STUART — It will take two to three days to remove nearly 2,000 gallons of diesel from a 60-foot boat that ran aground Monday night off Sandsprit Park, U.S. Coast Guard officials said Wednesday.
“We are trying right now to remove the oil pollution,” Lt. Carlos “Adrian” Jaramillo said. “That is our No. 1 priority. We are currently contracting with a marine salvage company.”
The boat, called The Endeavor, ran aground Monday at the St. Lucie Inlet. The Coast Guard removed five people from the boat.
Jaramillo said the Coast Guard was told the boat was going to Haiti as part of a humanitarian relief mission.
Frank Cesario, a member of the Coast Guard’s incident response team, said there was no cargo on board except for fuel, and it was heading out the inlet when it ran aground.
“We can only speculate that it was on its way to pick up something,” Cesario said.
The boat’s owner has been contacted, but Cesario declined to release the name.
“We have been told the owner doesn’t have the money to remove the boat,” he said, “and we have notified the owner that we’ll take action if they won’t.”
Cesario said the boat’s fuel tank has about 1,200 gallons of diesel, and several 55-gallon drums holding an additional 700 gallons. About 30 gallons of oil are on board.
Jaramillo said a commercial salvage company, Titan Salvage, will remove the drums first, then lift the boat using air bags and drain the fuel tank.
“We have to level the vessel so we can siphon the fuel out of the tanks,” he said. “If it’s at an angle, it’s very difficult. You have water coming into the vessel, which will prohibit the extraction of the fuel oil.”
Cesario estimated from 2 to 5 gallons of diesel leaked from the boat into the inlet.
“We got reports that there was a very light and broken-up sheen that extended about 100 to 200 feet from the vessel,” he said. “That would indicate that very little diesel came off the boat.”
Two booms have been placed around the boat to prevent further damage, he added.
The flooded boat is grounded on a sandbar and on its side. Cesario said the boat “is alongside but not in the channel” and is not hindering other boats from using the inlet.
John Joyner, 80, came to Sandsprit Park on Wednesday after seeing news coverage of the incident. Joyner, of Stuart, brought binoculars to get a look at it himself.
The boat appeared to be roughly one half mile from the wooden boardwalk at Sandsprit.
“I’ve been out through this channel on my boat and you’d have to be awful stupid to wind up running aground,” he said. “Maybe he just got too far to the left of the channel and ran aground.”
Still, Joyner said it could have happened to anyone.
“It was just a tragic mistake, an expensive mistake for somebody,” Joyner said.
Over at Twin Rivers Park in the Rocky Point area, Gary Herron, 66, said he was concerned and curious. The grounded boat is significantly closer to this park than Sandsprit Park.
"We came out to see the progress of the boat that's been sitting out there dumping oil on our estuary," said Herron, of Rocky Point. "This estuary takes such a bad beating anyway and now to add this on top is not very helpful."
Officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are providing security for the contractors removing the fuel and also are supporting the Coast Guard, according to the agency’s Lt. Dana Morrison.
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