CAPE ELIZABETH, Maine — During Thursday’s nor’easter storm, the sea tore the MV Destiny from her mooring near Peaks Island, carried her across Portland harbor to Cape Elizabeth, and utterly splintered her on the rocks at Cliff House Beach.
Lieutenant Commander Ryan Koroknay, with the U.S. Coast Guard's South Portland station, said the Peaks Fire Department called the station to report the Destiny floating unmoored. The Coast Guard found and called the owner of the boat, who confirmed no one was on board—avoiding a potentially dangerous rescue attempt in the rough seas.
Now Koroknay's only focus is making sure no pollutants are leaking into the bay.
"We have no reports at this time of any active discharge or sheen from the vessel," he said during a Wednesday interview. "There are a couple of inboard engines that originally, obviously, powered the vessel, that we are keeping an eye on."
Maine is famous for its jagged coastline, and Cliff House Beach is anything but a beach.
The force of the storm and the unforgiving rocky beach tore the boat into so many pieces, the debris field could hardly be recognized as that which belonged to sea vessel.
The scene was a reminder of nature's power.
"A vessel like this, to get, kind of, just completely blown apart, I would say, is somewhat rare," Koroknay said. "But mother nature is always gonna win."
Sometime during the six days after the wreck, larger pieces were carried up from the beach to nearby Sea View Avenue.
That is where we met Dan Harriman. A commercial fisherman and marine contractor from Cape Elizabeth, Harriman said the Destiny was familiar to him. He saw two options for getting the debris out.
"Either get some heavy equipment up here to try to pick it up over the bank, and take the chance of disturbing the park and the land here, or try to come by water on a barge," he said.
No pollution, so far, from a wreck that destructive was good news Wednesday. But there was much still to be picked up at the beach.