I swear I could smell it as soon as I crossed the Indian River and came onto Merritt Island. It is a very distinctive odor and I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being involved in the aftermath of several incidents like the one I was quickly approaching. The odor became stronger the closer I got to Port Canaveral and it is a smell that you recognize at once. As I crossed the Banana River my eyes started to water as my nose filled with the the charred essence of nautical dreams. I may wax poetic at times but never was a description truer than the previous one for nothing is as unrecoverable as a boat that has been on fire, except maybe for one that has sank.
At the junction where SR 528 ceases to be and becomes A1A I could see the smoldering remains of two of the innocent victims of Sunday’s event. Two sailboats sitting side by side all by themselves, set apart from the other boats and yachts in the service yard. Both boats were up on screw jacks with blue tarps stretched beneath them.
I made my way into the service yard at Cape Marine, parked my truck and walked over to where the two boats had been staged. Black water was still dripping from what was left of the hull and deck of the smaller of the two boats. Small tufts of firefighting foam blew across the ground like lonely tumbleweeds. Looking at these two boats was bad enough but when I asked where the other boat was, the one that had been the cause, unintentionally, of the fire I was directed to a chain linked barb-wired enclosure. Despite flashing my World Of Boating press credential, a twenty dollar bill, I was not able to gain access to the secured area.
I spied a ladder laying on the ground and while the fire investigators were busy with the two sailboats I placed the ladder against the fence and climbed up in order to get a look at what had once been a beautiful 35′(?) sportfish boat. It was hard to judge the size because once the boat had caught on fire and burned through its moooring lines, which then put it in contact with the two sailboats, it was towed out to a shallow area behind the cruise ship terminal and left to burn. Burn to the waterline. And so it did.
Nothing burns like fiberglass and resin and nothing smells like burnt fiberglass and resin. The deck, what was left of it, had collapsed into the cockpit and cabin. I could see the bow rail but there wasn’t much else left that could define the deck. It was really nothing more than a melted mass of fiberglass surrounded by yellow tape.
The cause of the fire is still yet to undetermined, although I think we will find that it was electrical in nature. What we do know is this. The sportfish caught fire while in its slip at the Port Canaveral Yacht Club. It burned through its mooring lines and drifted into the sailboats which then caught fire. The sportfish was towed out to a shallow area, which was boomed off, and left to burn. Thankfully there was no loss of life or injuries although one woman, for some crazy reason decided to jump off her boat which was docked at Cape Marina and started to swim towards the boats on fire. She was making some kind of heroic attempt to save lives(?) and almost lost hers in the process due to the fact that the boats moored nearby were pulling out of their slips in order to get as far away from the fire as possible. Imagine a mall parking lot emptying on Christmas Eve after every customer has been held inside until 11:59PM. You get the idea.
Nothing will but fear into a boat owner like hearing that there’s a fire at the place where you keep your boat moored, stored, or docked. We had one at the marina to the right of the yacht club and two in the marina to the left. That is what prompted my unscheduled trip to the port and fortunately our yachts were safe and undamaged.
As more information is released I will pass it along as this will be something that all boaters will be able to learn from.
Capt. Patrick
Hidden in Plain Sight? Not really but here ya go anyway.
Link to the video footage of the burned boats along with an original backing track by the supergroup, Uba Dio.
