Chicagoans Try to Free Boat Beached at North Avenue Beach, Come Up Empty

A boat that washed ashore at North Avenue Beach nearly two weeks ago is still there, despite a group effort Thursday to drag it back into Lake Michigan.

The vessel, called Sea No Evil, has sat lodged in the sand near the Lincoln Park beach since July 19. A crew of about a dozen volunteers, a rented tow boat and a water pump couldn't budge it during an hours-long push on Thursday, leaving owner Lenny Klinger to plan another attempt for Friday before a stormy weekend forecast makes conditions worse.

Michael Khrin was setting up nets for his evening volleyball league last week when he first noticed the boat sitting where it shouldn't be. He later learned the backstory from a local news interview with Klinger, who pleaded with Chicagoans to help free his boat, and Khrin showed up Thursday to lend a hand.

The trouble started July 18, when Klinger set out from Diversey Harbor with several others aboard. Large waves on Lake Michigan knocked out the boat's electrical system and killed the engines, leaving the group stranded less than a mile offshore. Klinger fired a flare, and a U.S. Coast Guard vessel responded and pulled everyone to safety. Coast Guard crews decided the conditions were too rough to tow the disabled boat, so they cut the anchor line and let it drift.

"I hit a big wave, and then the engines died," Klinger said. "The stupid Coast Guard made me cut my anchor and leave the boat behind. ... They said, 'Wherever the boat goes, it goes.' So it washed up on the beach."

The boat turned up on North Avenue Beach the next morning, its sides scraped and dented from banging against the wooden pylons that sit offshore. Klinger has been sleeping in the cabin most nights since, guarding the boat after a group of teenagers boarded the deck and set off a leftover Roman candle firework inside the cabin, nearly setting his bed on fire.

"I've been out here every night with a Gatorade and my knife," he said.

Klinger said the boat is the fifth he's owned in three years, and it isn't insured, which means the cost of recovery falls entirely on him. Boat insurance typically covers salvage and cleanup after a grounding, but without it, Klinger has been left scrambling to find his own way to dig the boat out and get it back to Diversey Harbor.

That search led him to Yachti, a water taxi and boat charter company, which agreed to help tow the boat for $4,000, according to founder Liam Poczatek. He said that price is a steep discount from what the job would normally cost.

"I was on the phone with [Klinger] today, and his voice was shaking," Poczatek said. "At the end of the day, he's a really nice guy, and I want to help him out, so we didn't charge him full price."

Thursday's attempt brought together Poczatek and colleague Santos Melendez, who used a converted Navy Seal utility boat to pull on a rope tied to Sea No Evil, while about a dozen friends and bystanders, including Khrin, dug a trench in the sand to give the boat a path back to the water. The lake had finally calmed after days of rough waves, and Klinger had called it the "day it happens."

It wasn't. After hours of digging, pushing and pulling, the boat stayed put, pushed even further up the beach by waves during the days it sat waiting for calmer conditions.

"We've been trying to get people to help all week," Klinger said. "But we've wasted time out here. It's just gotten pushed further up the beach by the waves."

Klinger is now facing fines tied to the boat's continued presence on the beach, and the weekend forecast calls for storms that could complicate any further attempt to move it. He said he plans to try again Friday.