A 43-foot Bayliner was inundated with water early Sunday morning, Harbormaster Matt Clarke said Tuesday. Clarke said he got a call from a graveyard shift harbor officer who noticed around 3 a.m. that the boat — named the Eagle Spirit — had sunk in its stall and was suspended by the vessel’s mooring lines.

“Our basic protocol is to make sure that there’s nobody entrapped, no potential for loss of life or injury. And then we start looking at it and making sure that any pollution can be either cleaned up or mitigated,” Clarke said.

Clarke said that there was no sheen evident, so they don’t think there was any pollution from the sunken boat into the surrounding harbor waters. At the time of response, he and the harbor officer who found the boat proceeded to install a keel hole cradling line, where they fished a line underneath the keel of the vessel and used it to suspend the boat to the float system. This method works to prevent the boat from additional rolling, shifting or sinking. The vessel was also encircled with a containment curtain for added protection against potential spills or pollutants entering the harbor waters.

Clarke said that the dive salvage contractor did find a “cracked, suction sea strainer for a wash-down hose,” which did not appear adequately winterized and could have created a freeze-thaw-ice plug.

“We had a period of deep freeze about 10 days, two weeks ago. We think that it’s probable that the sea water froze in the plumbing, burst the plumbing, leaving a temporary ice plug in its place which then thawed as temperatures warmed this week, creating the ingress for water and flooding,” said Clarke.

The entire evolution of the flooding and sinking of the Eagle Spirit occurred in under 45 minutes and was captured over the harbor video surveillance cameras.

Clarke says his message to boat owners is not to forget about their boat in the harbor, even if it’s wintertime and you’re not using it.

“Remain engaged. It’s important during these periods when we transition into a deep freeze, followed by a rapid thaw, and also sometimes even after heavy rainfall. That is what I consider to be the ideal boat-sinking climate. If we have plumbing that is not sufficiently winterized … it can lead vessels vulnerable to flooding.”

Clarke also suggested that those who have boats in the harbor regularly check their bilges, batteries and alarms to help protect against future preventable sinkings. He also reiterated that there are Homer Harbor staff on duty 24 hours a day and that they often catch these problems before they reach this level.

“We never turn our backs on it. For every one boat that sinks, we probably catch 50 in the act. What the public may not understand is that the harbormaster is walking the float systems three times a day, looking for signs of distress and checking on all sorts of other things. We do a lot of preventative, proactive work catching vessels that are partially flooding or in the process and reporting it to the owners and prevent it from sinking.”

Clarke said that the owners were contacted about the boat and hope to have it fully salvaged. The boat was successfully removed from the harbor Tuesday morning.

The Coast Guard and Department of Environmental Conservation were both notified of the incident.

Chloe Pleznac is a general assignment reporter for the Homer News. She can be reached at chloe.pleznac@homernews.com or by calling 907-615-3193.