The vessel had to be torn apart in order for it to be removed. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A sailboat that got stuck at Maple Cove in Red Bank during Hurricane Sandy was finally removed Monday, more than eight months later.
Sammy Fitkin, a supervisor with the post-disaster debris management company Crowder Gulf, had hoped to just float the vessel, called the Layla, out on a high tide. But the tide never got high enough, as it did during the storm that brought it in, and the boat lay against the promenade in the mudflats at the foot of Maple Avenue.
“The water wasn’t here to do it,” Fitkin tells redbankgreen. “So this was our only option.”
Fitkin, whose employer has a contract with the state of New Jersey to clear hurricane debris from waterways along most of the Monmouth County coast, said a vessel was in the river picking up debris from the demolition job.
What was left of the Layla was headed to a landfill for recycling, he said.
