Harbor staff work to salvage the Rambo at Battery Point beach. (Emily Files)

Harbor staff work to salvage the Rambo at Battery Point beach. (Emily Files)

Three passengers escaped safely after their 35-foot recreational boat, the Rambo, started to sink near Battery Point in Haines this morning. With the passengers off the boat, Haines Harbor staff launched an all-hands-on-deck effort to salvage the vessel on the shores of Battery Point.

When Alan, Angie and Destiny Bosworth stepped off the small dinghy that brought them to shore from their sinking boat, they were still shaken.

“[We were] very scared, very scared,” said Alan Bosworth. “There was a lot of emotions and stuff. We were lucky that we didn’t have to go in the water and get hypothermia or anything like that.”

Bosworth says his family was taking a ride to their property on the southern point of Sullivan Island. They were only about three miles from the small boat harbor when they noticed something was wrong.

“Both engines, just, one shut down and the other shut down and we opened the engine compartment, it was taking on water and there wasn’t much time to actually get off.”

Bosworth says everything happened very fast.

“It seemed like five, 10 minutes. We didn’t have much time to get off the boat, the back end started going down, the engine compartment filled up and we were actually on the back platform when the boat was underwater when we were stepping onto the dinghy and getting off.”

Habor staff got the call at about 11:30 a.m. and were the first on the scene.

“We arrived at the dinghy with the three occupants of the vessel Rambo,” said Harbor assistant Mark Allen. “They got off the ship and were dry still. We had an assisting vessel, Jerry Erny’s vessels. He took his family back to the small boat harbor. Now we’re still at Battery Point…”

Assistant Harbormaster Gabe Thomas works to move the Rambo ashore Thursday afternoon. (Emily Files)

Assistant Harbormaster Gabe Thomas works to move the Rambo ashore Thursday afternoon. (Emily Files)

Allen, Harbormaster Sean Bell and Assistant Harbormaster Gabe Thomas towed the Rambo about a mile to the shore of Battery Point Beach. They spent about four hours using a dewatering pump to keep the boat afloat.

“We got our pumps, we got it drying out, we’re winning,”

Rambo owner Bosworth says the fateful voyage was one of the last trips his family was planning to take on the boat. They had just sold it to a new owner and had an inspection done. He says the Rambo has always been reliable.

“We bought in Everett, Washington and we brought it all the way up the Inside Passage to Haines here. It was a really good boat.”

Bosworth said that he thinks a ‘deadhead’, or a submerged log, took a rudder out and put a hole in the boat. The harbor staff anchored the Rambo to Battery Point beach after high wide went out Thursday afternoon. A salvage crew from Juneau is scheduled to retrieve the beached vessel Friday morning. Bosworth says he thinks it will likely be a total loss.