‘Sometimes you just got to do the right thing.' It took a team effort to remove abandoned boat from St. Croix River.

Yahoo

20-05-2025

Wayne Prokosch, of River City Welding in Stockholm, Wis., may never have to buy another drink in the St. Croix River Valley.
Prokosch spent much of the weekend working to remove an abandoned 54-foot cruiser from the St. Croix River near Hudson, Wis. — a move that's led to numerous people up and down the river offering to buy him dinner and drinks. People were even cheering from shore as he towed the Sweet Destiny down river on Sunday morning, he said.
'I'm not a hero,' he said. 'We do this every day on the job, so it's no big deal to us. Everybody's just happy to see it gone, you know? And so am I. I got sick of the phone calls about it. There's not very many people who are capable of doing the project. Sometimes you just got to do the right thing, you know?'
Prokosch started the job, along with three other men, on Friday morning and got the boat — called Sweet Destiny — to the Hudson Excursion docks in Hudson owned by St. Croix River Cruises. Prokosch worked with Josh Stokes, a River City Welding employee, and Gordy and Dave Jarvis from St. Croix Cruises and the Afton House Inn to get the water pumped out from the boat and towed away.
Prokosch had a prior commitment on Saturday — his daughter was graduating from the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire — so the boat stayed docked at the Hudson Excursion dock with constant pumping and supervision, Dave Jarvis said.
By 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning, Prokosch was back on site with his barge and crane.
'We had our equipment up in the area anyway, so we just decided we could take a few hours out of our day,' Prokosch said. 'I figured we would just swing in there and make it happen, and get rid of the story and get rid of the headache and just all the crap that went with it.'
It took until about 1:30 p.m. to make the 50-mile journey to Hager City, Wis., which included a journey through Lock #3 on the Mississippi River.
'We had to keep the pumps running the whole time because the boat was leaking like crazy — 15 gallons every 10 minutes,' he said.
Once they got to Hager City, across the river from Red Wing, Minn., crews hauled the boat out on a hydraulic trailer and put it on the back of a semitractor trailer belonging to EdgeWater Boat Storage & Transport for the five-mile trip to the company's storage area, he said.
Prokosch, who has worked on the river since 1992, said he has done work for the cities of Hudson and Prescott, Wis., in the past.
'That's another reason why I did it: just to do a public duty,' he said. 'I just wanted to get rid of all the talk about the boat on the river and just put it behind us.'
He said he hopes Grayson McNew, the man who abandoned the boat on Beer Can Island in August 2024, after it started to take on water, learned a valuable lesson from the experience.
'If it sounds too good to be true, most of the time, it usually is,' Prokosch said.
A man who hopes to restore the boat paid River City Welding $5,000 for their work; the job would normally cost much more than that, said Dave Jarvis, who helped coordinate the removal. The man, who asked not to be identified, also paid $1,300 EdgeWater for their services, Jarvis said.
'All these government agencies couldn't get it done,' he said. 'But two river veterans (Prokosch and Gordy Jarvis) could. It's been an eyesore and, frankly, an embarrassing thing for our community for too long.'
McNew, of Afton, owes the City of Hudson about $21,000 in fines for abandoning the boat, Hudson City Administrator Brentt Michalek said Monday.
'It's already gone to collections,' he said. 'We could choose to waive some of it, but there are costs that are already incurred by the city that he is responsible for. This wasn't a cheap thing for us. A lot of time was spent trying to get this individual to move his boat.'
The Jarvises plan to work with the Hudson business community to raise extra funds for Prokosch, Gordy Jarvis said.
'Wayne deserves some some recognition,' Gordy Jarvis said. 'He's such a humble guy that he doesn't really want anything, but he's so deserving, and the community knows it, and they want to be a part of that.'
Dave Jarvis said he hopes the man who paid the initial fee to remove the boat gets it fixed up and seaworthy again.
'Beauty's in the eye of the beholder,' he said. 'All I can say is, God bless anyone who wants to try to fix it up. It's going to take a lot of love and the right knowledge and the right person. But it may happen. You never know. One man's trash is another man's treasure.'
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