Twincities.com. By Mary Divine.
Mike Olson wasn’t optimistic Friday morning when he arrived at the Boom Site Landing north of Stillwater.
“I don’t think I can move it now,” he said.
Olson, 45, of Chicago City, was referring to his 26-foot white-and-blue fiberglass 1977 Pearson sailboat that has been frozen in the St. Croix River since Nov. 1.
Around 10:30 a.m., Olson retrieved a medium-sized Otter sport sled from his pickup truck, put on a life jacket and a winter hat and headed out on the frozen river to check on the sailboat he and his ex-fiancee purchased in September. A boat trailer was not included in the purchase price of $1,500, and Olson has been scrambling to come up with a plan to get the boat out of the water.
He hoped he might chisel it out on Friday morning, but soon realized that task would be impossible. “It’s totally frozen in there,” he said.
Instead, Olson made two trips out to the boat to check for damage — there was none — and to secure solar-powered landscape lights to it “to make other people aware of it,” he said.
“There wasn’t any water in it,” he said. “Everything looked pretty good. I plan to come out every week and check on it.”
He said he plans to leave it in the river and sail it this spring. “Why would I take it out just to put it back in again?” he said.
Minnesota does not have a formal program for addressing abandoned or derelict watercraft. If a boat sinks, however, and is not removed within 30 days, the owner is subject to a civil penalty of two to five times the cost to remove, process and dispose of it.
Leaving a boat in the water during a frozen Minnesota winter can carry numerous risks. Among them, a fibreglass hull can succumb to the intense pressures of expanding, shifting and heaving ice. Essentially, the boat can get destroyed or sunk.
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