In a story that made national headlines, a young couple from Colorado lost everything when their boat sank in John’s Pass several weeks ago.
Their boat got stuck on a sandbar that their navigation systems couldn’t see.
“We had a plan and we were going to follow it, and there is something out there that is not on any charts,” said Tanner Broadwell.
While Broadwell and his girlfriend, Nikki Walsh are being criticized for not having insurance, experienced fisherman say the disaster could have happened to anyone and will likely happen again if the channel isn’t fixed.
Captain Dylan Hubbard has more than two decades of experience navigating through John’s Pass in Pinellas County.
His family owns Hubbard’s Marina. After hearing the news of the Colorado couple who saved up for more than a year to live and sail on their 28-foot boat that sank in the channel at John’s Pass, he immediately knew the problem.
“The channel at low tide is less than 4-foot deep, which is not deep at all for any type of offshore vessel, and then for a sailboat- it’s impossible, even at high tide,” he said.
He says the channel at John's Pass is filled with sandbars caused by storms, most recently Hurricane Irma, limiting access for boats.
“Whether it's Irma, any type of tropical system, cold fronts, even just a hard-north breeze, that sand is moving into John's Pass more and more.”
Hubbard says they have to re-navigate their boats daily at the marina to keep them from running aground.
Captains at John’s Pass say this isn’t the first time a boat has sunk because of this very issue. We’re told the Army Corp of Engineers is responsible for maintaining this area and has a project underway to dredge the sand which was slated to begin January 1, but has since been delayed twice. Some say if that project would have been on schedule, what happened to Broadwell and Walsh could have been avoided.
“It's unfortunate someone has to lose everything they own before any type of publicity is brought to the problem,” Hubbard said.
Pinellas County officials are partnering with the Corp of Engineers to fix the problem also say work is now slated to begin in April, even though a contractor has been in place since September. When we asked why it’s taken so long, we were told that’s just the nature of these types of projects.
There are doubts the project will happen at all.
“Last time they got enough to do their beach re-nourishment projects and they were gone,” Hubbard said.
As for the couple, they’re not giving up on their dream to set out for open seas. Thanks to a GoFundMe page created to help them remove the boat from the ocean, the community has helped them raise more than $16,000.
The couple did not have insurance on the boat. They're unemployed and only saved enough money to last a few months. In light of what happened, they’re calling the incident a lesson learned and say when they get a new boat, it will be insured.
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