Emergency Clean Up of Wrecked Boat Underway on the Montecito Coastline
John Palminteri
MONTECITO, Calif. – After a boat came apart on the Montecito coast, a two-day clean up effort appears to be successful.
An emergency response crew from TowBoatUS – Ventura was activated to finish off the project at Butterfly Beach.
Captain Carson Shevitz said he found, “hundreds of pieces with some debris submerged, off in the surf.”
Then everything in and out of the water had to be found.
“We have our vessel recovery team out on the beach, picking up the pieces, cutting the pieces down into a recoverable size,” said Shevitz.
That includes many items that are harmful to the environment. “We’ll try to find the fuel tank batteries. A boat like this, we’ll find out if it has an inboard engine or an outward engine,” Shevitz said. The team had many ropes and cables that were in big knotted balls.
Tuesday evening the environmental group, Heal the Ocean, worked until sundown removing debris from the beach and cutting up parts of the boat that could be a dangerous and deadly entanglement issue for marine life. That group funded the first part of the clean up, and has been responsive to boat wrecks in the past regardless of the cause or available finances from the owner.
With waves hitting them, this was a choppy endeavor but it was necessary prior to the word that TowBoatUS was activated to come in with just-approved insurance funding.
The clean up crews said they concentrate their efforts not only in this crash zone, but worked the entire beach to make sure that everything that was on the sand was picked up.
Shevitz said, we found the mast, so we try to find the large items and make sure we have everything.”
The owner Luke Wallace was told the only chance to save the vessel would have been early on.
Shevitz said, “We can get up here in 45 minutes, or hour and a half, whatever it is, depending on the time to get people where they need to go. But at that point, the boat was on the beach.”
What’s still to be found is the keel. Wallace said, “that’s heavy lead it’s made out of lead it is somewhere under the sand most likely. I don’t think anyone took the keel.” It weights 800 to 1,200 pounds.
In this case, the boat owner who had been in the offshore anchorage in Santa Barbara waters was helped by that insurance policy.
Many of the boat owners in the East Beach anchorage do not have coverage.
“Playing by the rules. Everyone should have insurance. It definitely helped. I mean, as you can see, the beach is clean. Probably cleaner than it was,” said Wallace.
The crew did a clean sweep of the beach and got a full load, but they have plans to come back and double check.
“We are locals, just like you. This is our backyard, and we want to do everything we can to make sure that we’re doing as well of the job as as we can,” said Shevitz.
(More video, photos and details will be added here later today)
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