Courtesy photos. Volunteers pick up the beached wreckage of a 46-foot trimaran that broke loose from its mooring in Ponce Inlet overnight, struck the South Jetty and literally shattered into thousands of pieces, before washing ashore along a half-mile stretch of the New Smyrna Beach coastline, just noth of the Beachway ramp.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- It took the better part of the day to clean up a half-mile stretch of coastline from the Beachway approach and north of thousands of wooden pieces from a 46-foot-long boat that broke apart overnight while moored in Ponce Inlet.
The 1965 trimaran with a wooden hull came undone from the mooring and apparently drifted, apparently crashing into the boulders of the South Jetty and breaking up.
"There are literally thousands of pieces of lumber," said Capt. Scott Petersohn, spokesman for the Volusia County Beach Patrol before the clean-up was completed. "It just busted into splinters."
The boat, "Cool Change," was valued at $30,000 and owned by Robert Werner, who did not have insurance on it.
That stretch of the beach was closed while a dozen or so volunteers assisted the Beach Patrol in removing the debris, which included embedded nails and screws.