{"id":7940,"date":"2026-08-28T14:38:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=7940"},"modified":"2026-08-28T14:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:38:22","slug":"salvage-crews-move-squid-boat-stuck-on-point-reyes-beach-but-demolition-likely-awaits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=7940","title":{"rendered":"Salvage crews move squid boat stuck on Point Reyes beach, but demolition likely awaits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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POINT REYES \u2014Salvage workers who had been struggling to pull a grounded fishing vessel out of the surf zone at Point Reyes National Seashore finally met with some success late Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Read more Exclusive: 49ers sought Palo Alto police report before disclosing Shanahan crash, records show<\/a><\/p>\n

Five days after the 58-foot Lake Bay ran aground on a sand bar on remote North Beach in Marin County, crews took advantage of an incoming tide \u2013 and the pulling power of a second bulldozer \u2013 to drag the stranded craft further up onto the sand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still kind of in the high tide area\u201d said Lt. Cmdr. Carey Lewis, the incident commander in charge of the Coast Guard\u2019s response to the emergency.<\/p>\n

Once the boat is far enough onto the beach, \u201cThey\u2019ll start the process of removing the squid,\u201d said Lewis, pinpointing the primary reason the boat has been so hard to budge: It has 40 tons of squid in its hold.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s extremely heavy with that squid in there,\u201d said Gene LaPointe, who was stringing yellow caution tape in a wide area around the commercial trawler late Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

Crews have been stymied getting all that calamari, now \u201ccongealed together,\u201d as Lewis put it, out of the tanks. After failing to make progress using a pair of four-inch pumps, said LaPointe, they rented a \u201cbad-ass\u201d six-inch pump.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that wasn\u2019t doing it either. It just was not moving squid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, LaPointe had taken part in an effort to dislodge the vessel with a bulldozer. Despite the salvagers\u2019 use of a heavy-duty pulley anchored by a pair of giant excavators \u2013 a rigging system that doubled the bulldozer\u2019s pulling power, he explained \u2013 the boat moved only a few feet.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The bulbous bow of the Lake Bay, a fiberglass craft built in 1975 and registered out of Smith River, California, was making the job of extracting the vessel even harder, said Lewis. \u201cIt\u2019s basically digging into the sand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the Coast Guard had considered pulling the Lake Bay back out to sea, Lewis said that once a boat of this size runs aground, as this one did, \u201cthe stability of that vessel is in question.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo even if you were able to pull it from where it\u2019s aground, there\u2019s no way to know there\u2019s no breach to the hull,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vessel could start taking on water,\u201d he added, raising the possibility that the diesel fuel it was carrying \u201ccould discharge in an environmentally sensitive area.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The coastal waters directly off the Point Reyes National Seashore are part of the federally protected Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Workers succeeded in emptying the Lake Bay\u2019s fuel tanks, extracting 1,400 gallons of diesel, along with 160 gallons of \u201chydraulic and lube oils,\u201d Lewis said.<\/p>\n

Rescuers ordered to stand down<\/h4>\n

After the Lake Bay foundered on that sandbar around 1 a.m. on Aug. 21, it sent out calls for assistance. Arriving before the Coast Guard was the Night Wind, a fishing boat out of Spud Point Marina in Bodega Bay. Its crew attached a tow line to the Lake Bay, according to several sources, and was trying to pull it into deeper waters when the Coast Guard arrived, and ordered a halt to that rescue operation.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard\u2019s decision to sacrifice the Lake Bay, rather than join the effort to rescue it, has stoked some anger in the North Bay\u2019s commercial fishing community, dredging up resentment around the Guard\u2019s previous responses to grounded vessels.<\/p>\n

In February 2024, a 57-ton fishing boat called the Aleutian Storm ran aground on a sandbar off Salmon Creek State Beach, on the Sonoma Coast.<\/p>\n

Like the skipper of the Lake Bay, the Aleutian Storm\u2019s captain radioed for help to the Coast Guard. As it did with the Lake Bay, the Guard responded with caution, erring on the side of safety and concern for the environment. Shallow water and breaking waves kept the Coast Guard rescue boat from coming within 700 feet of the Aleutian Storm,\u00a0 preventing an attempt to tow the stranded craft off the sandbar.<\/p>\n

Read more Victim of \u2018Happy Face Killer\u2019 identified 34 years after her body was found along a California highway<\/a><\/p>\n

It became grounded, then, over many days, was dismantled by heavy equipment and hauled away, piece by piece. That\u2019s now the likely fate of the Lake Bay.<\/p>\n

In the wake of this latest wreck, some members of the tightly knit local commercial fishing community have begun discussions with county officials, said veteran fisherman Dick Ogg, president of the Bodega Bay Fisherman\u2019s Marketing Association, to come up with some \u201cpotential options,\u201d which, in the case of future groundings, \u201cwould give fishermen and the Coast Guard an opportunity to work together to find a solution to get that boat off the sandbar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any such agreement, he said, would embrace the Guard\u2019s top priorities of \u201clife-safety,\u201d as he put it, as well as regard for environmental impacts.<\/p>\n

But it would also recognize what Ogg described as the fishermen\u2019s ability \u201cto potentially engineer a method to get that boat off the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

He and his peers \u201chave a good understanding of current flow, of wave action, of water depths \u2014 of what we can do to mitigate these potential issues\u201d that can arise when a vessel is grounded, Ogg\u00a0 said.<\/p>\n

What fishermen will likely ask for, he added, is a 36-hour window, after a vessel runs aground and isn\u2019t in immediate danger of sinking, that would give members of the fishing community a chance to save it.<\/p>\n

He and others are in process of preparing a pod, or container of equipment, to assist in case of such emergencies.<\/p>\n

That equipment will include various pumps, absorbent \u201coil pads,\u201d to capture leaking engine fluids or fuel, and\u00a0 a small robotic craft designed to deliver a tow line to a disabled vessel \u2013 eliminating the risk of collision with a rescue boat.<\/p>\n

From a fleet of \u2018tanks\u2019<\/h4>\n

The Lake Bay is a purse seiner, meaning it used its giant vertical net \u2013 now wadded up in a tangled pile on the beach \u2013 to encircle schools of fish (and most recently, squid), then close at the bottom like a drawstring purse.<\/p>\n

The craft was built in 1975 by Delta Marine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a Delta,\u201d said Ogg. \u201cThey are built phenomenally well, some of the best-made fiberglass boats on the ocean right now.\u201d Even five days after it ran aground, Ogg believes, the Lake Bay \u201ccould and would be repairable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are absolute tanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seeing it pulled ashore, later to be destroyed, \u201cis just hard for us to understand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo let\u2019s sit back, look at this and say, \u2018Okay, the next time this happens, what can we do, engineering-wise,\u2019\u201d to save the boat.<\/p>\n

Lewis acknowledged that \u201cthis is an incredibly stressful and emotional situation for the owner, and also the local community.\u201d He also pointed out the Coast Guard\u2019s responsibility to weigh the risk of \u201chaving a vehicle that size, with that amount of fuel, sink in a national marine sanctuary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the public would\u2019ve been happy about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Norway\u2019s crown prince becomes King Haakon VIII after his father\u2019s death<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Coast Guard\u2019s decision to sacrifice the Lake Bay, help its rescue, has stoked some anger in some of the North Bay’s tight-knit commercial fishing community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSalvage crews move squid boat stuck on Point Reyes beach, but demolition likely awaits - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=7940\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Salvage crews move squid boat stuck on Point Reyes beach, but demolition likely awaits - 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