Boat runs aground at Cape Point

The National Park Service’s Turtle Patrol and other beachgoers were startled to find a 30-foot sportfishing boat with twin outboard engines sitting high and dry at Cape Point early this morning.

According to David Carter, the National Park Service’s Hatteras Island district ranger, the boat, Dagsy Leigh, ran aground overnight.

There were two people on board and neither was injured.

Carter said the boat has a New Jersey owner and its homeport is Brielle, N.J. It is leased to a South Carolina captain, he said, and docked at Teach’s Lair.

Paul Rosell of TowboatUS of Hatteras was on the Cape Point beach today figuring out how to best get the boat moved.

Rosell said the boat’s operator told him that he had experienced mechanical problems with the boat on the shoals and drifted onto the beach.  He added that the boat did not appear to be damaged.

However, because of rough ocean conditions at the Point, the plan was to load the boat on a trailer and tow it off the beach, rather than tow it back into the ocean directly against the breaking waves.

A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard Sector North Carolina said the agency was aware of the grounding and it had been checked out by personnel from Station Hatteras Inlet. The Coast Guard, he said, did not take a report since the incident was being handled by the Park Service and that efforts were underway to remove it.