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Hurricane Katrina came ashore making a direct hit on Diamondhead Mississippi. The house was stripped clean by the tidal surge. The Mako 21 was found about 250 yards into the woods to the North of the house.
Here's the fun part...
It was decided the we could retrieve his boat from the woods. All we needed was
a crew of guys who are passionate about the old Mako boats. We assembled a crew
of five. Myself, Jason Thornhill (jcthornhill), Eddie Ring (RingLeader), Bobby
Wartman (warthog5), Jason Steckler Mako235), and Dan Arroyo (1980Mako).
The best piece of equipment we could come up with was a Bobcat mini excavator.
We had doubts at first, but ended up doing just fine with the little machine.
Otherwise we had 4 chainsaws, Bobby's A-frame, and a can of liquid Crisco spray
that we found in the woods not far from the boat.
It took us about 1.5 hours to go from this:
To this:
We pretty well
leveled a path that was 12 ft wide all the way back to the boat. Naturally we
tried to pick the path of least resistance all the way to the boat. We mostly
had to cut trees that were already broken/fallen and alot of small stuff. All
the stumps had to be cut as close to the forest floor as possible. We had to
move all the debris that had nails and sharp stuff as well.
I was surprised. We busted our way through the debris at the edge of the forest
and then had to build a bridge out of debris so we could get the machine and the
trailer in the area. That alone wore me out. After a water break, we walked back
to the Mako and I started to really worry. It took us almost 2 hours to make 25
yds! We had over 200 yds to go. The consensus was that it was going to take 2 or
3 solid days to get the boat out! Surprisingly, another 1.5 hours later we had
cut our way to the boat!
Next, we put the trailer about 25 yds into the woods so we wouldn't have to drag the boat across all the debris. We made a good decision there.
Back at the boat, we cut the trees away from the starboard side and got a chain on the bow eye. A little pull from the machine and we were moving.
We stopped to pump
the water out of the bracket and bilge... the less weight the better. The drain
plug was left out during the storm, but once the boat came to rest the drain
hole was clogged with mud.
We made good time towing her out. It probably only took 30 minutes to get her to the trailer. We used some sheets of plywood to cover stumps that we knew we were going to have to slide the boat over.
Here's Bobby and Dan keeping an eye on the progress. There's a real nice Viking sitting back there if anyone has the balls to go for that kind of a job.
We can finally see the street.
And the trailer.
