Sunken Sailboat Recovery in Port Orange

Before we got in the water, seized standing rigging and sails rotted in the bag had already told the story of this 27 ft Catalina 27. Nobody had touched the sailboat in years.

It sank at the public ramp, gunwales level with the water, in a spot where trailer traffic came and went all day. The obstacle was the rig. The shrouds would not budge, so we could not drop the mast, and the extra top weight made the hull want to roll as it rose. We cut the rigging wire at the chainplates, set lift bags on both sides to keep her upright, and brought her up slowly.

The job took about five hours on site. We ran the tow behind the work skiff to a staging spot, then loaded her on a lowboy for the haul toward Daytona Beach. The hull had good bones, so the sunken boat recovery ended at a repair yard that wanted a project. The old sails went in the dumpster, and the winches were kept as salvage.