The battered sailboat Layla has been junking up the view from Maple Cove for almost eight months. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

A wrecked sailboat that’s been lodged against the tiny boardwalk at Red Bank’s Maple Cove since Hurricane Sandy is finally about to cleared away.

Sammy Fitkin, a supervisor with the post-disaster debris management company Crowder Gulf, plans to assess as early as today whether the battered vessel, called the Layla, can be floated out on a high tide or if special equipment will be needed to remove it, he tells redbankgreen.

The boat has been an eyesore for eight months, generating complaints from kayakers and rowers, visitors and residents of a nearby high-rise.

Fitkin said he did not know who the registered owner of the boat is.

Once the vessel is removed, it will be taken to a salvage yard in Brick Township, where it will be destroyed if the owner does not claim it and pay salvage fees, Fitkin said.

Crowder Gulf has a contract with the state of New Jersey to clear hurricane debris from waterways along most of the Monmouth County coast, Fitkin said.

In the Navesink River, “we’ve recovered four or five boats, and there’s a couple more to go,” he said.