A cabin cruiser that ran aground on the Chilkat River flats Saturday apparently was refloated on a Sunday night tide.
The vessel came to an abrupt stop on a sandbar on the far side of the river.
Matt Whitman and some friends were on the Mud Bay Road beach just upstream of Pyramid Island when they saw the vessel at about 9 p.m. “They were cruising right along. They were up on step. They didn’t slow down any.”
Whitman said the boat didn’t go half a mile before running aground. Conditions, including steering into the sunset, may have thrown off the boaters, he said. “The water’s that brackish tone and the river’s just going by (but) obviously it was not somebody from around here.”
A cabin light inside eventually came on and Whitman notified authorities about the vessel.
A Coast Guard helicopter passed over the boat Sunday. Command center controller Nick Meyer of the U.S. Coast Guard in Juneau said a person on board the vessel “wouldn’t say anything on the radio” about what had happened. “Fortunately, he wasn’t in trouble.”
Meyer described the vessel as a white cabin cruiser with a black stripe that had an outboard motor.