Sailor’s boat still stranded after shipwreck
‘I have nowhere else to go’: Vessel remains on Outer Banks sandbank
In early November, despite his better judgment, Attila Szabo left Connecticut alone in his 42-foot sailboat with a plan to meet up with friends in Morehead City, North Carolina.
He said he knew “going over the Atlantic” on his own was dangerous, but an array of false-starts with sailing partners led to his solo journey. All went well until the evening of Nov. 5.
“Unfortunately, I realized at Nags Head that I needed more fuel to sail through the night with engine support,” Szabo said.
As he struggled to find nearby fuel docks, navigational charts told Szabo that he should be in 10 to 20 meters of water. He decided to stop, drop anchor and ride out the choppy surf. Instead, he fell victim to the violent winter storms and ever-changing sandbars of the Outer Banks.
What followed was a “nightmare” of wind, crashing waves and the boat grounding deeper into the sandy ocean bottom, Szabo said.
His instruments failed, his engine died and “the rest was at mercy to the elements,” he said. “The increasingly stormy surf drove my boat onto the sandbank,
where I am still trapped today.”
Szabo sent out a distress call at 8:52 p.m. that evening. He told dispatchers he didn’t know exactly where he was but could see a bridge with vehicle lights passing by.
The Coast Guard sent a small boat from the nearby Oregon Inlet station, and the sailboat was located about two hours later in the Atlantic Ocean, a mile south of the Marc Basnight Bridge near Pea Island. The boat was stuck in shallow water in the surf zone about 60 feet offshore, the Coast Guard said.
The water was too shallow for a rescue by boat, but a crew from the Chicamacomico
Banks Fire and Rescue was able to walk Szabo back to shore as rescue boats and a jet ski staged nearby.
The Coast Guard put Szabo in a hotel that night, he said, and that’s where any government help stopped. At the time, the agency said U.S. Fish and Wildlife, which manages the Pea Island refuge, would work with Szabo to remove the boat. A spokesperson for U.S. Fish and Wildlife did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
Szabo said he is saddled with the cost of recovery, with estimates ranging from $10,000 to $40,000.
If he can get it out, Szabo’s convinced he can repair the boat’s damage, even after it was tossed in another storm over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
“Abandoning the boat is out of the question for me, it is a celebrity, “he said. Launched as the “Love Machine” in 1977, the boat is one of only three aluminum sailboats of its kind designed by Doug Peterson Yacht Design.
Szabo hadn’t yet registered and insured the boat, but it became his home after a divorce in Germany, where he worked as an architect before coming to the United States.
“I’m asking for help to save my boat, that’s all I have,” he said.
After the wreck, Szabo first stayed on his boat on the beach, where the mast could be seen from N.C. 12 north of the Basnight Bridge. He said hundreds of sightseers traipsed over to the wreck, eager to take photos of another victim of the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
“One morning I get up and there are a dozen photographers,” he said. “Hundreds of people came to see. They were coming in groups, parking five or six cars along the road, knocking on the boat. I am not a tourist attraction.”
Szabo put a sign nearby asking people not to take pictures, and to donate to help him salvage the boat and leave the Outer Banks. He has also established a GoFundMe for his cause.
“It’s a never ending nightmare,” said Szabo, who has been staying at local hotels the last few days. “It is a big boat and people believe it’s a luxury problem. But I have nothing else in this life, this is my home, I have nowhere else to go.”