A 55-foot Novatec flybridge motoryacht has been stuck on a North Carolina beach for more than a week after it ran aground about 1 a.m. on January 25. The Coast Guard, TowBoatUS, and the owner have been trying to get it floating again ever since.
The boat is named Vivens Aqua and it ran aground after the owner, Scott Pumphrey, from Salisbury, Maryland, said it suffered steering failure. It ended up on the beach at Cape Hatteras National Seashore near the south end of Ocracoke Island. Pumphrey was trying to get through Ocracoke Inlet, notorious for its shifting sand, and into Silver Lake.
Pumphrey and his wife, Karen, has just bought the boat in Palm Coast, Florida, and were taking it home to the Chesapeake. After the boat was stuck on the beach on Ocracoke, Karen flew home and Pumphrey stayed on the unheated boat to help with the refloating effort.
At first, the National Park Service worked with the Coast Guard to remove the 55,000-pound yacht. After three days of trying to pull it off the sand, the NPS said they had to drain the fuel to lighten the boat. “Once the fuel is removed and the vessel becomes lighter in weight, there may be an opportunity to refloat it and tow it from the beach,” an NPS spokesman said.
During low tide on two days, workers drained a total of 700 gallons of diesel fuel out of the boat. They also put airbags under the stern so it wouldn’t become buried in the sand.
After the fuel was removed, Lee Sykes, the owner of TowBoatUS Morehead City, tried to tow the boat off at high tide, but the wind whipped up the waves so much that he had to stop.
Then this Tuesday morning, at high tide, Sykes started again, but this time the port cleat on the yacht holding the bridle attached to the tow line broke off. The next step was to call for more heavy equipment to try to free the boat from the sand.
Once it is free, it will be towed to a yard in Morehead City. Read more:
