Demolition crews were hard at work early Thursday morning after dismantling a 50-foot yacht on the Pompano Beach shoreline. – Demolition crews were hard at work early Thursday morning, dismantling a 50-foot yacht on the Pompano Beach shoreline.
The massive vessel was once moored at the Hillsboro Beach inlet and washed up on the shoreline nearly one month after Hurricane Nicole.
Pompano Beach Communications Director Sandra King said the owner was not available to claim the boat, so the city had no choice but to dump it.
“We’re gonna take the boat out by pieces after it’s demolished and basically bring it to the dump,” said King.
King told Local 10 News’ Liane Morejon that city workers helped remove the boat so that nobody would face any kind of repercussions.
“We’ve got mechanics out here, our garage folks are out here, so are public works, so we can carefully get this thing out of here without any kind of repercussion,” she said.
Bulldozers were brought in to break the yacht apart piece by piece.
Sky 10 flew over the shoreline where there was very little of the boat left.
King said the owner of the boat is currently in prison, so authorities had to follow the legal process of removing the vessel.
“Unfortunately, the owner is in prison, so we stickered the derelict vessel and gave them 21 days for the family or whoever it was, to get the boat out of there,” she said.
A family member was at the scene with wrenches, hoping to take home the yacht’s engine, but the parts itself were too heavy to lift.
“We worked out with a family member who happens to be a mechanic to come get these engines, but they’re so heavy, he couldn’t get them out himself,” King said.
Officials said measures were also taken to keep fuel and debris out of the ocean.
King said that as random as South Florida can be sometimes, this was a unique situation.
“Only in South Florida, you know, can you have a yacht itself with the owner in prison,” said King. “It’s just, it’s not something you see every day.”
The city of Pompano Beach said they will be footing the bill for the demolition and removal costs of the vessel and made an agreement with the family of the yacht’s owner so they can sell the engines to reimburse the city.