Photos of the Day: Grounding in Monterey

According to Capt. Chelsea Wagner, owner of Pacific Salvage in Santa Cruz, the long Memorial Day weekend was surprisingly slow. That may not be great news for a tow boat operator, but it’s good news for boaters. Unfortunately, one sailor wasn’t so lucky. The owner of the Monterey-based Hunter 27 Aeolus was reportedly out for a daysail on Saturday when he noticed the 30 feet of water he had been sailing in off Del Monte Beach was shoaling rapidly. "He was getting ready to tack away when it went from 30 feet to 4 feet in half a second," reports Wagner. Apparently the sailor had met the shoal area that built up over the winter — and isn’t charted. "It runs a good 150 yards out from Del Monte Beach," Wagner said. If you sail in Monterey, consider yourself warned.

Sausalito diver Tim Sell managed to snap these terrific shots of Wagner and her crew pulling Aeolus from the beach. "We had to drag it farther up the beach and out of the surf to wait for our boat," Wagner noted. "She was lying on her port side, so before we started towing, we managed to get her on her starboard side for inspection. There were no holes but the gelcoat was worn through in a couple spots where she’d been lying on some rocks.

"We tried pulling her around by tying to a deck cleat but that snapped off, so we wrapped the tow line around her keel. Normally a boat in this situation isn’t a good candidate for towing but, even though the rudder had already sheared off at the hull, the keel was fine and the boat wasn’t taking on any water."

Wagner says that the Aeolus‘s owner — who wasn’t injured in the incident — didn’t have insurance but that he intends to repair her. "Hunters seem to survive this kind of abuse better than other boats," she said. "It seems their fiberglass is more flexible than brittle."