Apollo Beach, FL: 22 ft Catalina 22 Off the Bottom in One Morning

Nobody had touched the 22 ft Catalina 22 in years, and the mast still lay down and lashed to the deck. With the cabin roof barely above the surface at a canal seawall, you could watch the lashings shift with the tide. She had filled slowly through a loose port and then dropped.

The mast was the trouble. Lashed down, it stuck out past the stern like a pole across the seawall, and any lift would have swung the whole rig into the concrete. We cut the lashings, lowered the spar onto a skiff, and rigged lift bags at the chainplates to bring the hull up level.

We were off the seawall in under a morning. The tow went to a public ramp a few minutes away. The hull was cored out and the mast was bent, so the Catalina went to our yard for dismantling and recycling, with the rigging sorted for scrap. Salvage was limited to the hardware, and the sunken boat removal was finished.