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The Westport emergency dive team pulled a 16-foot boat out of the water yesterday at the Compo Beach marina. Fire Department Lt. Ernest Ruot estimates the wreck is 25 years old. No one knows who it belonged to or how long it was buried there. Even the registered name of the boat, normally painted across the back of the stern is lost to time.
Its been down there so long the fiberglass is shredded, said Ruot. Some members of the team thought they could recover the Hull Identification Number, but once the wreck surfaced it was apparent that would not be possible. If it is much older than the mid-1970s it may not have ever had a identification number, said Ruot.
The dive team became aware of the wreck when using the marinas boat launch. When we would bring our boats and buoys through here we would keep catching on something, said Police Sgt. Eric Woods. Eventually curiosity got the best of them and an exploratory dive discovered the wreck. We tried to raise it a month ago but the lift bags werent up to it.
The Bridgeport Police Department had a set of inflatable bags big enough to get the job done. They joined the Westport dive team for yesterdays operation. Once the wreck floated to the service, the joint team used a line and one of the emergency vehicles to pull it to shore.
During the recovery, Divers went into the water in pairs. On an emergency dive a third would join them. Support crew on the surface fed them instructions through wired communication lines. Police diver Pete Biagotti described the murky conditions around the wreck as Braille diving because they couldnt see much further than a foot ahead, even with diving lights.
The first attempt to raise the boat met a minor setback when one of the inflated lift bags ripped loose from the boat, bringing a corroded piece of railing with it. However a second bag seemed to raise the bow out of the muck. By the end of the day, the rest of the boat came up in one piece.
After the first attempt failed Biagotti, who did diving in the military, was eager to get in the water and try his hand at getting the rest of the wreck up. Ive been land-lubbing too long, he said while fellow divers helped him get his gear on.
Yesterdays salvage dive served as a training exercise for the team. Rout said they perform a dive every month regardless of the weather. According to him, once submerged the only difference between a nice day and a winter storm is the temperature of the water.
Next month the dive team will use their training time to work on the area where the towns fireworks barges anchor. There are structures the barges hook into that require maintenance.
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