The sailboat runs aground on Sept. 28 near the 22nd Street beach in Ocean City. (Photos and video by Max Kelly)
A large sailboat ran aground Saturday afternoon in Ocean City and then took a pounding from rough surf while stranded just offshore.
Bystanders said one of the two men who were on board may have been injured while the boat was buffeted by waves at the 20th Street beach.
“Once it got into the breakers, they really started struggling. The guys were falling all over the boat, trying to hold on as it was getting knocked over,” said Robert Bond, who was on the beach with his wife, Deb, and two nephews when the sailboat drifted ashore around 1 p.m.
Bond said one man may have been injured. He was taken ashore by a rescuer on a Jet Ski and then was driven away in an Ocean City Beach Patrol truck.
The other man on board walked into shore and left the beach shortly afterward in a truck driven by emergency responders, Bond said.
Responders from the Beach Patrol and the Ocean City police and fire departments were on the scene.
The names and hometowns of the men were not immediately released by authorities. The boat is named “Scooch” and is based in Ocracoke, North Carolina.
Ocean City Police Chief Bill Campbell said the boat’s captain ran aground after running out of gas.
The sailboat got stuck on a sandbar about 100 feet offshore around 1 p.m., Bond said. By 4 p.m., the boat slowly drifted all the way to land. It was later pulled off the beach by a towboat during high tide.
“They had the sails up, but it didn’t seem like they were getting very far,” Bond said. “They were in the same spot the whole time. Then we saw they put the sails down, and they started just getting closer and closer to the beach.”
The scene drew a small crowd of spectators to the beach. Rick and Vicky Connor, who live nearby, said they decided to walk down to the beach after seeing a Facebook post about the incident.
“We saw it posted on Facebook that it was here,” Vicky Connor said. “We live nearby, so we wandered down and were very surprised with the massive size of that boat.”
Beachgoers watch the grounded sailboat.
