FloridaMeadow Woods, Orange County
Raising a 24 ft Formula 242 in Meadow Woods, FL
Rotted stringers under the cockpit floor are what finally put this 24 ft Formula 242 cuddy cabin on the bottom. The owner had been told to watch the floor for flex, and by the time the floor flexed, water was already finding its way in at a lake dock. It sat with the gunwales level with the water for two days before anyone called.
Our obstacle was the soft structure itself. A hull with no stringers can fold when it lifts, so we could not just crank it up. We slid lift bags under in stages, kept the bags low and wide, and used pumps only once the rails cleared the surface. Lifting slow kept the deck from buckling.
The whole sunken boat recovery took about five hours. A short tow brought it past Apopka traffic to a trailer at the ramp. With the structure gone, the boat was not worth a repair yard, so it went to ours for recycling after the engine came off for salvage.
Case summary
Illustrative example — a representative sunken boat recovery in Orange County, not a record of a specific customer job. Photos are illustrative too.
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Crews cover Orange County: Apopka, Bithlo, Conway, and Doctor Phillips. When a boat goes under in Meadow Woods or anywhere nearby, we schedule the recovery the same week once we have photos and a rough depth. A sunken boat rarely improves with time, because fuel, oil, and weather keep adding to the work, so a short call and a few photos are the quickest route to a spot on the crew calendar.