Palm Beach Gardens, FL: 27 ft Cal 27 Off the Bottom in One Morning

A 27 ft Cal 27 sailboat with the boom missing and the mast corroded at the step settled beside a concrete seawall, cabin roof just above the surface. She had been tied there long enough that the lines had chafed through the guards.

Access was the obstacle. The seawall sat behind a row of houses, the yard gate was narrow, and a truck could not get close. So the crew brought a work skiff up the canal, placed the lift bags from the water side, and ran a generator in the yard for the dewatering.

Four hours later she floated alongside the wall. We took the mast down with a gin pole, tied it along the deck, and made a slow tow to a ramp. The hull and keel were still good under the grime, but rig and deck were shot and nobody wanted to pay for a rebuild. She went to our yard near Boynton Beach to be dismantled and recycled, and the lead went out as salvage after this sunken boat recovery.