Two months after its maiden voyage, Sheriff's Lake Erie patrol boat sinks in marina
Storms hit the Ottawa County shores with high winds starting late Wednesday. They were strong enough to cancel both the Miller Ferry and Kelleys Island Ferry lines by Thursday.
'We're not really too sure about what happened other than all the rain we had and the water that came up. The boat was tied up and we don't know if that caused it to be dragged under,' Chief Dep. Brad York said. 'We're thinking that there was a sieche that caused the water level to rise quickly. Plus, we have those dive doors and the mechanic said the dive doors were compromised.'
The boat was docked at the Gem Beach Marina in Port Clinton.
The actual cause of the boat sinking is still under investigation.
'We have a couple theories,' York said. 'With the weather, we sent a guy to check on the boat and he saw that it was taking on water; we immediately had everybody scrambling, but by the time we could do anything, it was completely submerged. They raised it by just pumping it out. They just put big pumps in there and pumped it right out.'
The top of the cabin was never completely submerged.
It was 7:04 a.m. July 31 when the boat started taking on water, but had not yet gone under. By 7:45 a.m., the boat was sitting on the floor of the marina. The pumps had it floating again two hours later.
'It was only submerged for maybe an hour. Our guys went down and pumped it out. It came right up. Right now, it's currently being dried out. The motors are OK," York said. "It had some water in the starboard engine, but they dried that out. It's doing OK. There's a lot of cosmetic (damage) inside the boat, and the electronics are probably ruined. It needs to be completely dried out and we will see what we can salvage.'
The boat cost $360,000, which was funded by the Department of Homeland Security. Its maiden voyage on Lake Erie was on June 2, 2025.
Getting the boat ready to patrol Lake Erie again could be expensive, but repair costs are yet to be determined. In addition to some marine electronics, the boat is outfitted with all electronics found in a standard patrol car, which run in the $30,000 price range.
The futuristic-looking craft is a 34-foot Novielli aluminum hull boat.
Sheriff Stephen Levorchick said he was confident that it would be up, running and back out on Lake Erie patrolling soon.
A seiche is a water phenomena, similar to tides, that are 'caused when strong winds and rapid changes in atmospheric pressure push water from one end of a body of water to the other … As recently as 2008, strong winds created waves 12-16 feet high in Lake Erie, leading to flooding near Buffalo, New York," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted.
rlapointe@gannett.com
419-332-2674
This article originally appeared on Port Clinton News Herald: Storm sieche swamps Sheriff's new boat in Port Clinton marina
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