The unified command charged with removing the American Challenger from the rocks north of Dillon Beach has run out of funds, suspending its operations and leaving the decaying boat stranded once again after months of recovery efforts. In an online update earlier this month, the coalition led by the United States Coast Guard said it had dismantled its cliff-top winch system and that the shipwreck would remain in place “for the foreseeable future.”
“Most of it does have to do with funding,” said Lt. Sondrakay Kneen, a public information officer with the Coast Guard. “The trust fund that was originally funding the operation has reached its maximum amount.”
The Coast Guard and other agencies have already spent more than $12 million to recover the 90-foot vessel. Since the pot of money allocated from the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund dried up, the Coast Guard, along with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, will seek a new source.
“There are various federal and state funding options that are being looked into by the other agencies of the Unified Command,” Lt. Kneen said, “but none that have been secured as of yet.”
Meanwhile, another state agency is mounting its own strategy to pay for the removal. The California State Lands Commission, which oversees the state’s tidal and submerged land, plans to apply for a grant from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine debris program next month. The American Challenger will be just one of the targets for the NOAA grant, which could amount to up to $15 million. The marine debris program is funded through President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and is set to dole out $56 million in grants statewide by the end of the year.
The Challenger, once a productive fishing vessel in the Puget Sound, has been lodged on rocks on an inaccessible stretch of Marin coastline since it broke free from its tow while en route to a
scrapyard in Mexico a year and a half ago. The unified command of public agencies first considered a plan to refloat the boat with foam, but later deemed that effort infeasible.
In July, the pulling began. Crews mounted a huge winch system with three cables on a nearby cliff and yanked with 300 tons of pressure, eventually moving the boat about 50 feet during high tides, all while keeping its hull in one piece. But there were still more than 100 feet to shore when, after weeks of pulling, the command determined last month that the Challenger was too heavy to move across another series of rocks. “That operation hit its maximum potential, as far as they could pull with the tide,” Lt. Kneen said.
With the boat 50 feet closer to land, salvage contractors removed some petroleum from its tanks, and used a helicopter to remove more than 26 tons of steel and debris, including the anchor and various cables. There are still roughly 5,500 gallons worth of fuel tanks that the contractors have not been able to examine because they are submerged, but the boat was largely drained of fuel when it was being towed, and any direct threat it ever posed to the environment has been averted, officials said.