Two sailboats on a cruise to nowhere
Washed up in a storm last year at Bluff Point, they remain unclaimed
Groton — Two sailboats that were blown ashore on a beach at Bluff Point State Park and Coastal Reserve during a storm last October remain abandoned months later.
The vessels, named Waypoint and Motivation, on the sandy shore have piqued the interest of passersby, such as Stephanie Belser, who walks the Bluff Point trails every two or three days.
Belser said she first noticed the boats, located pretty far down what is officially called Bushy Point Beach, a day or two after a nor’easter in October. She called the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to report them and was told the agency had received a lot of calls about the vessels.
She said what piqued her curiosity is that the boats remain on the shore months later with no apparent movement so far.
DEEP spokesperson Will Healey said the Catalina sailboats were attempting to head out onto Long Island Sound last October, with the vessels tethered together since one of them had steering issues. The operators could not control the vessels due to a storm that day, and the sailboats were blown to shore.
Healey said the owners, who were from Texas, were accounted for at the time of the incident and said they would be making arrangements to remove the vessels. But he said the owners’ whereabouts are not known at this time, so DEEP’s Environmental Conservation Police have started the abandoned vessel process.
“They have been deemed abandoned, and EnCon Police have issued abandoned vessel paperwork to the DEEP Boating Division to start the process of removal,” Healey said.
He said the state receives about 130 filings per year under the state’s abandoned boat statute. According
to DEEP’s website, vessels in Connecticut are deemed abandoned under the following circumstances: if they are on a property for more than a day without permission from the property owner; if they are “free floating and unattended on the waters of the state” or “improperly registered and left on the waters of the state” for longer than a day; if they remain at a mooring for 60 days after payment became overdue; if they are abandoned “at a commercial facility for more than one year since payment for storage became overdue,” or if they are left in a public right of way during a “declared public rightof-way.”
If the current owner does not claim the boats after a certain time period, ownership of the vessels will transfer to the “Party with Standing” — the state, in this case — by state statute and then their final disposition will be up to DEEP’s Environmental Conservation Police.
The boats were last registered in Rhode Island, though the registrations are expired, Healey said. Gail Mastrati, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, said neither boat has been actively registered in Rhode Island since 2015 and 2014.
He said DEEP and EnCon are investigating and no further information was immediately available.
The Coast Guard was notified of the sailboats but was not involved because there was no need for search and rescue and there also was no pollution, such as fuel or oil, said Ensign Sarah Dupre, public affairs officer at Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound. The boats are located on state property and DEEP is in charge from start to finish.
City of Groton Harbormaster Jeff Dziedzic, whose coverage area spans from around Mumford Cove to the Thames River past the Naval Submarine Base and who was among those who responded to the reports of the boats on the beach, said he initially was concerned that a high tide could pull the boats back into the water and create a navigational hazard, so he was carefully monitoring that.
He said he was assured around mid-November, from visual observation, that the boats were not going to re-enter the water. He noted that storm winds and higher tides over the past couple of months have pushed the boats higher up onto the beach.
Months after they appeared on the beach, the boats continue to draw people’s attention, with some people walking by take photos of the boats or take “selfies” of themselves with the vessels.