Last summer, the Sailing Center received a Catalina 26 that had been dismasted and scuffed up in hurricane Ian. It was a promising donation with a working Yanmar diesel engine and no major damage apart from the mangled mast. We had fitted the Catalina’s old standing rigging and spreaders to a donated mast and were getting close to having a working sailboat when hurricane Helene flooded our building in September 2024. We were just getting the mud out and drying out our stuff in October when hurricane Milton flooded the whole park much worse.

The floating dock escaped its piling rows and crashed into the Catalina as it was tossed up onto the dock pilings and a piling tore a large hole in the side of the boat, sinking it. In the picture at left you can see the aluminum ramp that provided access to the floating dock just hanging in the water and one piling next to the Catalina that looks a bit battered on top. It won the fight.

With limited access to the park and the need to clean our way to our salvage tools, it took a while to assemble the people and tools needed to raise the boat. First it was lashed to the dock with come-a-longs to hold it vertical. Then our fearless leader, Dennis, went in the water with a hand drill and a thin slab of fiberglass and covered the hole. We then draped a tarp over the patch and some sails and canvas over the companionway and cockpit hatch to help seal up the boat. We fired up a 2″ trash pump and a 1 1/2″ one and gradually got most of the water out of the boat. It was still sitting low because it was filled with mud so we removed mud with buckets and then pumped water into the boat with the small pump to make a stinky slurry, which was then pumped out with the large pump.

At the end of the day, the boat was moved around to the inside of the dock to allow crews who are working on the park to use the outside again. We’re still working on what will come next. Stay tuned!

We removed the diesel engine from the boat and started to remove the mast but realized that our hull patch was leaking too badly and the boat would sink again. We used a come-a-long on the far side of the dock tied to the main halyard to heel the boat over and expose the bottom of the patch, then Dennis loosened it, stuffed the seam with butyl rubber tape, and screwed it back down with additional screws.

I hope we get our patch back! It is one of a few fiberglass cockpit covers for our 2.4mR sailboats that are rigged for disabled sailors. It happened to be just right to cover the hole left by the piling so we used it to make this repair but we should be able to remove it when the boat is out of the water, repair the screw holes, and put it back where it belongs.

The Sailing Center has been donated a 1985 Com-Pac 19 sailboat. The most recent registration sticker on this boat is 11 years old and it’s easy to believe no one has sailed it since then. It’s dirty and neglected looking.

Boats like this can be hard for individual owners to sell. It needs so much work that hiring it out would consume the sale price and people can’t or won’t do it themselves, so the boats deteriorate until they find their way to a landfill.

We interrupt that process with volunteers who are willing to use a little elbow grease on an old boat so we can sell it to support The Sailing Center. If you have a boat to donate or if you are willing to help us rejuvenate donations, contact us today!

Our latest project boat is a Catalina 26 that was dismasted in a hurricane. We’re in the process of adapting a mast from another boat to fit. The boat has a working diesel engine and isn’t in bad shape. We will sell it to support our sailing programs.

The original mast was mangled beyond repair but the mast we are using for the boat was another donation. It was the mizzen mast on a cruising multihull.