The Coast Guard has seen about everything protecting America.
Sometimes they run into the unexplainable.
And Coast Guard officials were baffled when they discovered this mystery on a Florida beach.
An empty boat washes ashore on a Florida beach
People looking to have fun at a beach on Florida’s Atlantic coast were stunned when they found an empty ship.
A 50-foot shrimp boat washed up on Beverly Beach, Florida, without any crew members.
The Flagler Beach Fire Department was called to investigate the boat named Miss Montie.
Fire Department officials contacted the Coast Guard to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Coast Guard Marine Science Technician Brendan Blackwell investigated the boat, which still had hundreds of gallons of fuel.
“We are just making sure that everything looks like it’s buttoned up, the vessel is still upright, it’s not capsizing or anything. It’s a steel hull, so it shouldn’t fall apart overnight or anything crazy like that,” Blackwell stated.
The ship drew a crowd of onlookers who took pictures with it.
Ormond Beach resident Jeff Olkowski took his family to see the boat.
“It is pretty wild to see it out on the beach. It’s not something that you see every day,” Olkowski said.
St. Augustine resident Mackenzie Kohlbeck traveled to take a picture of the ship.
“I grew up in the Jacksonville area, big shrimping area, so I’ve always loved shrimp boats, but they’re hard to get pictures of when they are all the way out in the water,” Kohlbeck said.
The Flagler Beach Fire Department discovered from the Coast Guard that the crew had been forced to abandon the ship.
“I’ve never seen a boat this large stranded before so it’s kind of surreal to see but glad everybody’s ok,” Jaime Burdick stated.
Mystery grows about the ship on Beverly Beach
Miss Montie’s captain, Corey Thomas, told the News Journal that the ship lost power while it was out at sea.
He contacted the Coast Guard for help, but officials gave him a strange answer.
“I didn’t want to leave the boat drifting,” Thomas explained. “The [Coast Guard] told me they couldn’t tow me. And I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t tow me. They told me it was too dangerous.”
Thomas put down anchor, and a Coast Guard ship took him and his crew back to shore.
He found someone willing to tow the boat back to a dock, but the waves were too rough to pull it off.
Miss Montie began drifting because the anchor wasn’t strong enough to keep it in place.
A second anchor broke, and the ship ended up washing ashore on Beverly Beach.
The boat, which was built in 1984, suffered about $11,000 worth of damage after the ordeal, but it would be salvageable with repairs.
Miss Montie’s captain turned to GoFundMe to help get his ship seaworthy again.
“Thomas and other local shrimpers are struggling to keep their occupation afloat because so many restaurants opt for cheaper shrimp from shrimp farms,” the GoFundMe stated. “There is nothing like fresh shrimp and Captain Corey desperately wants to keep providing fresh shrimp to your table.”
Beverly Beach’s mystery ship avoided the worst-case scenario and hopefully can get back out on the high seas.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
