Well, we have a mystery on our hands. An abandoned shrimping boat mysteriously washed to shore in Florida, sparking a police investigation into exactly what happened.
The boat was unmanned. It was a 50-foot shrimping boat named Miss Montie. It ran aground at Beverly Beach least Sunday. Prior to it running aground, authorities tried to reach the crew. But they discovered there was no crew, the department said in a social media post.
They wrote, "At approximately 6:05 pm, crews from the Flagler Beach Fire Department, were dispatched to a shrimp boat that had washed ashore in the area of 2480 N. Oceanshore Blvd. Upon arrival, crews attempted to make vocal contact with the crew with no response. A search of the vessel was conducted with no findings. The United States Coast Guard were contacted and it was revealed that the crews was accounted for. The scene was turned over to local law enforcement who will await on FWC."
Shrimping Boat Aground
Later, the Coast Guard learned that the crew left the boat prior to the boat going aground.
"We are just making sure that everything looks like it's buttoned up, the vessel is still upright, it's not capsizing or anything," Coast Guard Marine Science Technician Brandan Blackwell said. "It's a steel hull, so it shouldn't fall apart overnight or anything crazy like that."
According to Corey Thomas, the captain of Miss Montie, the ship lost power on Friday night. He called the Coast Guard that came and rescued him and his crew. But they told him, "The [Coast Guard] told me they couldn't tow me. And I couldn't understand why they couldn't tow me. They told me it was too dangerous."
According to Thomas, they took him to shore. Thomas was in the process of trying to get someone to tow the boat. But meanwhile, Miss Montie drifted miles away and later ran aground. Now, Thomas has hired a company to come tow the shrimping boat off the beach. So while the situation was mysterious, it sounds like it has been handled now.
