist and Cascade Towing to remove that vessel, which towed it to Port Townsend Boat Haven marina in December after island residents found it listing and prevented it from sinking altogether.
The vessel had been anchored there for 10 years, residents said.
Since diesel fuel was seeping out of the vessel at the marina, Port of Port Townsend officials hauled out the Yankee Sundowner immediately so the remainder of between 10 and 20 gallons of fuel could be pumped out of it into a secured tank for proper disposal.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.