Sunken Cabin Cruiser Recovery in Wright

When someone finally backed the 23 ft Chris-Craft Cavalier down to a canal behind a house, it still wore decades of barn dust and a cracked keel strip. It floated for a day, then settled until only the cabin roof showed beside a concrete seawall.

The obstacle was the lot. A narrow driveway, a shared seawall, and a power line over the water left no room for a crane. So we worked from a skiff, ran slings under the keel, and floated the cruiser with lift bags at the gunwales. The cabin drained as the deck came up, and the hull stayed off the seawall the whole way.

We were on site about six hours. A short tow took it to the end of the canal, and from there the Cavalier left on a trailer toward Niceville. The keel strip had cracked through, so no yard would take it. Only the fittings were kept for salvage, and the rest was recycled at our yard. Sunken boat removal here was mostly a question of space.