Raising a 22 ft Catalina 22 in West Pensacola, FL

Sometimes the mast is the whole problem. The 22 ft Catalina 22 had its mast down and lashed to the deck for years, and when the slip lines finally chafed through, the boat took water at the cockpit drains and settled with the deck awash and the bow slightly up.

The lashed mast made lifting awkward, since nothing along the deck was clear for a bag to sit under. We rigged slings under the hull, set lift bags tucked at the gunwales outside the standing gear, and freed the mast first so it would not shift during the rise. That order is the whole trick in sunken boat recovery on small sailboats.

We were done in about four hours. The hull had no cracks and the keel was sound, so the sailboat went on a trailer to a repair yard north of Ferry Pass for new rigging. It is the kind of salvage that gets a boat back on the water. A short tow to the ramp closed the job.