My O’Day 22 Sailboat Blog

I saw this post on Craigs List the other day and went to go see it yesterday. I was in Santa Barbara for the afternoon and I swung by there to find this beached sailboat. I forgot to bring a camera with me but I snapped some low-res photos with my camera phone.

It is a Santana 27 and looks to be in relative good shape before it ran aground. It some how broke loose from anchor at the infamous “Fool’s Harbor” on the east side of Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. From what I heard, this boat washed up on the 19th of May and the owners have until the 2nd of June to get it off the beach. According to the Craig’s List post, if you can get it off, it is yours. I don’t know if its worth the effort at this point. Just from what I can see, there are going to be a lot of work to get her back to shipshape. The spade rudder is gone, one of the sidestays have snapped off and took a piece of the port side spreader with it. There is no motor any more. If anything, this boat can be scavenged for parts. Even the parts won’t be worth much to anyone unless you have a similar boat that needed alot of work.

This is pretty unfortunate for the owner. I don’t know what exactly happened to it to cause it to break loose from its anchor. Apparently the anchor was still connected to the bow when it washed up so it just dragged itself all the way up the beach. Unless it was a feeble attemtp to try to kedge away from the sand. There hasn’t been much weather in the area so it must have just anchored really poorly out there. I would not be surprised though if this was a sabotage job either since I know there are some shady characters that live aboard at the free anchorage. They often will mess with your boat if they see it just left alone. As it is a free anchorage, there tends to be a lot of homeless live-aboards and they don’t like having too much of a crowd in their backyard. What a shame. Good luck to the owner getting her off of the beach. If you are around the area, go check it out at East Beach in Santa Barbara…

This is a photo from someone else toko the day before I took mine above. Note the anchor line is still attached and it is still pointed away from the beach. It may have been used in a fail attempt to kedge the boat off of the beach.