Classic WWII-Era Yacht Sinks Near Bremerton

 

The U.S. Coast Guard has set up a unified command to respond to the sinking of the historic yacht Cairdeas near Bremerton, Washington.

Cairdeas is a classic 34-meter yacht built in 1943 at the Fellows & Stewart Yard, and according to private databases she was designed by the famed naval architecture house of Sparkman & Stephens. The wooden-hulled vessel had been a familiar sight around the Northwest coast for decades and had been restored may times, but had reportedly fallen into disrepair in recent years.

Cairdeas had a history of resurrection. In her heyday, under charter to Warner Brothers for movie work, she hosted some of the biggest starts of the era, including Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson, according to a retrospective published in the Anacortes American in 1994. She burnt to the waterline in 1973, but was restored with an aluminum superstructure. Two decades later, in 1993, she sank while she was moored on the Fraser River in British Columbia, and her classic interiors were destroyed by flooding and removed. She was restored once more and resold to continue her career. 

Under current ownership, the yacht had sat idle for some time in Sinclair Inlet, according to local reports, and had been declared abandoned by the state in 2023. It ran aground last year in a windstorm, then sank completely last weekend. 

Resting on the bottom in Sinclair Inlet, Cairdeas is a spill risk, and the Coast Guard has responded accordingly. About 2,600 feet of boom has been strung out around the vessel, and divers are installing vent plugs to stop any discharge. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund has been tapped to pay for the immediate response; typically the owner is billed for the pollution abatement expenses after the fact.