Trawler now afloat after Herculean effort

They waited for high tide. Then they tried pulling. They even dug a trench in a sandbar to free a scallop trawler beached on Kiawah Island.

The Coast Guard oversaw a week and a half worth of efforts to free the 77-foot Nanami. In the end, a large trench and lots of giant inflatable bags helped a 1,000-horsepower tug boat wrest the vessel back into the water about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.

"Probably one of the tougher ones that we had to do in the last 20 years," said Joe Beasenburg, the owner of Charleston Marine Services, a salvage company that assisted the Coast Guard. "She had been driven all the way up on the beach on an extremely high tide."

The Nanami ran aground Nov. 14, a day after its anchor chain broke. An attempt to tow the vessel off the beach last week failed.

The Coast Guard's Lt. J.G. James Litzinger said that no pollutants made it into the environment and that authorities had removed most of the 1,250 gallons of diesel fuel from the tank as a precaution. There were no fines but the Coast Guard planned to recover expenses from the owners.

When it ran aground, the trawler had been on its way to Wadmalaw Island for refitting as a shrimp boat, Litzinger said.

The journey originated in New Jersey in October. The trawler made it only as far as Lewes, Del., before the Coast Guard ordered it to stop for cleaning. It remained there about a week before leaving Nov. 1.

Three days later, the trawler broke down off Cape Hatteras, N.C. Two Coast Guard cutters spent the better part of two days towing it to Southport, N.C.

The trawler also stopped in Georgetown to drop off a woman who had hitched a ride from Delaware.

On the final Kiawah leg of the journey, a tug boat from Stevens Towing pulled the Nanami through a ditch permitted by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Coast Guard and Charleston Marine Services.

Beasenburg said excavators spent the night digging the ditch, which was 30 feet wide, 8 feet deep and 200 feet long. Once everything was in place, the final pull took about a half hour.

Since the boat had gotten stuck during a full-moon tide of about 8.5 feet, they had to wait for another high tide to free it.

The best they could do was Tuesday, when the tide reached about 6.5 feet. Even so, they needed to use numerous inflatable bags with a combined capability of lifting 200,000 pounds to help the vessel float.