Speaker A
We have a houseboat that is currently sinking up lake here at Lake Powell. It's been sinking for about a month. You guys may have seen it. There have been multiple attempts to recover it. We will be heading up lake to figure out the best
HeavyDSparks documents a complex salvage operation to save a sinking houseboat at Lake Powell before it falls off a 200-foot underwater cliff.
Key Takeaways
- Salvaging a large sinking houseboat in a remote lake is a highly complex and resource-intensive task.
- Proper heavy-duty marine salvage lift bags are rare and essential for lifting large boats safely.
- Legal and bureaucratic challenges can delay or complicate marine recovery operations.
- Teamwork, experience, and specialized equipment are critical to success in challenging salvage projects.
- Even with careful planning, unpredictable challenges require adaptability and persistence.
What the video covers
- A houseboat has been sinking for about a month at Lake Powell, resting precariously on a rock shelf near a 200-foot underwater cliff.
- Multiple recovery attempts failed due to red tape, permits, insurance, and lack of proper heavy-duty salvage equipment.
- HeavyDSparks and his team arrive to assess and plan a marine salvage operation using specialized lift bags and cranes.
- The operation involves diving to inspect the boat, attaching large marine salvage lift bags, and pumping out water to refloat the boat.
- The houseboat weighs several hundred thousand pounds plus water, making the lift a major engineering challenge.
- A scale model is used to explain the recovery strategy and demonstrate the placement of lift bags and pontoons.
- The team faces difficulties balancing the boat, finding lift points, and managing limited resources and equipment.
- Despite setbacks and exhausting resources over multiple days, the team remains determined to save the boat.
- The video includes detailed technical explanations, underwater dives, and collaboration with local marine operators.
- This is one of the largest lake salvage operations HeavyDSparks has undertaken, highlighting the complexity and rarity of such recoveries.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to the sinking houseboat at Lake Powell
- 04:37Background and challenges with the sinking boat
- 07:42Marine salvage lift bags and equipment overview
- 11:26Initial salvage attempts and planning
- 14:48Demonstration with scale model and strategy explanation
- 19:17Diving inspection and attaching lift bags
- 26:42Pumping out water and lifting efforts
- 29:36Challenges, setbacks, and ongoing salvage efforts
- 34:49Final attempts and reflections on the operation
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
way to get this houseboat out of the water. We got to lift it up. We got to get it pumped out. Luckily, it's sitting on a shelf and it didn't sink below the shelf because if it falls off the shelf,
Speaker A
it's going down to like 200 feet deep and then it's gone forever. Rather than sit around and wait any longer, we've decided to work with our friend there and save their boat.
Speaker A
Hi, I'm Heavy D and that houseboat is sinking. So, I think we're going to go try to save it. All I can say is buckle up, take a deep breath, make sure your flashlight's got good charge, and let's
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go. Good luck, man. Thanks, man. Good luck, Dave. Make us proud. Got the blue one.
Speaker A
We'll pump those out as fast as we can. We got about 30,000 pounds worth of bags lifting.
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Just rolled up here to the helicopter barge, which, believe it or not, I don't own anymore. This was sold to Dan from Lake Powell Marine Center and my whole plan was to find somebody who could
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actually manage it down here. Just because it's a lot of work. So I sold it to him and his plan was to charter it out and keep it busy. Dude, he has kept this boat rented out non-stop. Right
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now, we're setting up to get the barge staged because I have another client flying in in about 20 minutes in an AW139, which is one of the world's nicest executive helicopters. But they said, "Hey, on our way, we want to check
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out your barge and just land on it and make sure it's good to go. And then we're going to sign the purchase order and order a couple of barges." So, this is an opportunity for us to build a
Speaker A
couple more boats. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. See that? That houseboat is currently sinking. And oddly enough, there's been no solution. There's been no ability to salvage it or recover it. And it's not because it's impossible. It's because
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there's been a lot of red tape and a lot of drama and a lot of issues with permits and insurance and different things like that. And we have decided to come down and see if we can help this
Speaker A
owner get his boat floating again before it drifts off and slides off into Neverland. Because if it slides off the rock ledge where it's sitting, it will be gone forever. This is one of the biggest marine recoveries we've ever
Speaker A
done. Might be the biggest lake recovery we've ever done. We've obviously done stuff on the ocean with the shrimp boat, but this one's pretty nasty.
Speaker A
I don't think there is a checklist for anything like this. This is just get it done.
Speaker A
Do you just carry this in your glove box? Uh, abnormally. Yeah, that's where the people last saw Brett was Tonap, right?
Speaker A
Oh, the last place they would have seen him was Tonap. It's been a long time since they've seen him.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Whenever you want something done, this is the guy you call. Hey, guess what I'm doing? I'm scuba diving. Oh, hey, I got scuba gear. Weird. Hey, guess what I'm doing? Flying. Hey, I got an airplane. Oh, weird.
Speaker A
Do you think he actually knew how to rappel or did he just Google it before he got here? He totally watched a YouTube video before I came and hung out with you guys.
Speaker A
Step one, finish my Uncrustable. Step two, we're going to dive and we're going to go down and assess the bottom of the boat. See how it looks.
Speaker A
See where we can... I got so much peanut butter in my mouth. Give me a minute.
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So, as you can see, we've got a real dilly of a pickle on our hands here with the houseboat that has been beached and sinking for several weeks now. This is a very complicated recovery as you're seeing. It's just super far up
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lake. It's a really big boat. They're not sure where the water even came from.
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So, it's not like you can just dive down and fix the leak and then lift it back up. And then lifting it back up is just really challenging because you're dealing with a houseboat that weighs, you know, a few hundred thousand pounds
Speaker A
plus all the water. I mean, you're dealing with a million plus pounds of stuff that you're fighting against to be able to lift it up. So, I've got a scale model here, a little that's like very historically accurate, by the way.
Speaker A
Everything here was sourced specifically for this recovery. As you can see here, we have Lake Powell. It's a little bit more full than the actual Lake Powell. But we've got the beach, you've got kind of the sandy bottom, you've got the
Speaker A
houseboat, which is currently sitting on the rocks, beached, it's got some damage, the sand is underwater, right?
Speaker A
So, as we go through this recovery in real life, things got a little crazy, a little bit hectic, and it was hard to be able to stop and be like, "Hey, you viewers, this this this this." You'll see some of that throughout, but I felt
Speaker A
like doing this little reenactment here would be a perfect way for you to understand exactly how we're doing what we're doing and why we're doing it because it matters because it's a very complicated recovery. Like I said, there's no real perfect way to do this
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recovery. The owner has been out here for several weeks trying all sorts of different things. They built some giant pontoons that they were hoping to be able to strap to the sides and lift it up that way. They've used airbags.
Speaker A
They've used all kinds of different stuff. And the common theme has been the proper tools needed to recover this houseboat is a massive set of heavy-duty salvage lift bags. Like those marine pillows that you basically fill with air
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and you attach to the boat. The problem is those are actually way more rare than you would think. Like salvage companies have them and you know people who do this on a regular basis have their own little kits but most companies
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I know of have like maybe five or six bags because they just do like speed boats and wakeboard boats and stuff like that. When it comes to lifting a big boat like this there's very few operators in the country that
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have the tools, resources, skills, and experience to be able to do something like this. They're out there for sure, don't get me wrong, but they're not here in Lake Powell right now and the owner needs help.
Speaker A
It's been a minute since I dove. You going to take care of the barnacles on the river rainbow while you're down there?
Speaker A
Yeah. Give her a good bottom cleaning. Yep. But this one we're going to try to put right behind that one if there's room for. So, in our example here, this is going to be our marine salvage lift bag,
Speaker A
right? So, when it's empty, you can push it underwater pretty easily, right? You can take it down there and attach it to stuff. But when you put air in them, you can't put it under water very easily, and they create lift. All right,
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so day one, we've got a perfect platform to work off the back of this boat. The goal was to say, "Hey, let's just put some, well, first of all, let's talk with the owner, see what he thinks, get a
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plan, let him know what we're thinking, and make sure that it lines up with what he's thinking about doing." After a couple of hours of talking, looking at it, going over things, we all agreed that it was time to see what would
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happen when we attached some of our marine salvage lift pillows onto this boat to see if one, two, three, four, five, six, how many it would take to even kind of start moving the back of this boat. We knew it was
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going to take a lot and we knew that it wasn't going to be probably doable with just the stuff that we brought, but we needed to at least get an idea to see roughly how much lifting force we're
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going to need, plus where can we lift from. So on day one, we took the, you know, probably six or seven big bags that we had. Our plan was to take the lift bags and stick them underneath the
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houseboat because that's really the only place that we can get to and there's not a lot of really good lift points on this houseboat to begin with. So ev
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bags had the hook points, you're still limited on where you can hook. So, we discovered basically right underneath the back of the house boat where the engines sit and where the swim uh deck is and where the rear deck of the boat
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is. We found that underneath there was a spot where we could stick quite a few of these lift bags. This right here represents my 40ft river patrol boat.
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Our boat has two recovery cranes on the front of it which are designed to lift, you know, little wakeboards or wakeboard boats and ski boats and stuff like that.
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They're not necessarily heavy heavy lift cranes designed to lift something like this sinking house boat. We pulled my boat up to the side of the barge and we tied the two together and that allowed us another stable platform to be able to
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work from and more importantly to be able to eventually hook the cranes on the front of the riverine boat to the rear of the house boat. So, it was around like mid to late afternoon on day one that we actually had time to like
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get rigged up and start going on the job. And our plan was to take the airbags that we had and stick them underneath the back of the boat, right?
Speaker A
Wherever we could find a spot for them. As you start filling those bags up, you'll see here the back of the boat will see how it's starting to lift.
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You may not see them seem like much, but right there we were able to get the back of the boat lifted like about a foot with bags that we didn't necessarily think were going to work in the first
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place. After that, we hooked the winch and the cranes from the riverine boat to the back of the the house boat and we started the lift again as well and it gave us another 6 in. So, day one, we've
Speaker A
got the boat roughly 12 to 18 inches out of the water. Feeling pretty good about it. But then we run out of daylight.
Speaker A
All right. All by myself. We're in a pretty good spot right now. Um the boat we've raised it 18 inches higher than when we started today, which is a good place to be.
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Boat's very stable. Airbags are all holding. We got one with a leak. We need about probably four or five hours of setup tomorrow and then we'll be able to lift and pump.
Speaker A
That said, it all right. Before we get back to this houseboat disaster, I want to show you guys another disaster. Right here is a binder full of personal information.
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
You guys are making over here. If you hit that wall, I don't want your broadside.
Speaker A
All right, so last night was obviously a party, unexpected party for all of us.
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Microbururst came through around 2:00 a.m. and just rocked everybody's I mean, I'm It was rough. The boat across the bay from us sent uh a runner over here begging for help. They had called 911.
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They were in a pretty tight spot. They broke off the beach, hit the wall, broke their outdrive off. We were able to get them a little bit situated. We're going to go over there and help them now because their natique got wedged between
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the housebo and the beach and it's stuck there and their house boat stuck cuz the road motor got ripped off. We got rocked too. Our boats were tied up for a mellow night, not for a monsoon.
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front. I I ideally would like to pull the front around rather than swing the rear.
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Hey, the ropes out. Hey man, thank you. Yeah, I'm going That's fine. It's coming down. I'm already below the ground.
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We got underway and all a sudden boat's running great. Temp's actually working good. My little homemade fix is like kind of working and then all a sudden I see my speed going from like 36, 35, 34.
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My boat's getting heavier and less power and I'm like something's not right. We're taking on water.
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So, we stopped and I realized that the freshwater intake system that wasn't working before because the water pump wasn't pulling from it. Well, it's a ram air it's a ram water system. So, under speed, it throws water in there and we
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had left one of the pipes uncapped. So, we b we didn't just leave uncapped. We stole the fitting off of it to be able to connect the other line. So, we couldn't just put it back to where it
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goes. So, basically, we stuffed the sand filter, the water intake assembly with towels, trash bags, and whatever else.
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Go um go back just a crack about 10% back. How do you sink a pontoon boat?
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Heavy. When I got out, we were the pontoons your fall. Yeah. This just this one. If we can lift this up and drain that tune.
Speaker A
Oh yeah. Get the the crane controllers out. Uh just going to winch up the back of the old uh boat there. Get his pontoon out of the water and then pull the drain plug and then let all the water come
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out. When you get a pontoon boat really heavy, there's vents on the very top of it that normally would never be exposed.
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And they were just way too heavy um trying to bring all the the equipment to us cuz they were the ones at the marina, not us. We don't have We've got maybe four or five hours of daylight left. So
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hopefully we can get to the boat and get those bags on it and get some work done today. The storm last night just kind of threw everything off. All the boats and equipment that we were hoping to use to
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lift and pump are all busy saving other boats that are currently sinking. So it's just something that happens.
Speaker A
Higher. Good. A little higher. Crazy. All right, we made it all the way forward as far as we can after a long set up freaking day. It's 4:00 and we're just barely rolling up to the boat, which is
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honestly the It's less than ideal, but that's just the way the day went. And uh we've got the airbags now.
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We got all the equipment. We got the flex seal. We got it all, baby. Now I just got to figure out I'm done talking about all the things this boat still needs. It's doing great.
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It's a workhorse. Try to put an air hose compressor. So, so we'll be actually Heat. Heat.
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All right, they're both hooked up. Heat. Hold on. I don't think it's there yet, but it's close.
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Is it going good? Oh, yeah. It's It's solid. We got some serious lift again. We got more lift today than we did yesterday and the whole day. You can see that post is kind of my corner post with the
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windless and winch on it. It's kind of like my marker. Yesterday when we came that was about a foot underwater. Now we are every bit of shoe 3 ft above the water. That's a great sign. And that means we have come up a ton
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work that way. We got some good movement happening right now. the post, my measuring post that I've been using as a as a guide that was originally about a foot under the water is almost 4t out of the water
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and we're pumping all the water out of the living room and I think the pumps are out running the lake because they have the whole outside of the boat sealed off. So now we got the winches hooked on it to it. We're going to lift
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it and as we lift this thing might just keep on outrunning the pumps. We hope.
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We've got the boat a solid 5 ft out of the water right now and we haven't even started winching yet. The pumps are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. The living room is emptying.
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The front living space is emptying. The boat is coming out of the water. So, with the help from the crane boat right now, we'll be able to probably get another 2 ft. Whatever we gain tonight, we're going to try to keep by tying the
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pontoons to either side of it and basically supporting the whole weight of the boat on those pontoons. So, wish us luck.
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That's exactly what we're going to do. We're going to use this hole saw and punch into the side of each pontoon cuz they're in 5ft uh compartments. We're going to drop this water pump down there over the hose. pump out each pontoon
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till they're dry. That gives us more buoyancy. And then we're going to put Flex Seal over the top of the hole that we cut.
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Here we have an example of what those bags look like when they're lifting on the back of a boat. The bag starts to pop out of the water as the boat starts to come up. In this case, we didn't have
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enough bags to be able to get enough lift. And so, obviously, the bags that you saw were still well underwater because just the few ones that we had on there couldn't get lifted up by themselves. And then we went back
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underneath the boat as we were diving to see the bags that we had put down the prior day, the ones that we had brought.
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And we found that about half of them were still holding air, the other half um had either just kind of slowly deflated overnight because we left them full overnight. Um, and a couple of them had popped. So, we rerigged all of the
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hoses, all the lines, went back down there, uh, down underneath the boat, and filled up all the bags that we had put on the prior day, filled up all three or four of the new Brett bags that showed
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up this day, and the back of the boat came up like another foot or two. So, Tuesday night, we're feeling pretty good. But then we realize we still don't have enough lift bags. We're going to need a lot more
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lifting bag. we're going to need a lot more horsepower to be able to get the back of this boat in the air. So, we start calling, calling, calling. We literally called everyone from like coast to coast trying to see who could
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get us marine salvage lift bags the next day. Luckily, my friend Brian Gardner got a hold of a friend of his named Joe Muth out of uh uh Elco, Nevada, and they have a salvage company, and they just
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barely purchased a bunch of new lift bags. And he called and said, "Hey, can you get out there?" And they said, "Yeah." They drove through the night, literally all night, Tuesday, and showed up uh Wednesday morning around 11:00.
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And this is a common theme for every single day that we're down there. Every single day, we realize that we need more stuff. So, we scrambled to try to find it. It takes like overnight and into the next day for the stuff to get there. And
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pretty much every day that we got started on this project, we didn't get rolling until like noon at the earliest.
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And most days we got started like 2 3 4:00 in the afternoon just because we were waiting for stuff to show up. So, when Joe um showed up with his bags, they were nice, but they were a different kind of lift bag than what I
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was hoping for. So, the bags that Joe brought were a different type of bag.
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They weren't necessarily meant to lift or pull either. They were meant to push from underneath, but we knew that we could potentially stick them back underneath the back of the boat in the same spot where we had all the other
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bags prior. We found that if we were able to take a few of Joe's really big bags, they hold way more air than the standard lift bags that showed up on the second day. So, we were able to get four of
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Joe's big bags underneath the back of the boat. And what happened next was, you think this is going to come out tomorrow?
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But I've been wrong before. I'm having a very fun time underwater, especially here with Ryan.
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True. When do you think it'll actually get out of there? I'm going to say tomorrow.
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Tomorrow. If we get some more bags. Tomorrow should be a good day. Heat. Heat.
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Good. Locked and loaded and ready to roll. Once again, we are locked. We are loaded.
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And if everybody shows up right now on time, I think we might be loaded.
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So, right now we're waiting for several things. Uh Brett, is the switch on that Wi-Fi right here? No.
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No. Go vertical or uh horizontal. So, now we have Wi-Fi. We've got people coming from Huawei.
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They have five big bags, two small bags. I have a location here. Hold on.
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We're good. Code is clear. I have to go out, you know. Bless you. Bless you.
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Bless you. Goodness gracious. Oh my goodness. That's the first time I've ever heard you sneeze.
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Really? Yeah. That was it. I swear I've never Hey, that's our boat. That's our old boat.
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That is our rescue boat. That is our rescue boat. They got new motors, dude. Nice.
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There should be a pontoon here. Hey, we couldn't find the title, so we're going to have to take it back from you guys.
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Oh, perfect. As is. Oh, man. Dude, she's looking good. That looks great. Dude, she's awesome. She's been great.
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It's a good boat. It really is a great boat. We just got it finished up. So, it's a good boat.
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It's been a ton of fun. I love that boat. She's sweet. Yeah. So, we're just bleeding the hose off this end.
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Oh, perfect. I don't think so. Pull down on it. I like that. We had to pump backwards for the last like 20 minutes, which is not great because that's the 20 minutes of carbon monoxide that I was breathing.
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So, I need some fresh air. That blue one's full. Yeah, it's still black. Keep going. Give it a little bit.
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Are you What have you guys been able to accomplish down there so far today?
Speaker A
Dude, we've gotten a lot of bags. So, we've uh filled almost all the cracks with inflatable bags. We've got five five or six new ones, and they're big boys. So, it's uh it's a bunch of hoses and lines and everything else, but this
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thing has, if you can't see behind me, is up 5 6 ft. Nice. That uh that thing behind me was under the water when we first started. So, just with airbags, nothing else, we've got it lifted.
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Heat. Heat. Heat. freaking out. I know, dude. Hey, we are probably like 10 minutes away from running the pumps like last night. So, we should probably check all those pumps for fuel cuz the ones up top ran. We didn't refill them. The ones
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down low are all full. Once we get the next bag full, this second deck will be out of the water. That's where we need to start pumping like crazy. Need to get the hole saw ready and the ground pumps
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ready to go. So, if you need fuel, we got fuel cans right here. Grab a fuel can right here. You'll need at least one.
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Hey, dodge forward. Yeah, we need to go forward. Watch out. Pull the barge forward.
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Run. Or just go to neutral. Forward. 3 ft. Go forward. 3 ft. We got nine pumps on the boat moving water plus one on the ground that's going to start moving water out of the pontoons. So, we have 10 water pumps
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between 2 in and 4 in that are sucking water out. We've got about 30,000 lbs worth of bags lifting.
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It should come up. Let's see what happens. There's actually it's a lot. It's getting to the point where uh there's so many lines and hoses and everything else that there's a lot going on down there. But uh no, the D was good. It's getting
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dark. The lights help. It is moving up. So, just trying to keep it balanced and there's only so many places you can put airbags underneath. So, we got lots of lifting power. Now, we just need to reduce weight on top. See how it goes. I
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mean, Uh, I'm pretty exhausted and then the exhaust makes it even worse. Is he anything complicated down there?
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Yes, because we've had like three batches of bags coming in and so it makes it difficult like you get a game plan with the first set of bags and then the next day we get another set of bags
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and then we've got to regain plan and then the last day we got the best bags.
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It's almost like you would want to rerigg with the best bags, but we put so much effort into plan A and B.
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So, we'll just see how it goes tonight. For sure. You enjoying it? Oh, yeah. Definitely enjoying it.
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Uh, I'm cold. I want a cheeseburger. Do you like how things are looking down there?
Speaker A
Yeah, it looks great, honestly. Like, I mean, most things in life are made up.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, hey, it looks okay. You know, everything we've we've we've packed everything in there, you know, really well. tied off things really well. So, I think it looks good, but this is not my my area of subject matter expertise. So,
Speaker A
what do I know? True. Good. So, I'm going to go down. I got to hook my rope up. We're not going super deep. I got my mask on. We got dive master. We're good to go.
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Take a deep breath. Make sure your flashlight's got good charge. Let's go. Good luck, man. Thanks, man.
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Good luck, Dave. Make us proud. There he goes. Heat. Heat. Got to speed it up, guys. We're running out of air.
Speaker A
Come on. It's okay, guys. Take your time. Jeez. Thank you. All right, it's trucking.
Speaker A
Water heat. I got air compressor hoses. Yeah, it'll work. It'll taste like fuel, but it'll work.
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How was it? Listen, where one man breathes 3,000 PSI of air, another brand, another man breathes like a,000.
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So, what I'm trying to say is I'm a very heavy breather. Most people get like 30 to 45 minutes out of a tank. I get like 10. But I get a lot of work done.
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Honestly, I don't mind diving at night. And I think I just conquered one of my biggest fears. I hate dark water at night. Turns out I don't mind it if I have a flashlight in a scuba tank. And
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the boat is Oh, she's coming up. When I went down there, I found at least three airbags.
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Hold on. I found at least three. I don't know if I'm yelling or whispering. I don't know.
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I found two or three airbags that were completely empty. I brought the hoses up. I said, "Hey, hook these up." They hooked them up and now the boat is cruising on her way up. And we still have we still got room to go. But this is
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very, very promising. This is the highest we've been all week. There we go. My ears. They don't regulate very well.
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But uh now we're to the point where we can start pumping each pontoon out. And when we pump the pontoons out, we're going to seal them. When we seal them, that means we got buoyancy forever.
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I'm pretty happy about it. So I got a lot of water in my ears.
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The light your shadows. They're fine. Thanks. Oh, we're way way close. We are 2 ft away from breaking that water line. And from there on, she's up.
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We're going to pump the out of that lower hole. We are literally like 2 ft away. Once we hit that twoft mark, we'll be able to pump the rest of the the lake water out.
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We're golden. I'm going to go check on the pontoons right now because if we're if we're pumping the pontoons right now, we're going to be dry here in a second with dry pontoons. She's floating.
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It's good. Very, very good. It got weird for a second and then it got really good.
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Killing it, man. I'm so stoked. Heat. Heat. By the end of the third day going into the evening, we had so many bags under the back of this boat and it kept on coming up, coming up. Our goal was to
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get the back of the boat lifted up enough that we could get it above the water line because then we could take all of the pumps, the big water pumps that we had on board the boat and start
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pumping the water out of the boat. As you start pumping water out of a boat, while you have a bunch of things lifting on it, like the lift bags, like the cranes on the on the Navy boat, it's
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just going to keep going up and up and up. By the time midnight rolled around, we realized that we had a chance to potentially get this thing pumped out and floating. So, nobody stopped. I was underneath the boat for I think I did
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three or four total dives on uh the third night underwater for a total of probably 2 and 1/2, 3 hours. And while the guys up top were running the pumps, they were running um, you know, checking patching stuff, we were pumping out each
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of the pontoons along the side because the pontoons are in 5ft compartments. Drilled a hole, put a pump down in there, pumped it out, and then put Flex Seal over the hole so it wouldn't take on water again. And we got to the point
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by about 4:00 a.m. that the back of the boat was sitting almost completely out of the water. Pumps were doing their job. Everything was working the way it was supposed to. and we decided that we needed just a little bit more lift. So,
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we went back down under to reconfigure these bags and be able to lift further down on the bottom of the house boat just to give us a little bit of extra lift. And once we got it up to the point
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where we needed it, let's say we have it right here, we pump it out. Then the plan was to take the hely deck and my river patrol boat and essentially pull it backwards. That was the next move.
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Well, unfortunately, we didn't get to that point because right as we were getting ready to rig up the tow lines, something happened. Something absolutely devastating happened and it was this basically it's a little dramatized and it didn't break right here. Broke on the
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back. The entire area on the back of the boat where we were lifting from, basically underneath the transom, has a deck over it. And um that deck has doors where the seedos you can flip it up and you can pull seedos
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on there. Well, one of those doors popped open which caused one of the big lift bags to basically pop up through the rear floor of the deck. And once that one failed, everything else had such an abrupt jolt on it that it
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actually broke the main beams coming off the back of the housebo. So, off the back of the house boat, those all either bent, broke, or got deformed in some way that then all of our airbags that we had
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underneath there just kind of went everywhere or even worse, many of them went like this.
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But now we have a house boat that is right back where we started. Almost all of our bags are either lost or destroyed. There's like maybe 12 or 14 different bags on there. Seven or eight of them we were ours that we knew were
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going to be destroyed. Um Joe had his brand new bags underneath there that um were doing a great job. Unfortunately, a few of those got destroyed. And the remaining bags, the pillow bags, the lifting bags like these, the ones that
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were the right tool for the job that we couldn't find and didn't have access to, they were pretty much the only thing holding the back of that boat basically on the anchors doing their best to try to hold it up. But there was only like
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three or four of them that had air in them and there just wasn't enough lifting force. So that's why at the very last minute, basically on night three at 4 in the morning, we realized that we weren't going to be able to finish this
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job. I thought we were about to pull it. I thought we were there. Oh, we were. We were there, man.
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It's a lot of weight. A lot of weight to lift and a lot of weight to take on one section of the boat. Ah, that sucks.
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Good job. Something really shitty just happened. Uh, we were there. It was out of the water. We had raised it probably every bit of 12 to 15 ft and we were putting the last finishing touches on it. a
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couple more bags to be able to basically secure it so that we could then pull it backwards and get it to float. And then the swim step that we were using to basically to mount our bags on basically that's the
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only place to put the bags under in the bottom of this boat. It has some jet ski uh ramps that have doors. Those doors failed and the it allowed our bags to basically shoot through them and the whole assembly down there broke. The
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whole swim step didn't break, which is what we were afraid happened. There's still some structure there, but that that's that's awful. That's like that's like a full day worth of work that just kind of went up and smoked.
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Oh, that sucks. That sucks so bad. We were literally We were there. The boat was floating.
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She was pumped out. Everything was where it needed to be. And we are literally back at square one.
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And it's 5:30 in the morning. So, what we have to do now is go back to camp. Those of us who can sleep are going to get a little sleep. And then we'll be back up here probably 5 6
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hours. Then we're going to try it one more time. And if that doesn't work, this boat might just have to sit here until the water drops.
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Not stoked about that. Gosh damn it. Teasing us. Heat. Okay, we are on day four. Today's Thursday. This is our last chance to save this house boat. Last night we had it. This morning at 5:00 a.m. we had it
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and then you guys saw what happened. That was a devastating failure. Like an hour before that, I was underneath the hull of the boat and it would have just it would have just pinned me against the bottom and smashed
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me. And I'm glad it didn't do that. Uh Ryan and Brett were under there, too. Uh luckily nobody was under it when I went down. So now we know that can happen.
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We're going to be just a little bit more cautious of it. So today we're headed up. We've only got about 4 or 5 hours that we can dedicate to it, but everything's there in place, ready to rock and roll. The only concern right
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now is I'm not even going to say it. There's no concerns. We're ready to roll.
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Here we go, baby. Attempt number four. Heat. Heat. Not good. Easy. But I need two batteries cuz we were dead when we got done. Today we're going to see that boat that's sinking over there. That house boat.
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I just pulled my titties into into the into the strap. We didn't like that at all. We're going to do a little different strategy than we did yesterday.
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Um, which I think has potential. So, this thingy or not? Go give her hell, I guess.
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Uh, I can't believe that. Well, he wants a black, but the black one's not available right now. So, maybe for contest.
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Well, my friends, you can't win them all the first time. And the reason I say the first time is because something tells me we might be back. But we are on day four. We have exhausted all of our resources that we
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had available. All the airbags, we either broke them, pop them, lost them, or they're just not working anymore. And the reality is we don't like we have every flavor of airbag except for the right ones that we need for how the boat
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setups. Now, yesterday we had the right ones because we had somewhere to put them against the swim step when the swim step broke, which I'm talking these are giant aluminum beams that just cracked.
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So, it's not like, oh, you shouldn't have put them there. It's like, well, it was a pretty strong spot, like it should have held. So, yeah, we decided rather than just keep on doing one bag at a time and and, you know, being
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underprepared, we knew we didn't have enough after these last couple bags failed. And so, that's where we just say we're going to call it quits. And, uh, I have to get back home. We all got to get back. We got places to be over the next
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couple of weeks. So, you know, Yeah. When I was looking at them, I think there was one exactly where it was when we found it, which is the worst cuz last night it was I think we were 10 or 15 minutes away
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from floating. And now right back where we started. So, I guess that's the part where I just say we're headed home and stay tuned. We'll see what happens. This sucks. I thought for sure we were going to have like a home
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run win, you know? I was hooting and hollering last night. I was cheering. I was ready for that to work and then one thing failed and the whole thing fell apart. Oh well, live and learn. And we're on to the next one.
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It's hot. Overall, how'd it go? So, hold on. Hold on. First off, you are the the infamous purchaser of the bar barge. Not not infamous, but famous.
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I'll interrupt the barge. Called Dave up, bought the barge. Anyways, this is pretty cool. Um, he said, "Yeah, I'll sell you the barge." And so, uh, Mike, I don't know why he's talking right now.
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Mike, but it's not enough. This guy right here is a freaking animal, bro. You have not slept for 36 hours at least. At least.
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So, we all left at 5:00 a.m. Dan's been on this thing since way before we got there, by the way. He's been there for a couple weeks.
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He was there all night running pumps, running hoses, doing the damn thing. We all go back to our house, but it's like 30 minutes away. You have to come out of the water.
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Yeah, I drove back to all we Where do you live? Well, I have an I have the at the Lake Marine Center. We have an apartment. So, I literally drove back to my job and all my employees just showed up and so they
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said, "And what time did you get back?" 7, 8, 8, right? Like perfect timing, right? When they all showed up and and they're drilling me with questions like, "Hey, what about this? Hey, what about this?" I mean, literally stupid things like,
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"Hey, how much should we price a Coke for?" And I was like, "Are you kidding?" And then a Coke freezer literally freezing. Yeah.
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And I'm I'm like trying to fix that. And I'm not kidding you. It was like 30 minutes later, Brian calls, "Hey, Dan. So, we're gonna do one more." Oh, yeah. One more. We're going to go again. And I was like,
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"Let's go." So, Dan's boat sank yesterday. You guys remember that? That feels like a week ago. But that pontoon boat was She was toast.
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Since then, you did something. Flex sealed it or just went for it. Oh, flex sealed the crap out of it.
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So, listen. I met Dan because I put the barge on Lake Pal and I knew that somebody would want it. I thought it would be another helicopter pilot or an owner or something like that and they'd be like, "Hey, I want this thing." Dan
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reached out before anybody. He's like, "Hey, I own a marine center on Lake Pal.
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You guys do service, do kind of just different stuff around the lake." Just servicing people on the lake.
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Service people on the lake. So, he bought the boat cuz he's like, "I could use that to help people, you know, potentially take it out to people if they want to land their helicopter, whatever. It's not like a like a rental
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charter business. He's just providing services to help people on the lake." And so, he bought the helicopter barge and uh When I sold it to him, I was like, I don't know, man. This is like a very specific barge. Turns out people
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love it. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You use it all the time. For not only helicopter stuff, but obviously housebo salvage, rescues.
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Yep. Rescues. You're hauling fuel to people. Fuel. Listen, this guy right here, if you guys need somewhere to land, picking up Chuck.
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Always picking up Chuck. If you need somewhere to land at Lake Pal, the only option, literally the only option is Lake Pal. They're on Instagram. I'm going to link them below.
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Also, if you break down or if you just need like a cool bro to show up for 36 hours and just grind hard or sink his pontoon, Dan's got you. So, Lake Pal Marine Center, we're going to tag them below.
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Definitely hit them up because honestly, listen, this lake is one of my favorite places in the world. Unfortunately, it's full of a lot of people who just don't necessarily want to use it the same way I do. And what I mean by that is
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agencies that manage it. It's fine. I'm not throwing shade at anybody. I'm just saying that there's a lot of conflict down here. So, in a world full of conflict where everybody kind of is just mad at each other all the time, Dan
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stepped up and he's like, "Nah, man. I'm here to help." He stepped up to help Ron just because it was the right thing to do. He's not trying to give him a salvage bid. He's not trying to be a
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salvage operator. He just said, "Dude, your your boat's sinking." Well, we got the deck and it's probably going to be a great platform to help. And you know what? It was because last night we were 2 in away,
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bro. Literally, bro. We were minutes away from floating that boat and it's gonna haunt my dreams forever because we should have just pulled it. But we'll get it.
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We'll be back. You're the man, dude. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you sleep huh? Yeah.
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Go take a nap. Hey, I'm serious. Thank you. Check the link below. Legit. There you guys.
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Enjoy. Okay, so I got to explain something. This is as far as we got with our video.
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Like I said, we ran out of time. Um, we all had to leave. We did what we could.
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Um, the problem's not solved yet, but luckily the owner of the boat has Trent from Lake Palm Marine and Dan from uh, Lake Pal and a bunch of other people down there who are willing to help. So, what you're going to see from now moving
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forward is iPhone footage from a bunch of the dudes that were there um, helping during that recovery. So, it's shot differently than we shoot. We obviously shoot with um, you know, bigger cameras and GoPros and a lot more stuff like
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that. whereas these guys are actually doing that's all they focus on is the salvage operation and they don't have a whole media team with them. So you're going to see a lot of just run and gun iPhone and different types of footage.
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So that's why it's different. But we felt like rather than just give you half a video and say, "Oh, good luck to somebody else." We got together with Trent and the team at Lake Cal Marine and everybody else involved and said,
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"Hey, why don't we take your footage and mix it with our footage and be able to tell the whole story and also we are helping them create a video out of all the footage they have for the Lake Pal
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Marine Channel. Guys, I can't tell you how much we've got ourselves into. So, we're 50 miles up lake on Lake Pal dangling rope canyon and we're on a destination yacht that sank. The bow is still on the beach, but the whole stern sunk. Just
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pan around right there. So, they can kind of see that's the second deck of the house boat that's still underwater.
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So, the whole kitchen and living area down below is completely full. So, we've had to come up and try and salvage this boat. It hasn't been great so far. We came up two weeks ago with what we had
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and gave it a shot, but we knew that the equipment we had wasn't going to do it.
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Uh, we've got two 12,000 pontoon style lift bags. We've got 10 7260 flat bags that we're going to slide up the pontoon chambers uh and start lifting. We've got some divers in the water right now.
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They're commercial certified, so we're doing this all safe. That's the key to this project. Out onto the beach. This is just an example right here of one of the lift bags that we've got going on.
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This one is a pontoon style, 6600 lb. We got two of those that we're going to slide under the front of this boat. So, you can see if you pan in over here, this is like a twin style. It's pontoon,
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half pontoon, half monohole. It's kind of a a weird setup, but these two bags right here, we're going to slide in under to help lift it off of the rock because it's beached so far. This boat's been up here for a month, just over a
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month now. Here's the manifold system that we built. So, we've got eight spots to fill. So, two of them will go to these bags in the front right now. We've got two to the starboard rear pontoon that's 12,000 lb. And we've got two to
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the rear port that's 12,000 lbs. Divers are said that we're ready for air. So, we got Dusty going to be controlling the manifold and we're going to go up top and relay what the divers are telling us to do to Dusty. Here's our crew right
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here. You guys ready for this? Let's have some fun. Looks like we've done looking at the port inspection. You can see the bubbles right here. You can actually kind of see him. He's in pink. He's moving to the
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starboard side. So, we put a minute of air in both of those. And now we're checking.
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Hopefully, he's going to give the thumbs up when he comes back up after inspecting the starboard. Divers have inspected that side and now they're moving to this side to inspect.
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We have one of the valves that's starting to roll towards the boat. Hopefully the bag will start inflating in different areas to roll that back the right way. That's why we're going slow.
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We'll see how it works. See what they say when they come up. All right, here they come.
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Got two divers. So, two eyes on it just to make sure everything's staying good.
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What do you think? Do another minute. Another minute. Perfect. All right, let's get the other dusty. It's time to mark to see if we're making any progress. We're putting another 1 minute of air into the bags. Now, it's time to
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mark where the water level is to see if we're gaining A nice dig into the paneling right there.
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It's better to do that than Sharpie or something that will wash off. All right. So, we're sending the straps down. Everything's looking really good.
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Now we're going to set straps from So we've got some right now that are keeping the lift bags from moving forward as we inflate. Now we're at a point that we need to keep them from moving backwards because we are lifting.
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We don't want them to pop out. So now we're strapping the back side of the pontoon lift bags to the back of the boat. So everything stays nice and tight and those bags don't move. So we're looking really good.
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So let's turn it this way. here, the keer. All right, so we're going to start sliding these front bags in.
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We're starting with the bag, the lift bags in the back. It's starting to bring this front down further to the rock. So, we're going to slide them in here.
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So, then our biggest concern here is just that valve hitting the boat. Yeah. But as it blows up, it should blow. It should face towards us and away from us. It shouldn't go up and in.
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Uhhuh. This doesn't go too far. All right. Counts. You ready? One, two, three. One two three.
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Are you able to get down any further? Army crawl. Just set him right here.
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You guys want any water? Kevin, Richard, you guys need any water? Dusty, is the other compressor running this other manifold?
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Okay. Environmentally safe. This stuff is amazing. We're using it as a lubricant for the top of the bags. We're going to squirt this all over the top. So, as it lifts it, when it's time comes timed, it'll slide rod off. You can see we've
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got ropes holding this whole boat on. So, we're not really worried about it letting loose yet. What we're trying to do is just lift the front so we can keep lifting the back. And then when it's time, we can just slide the front off of
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these bags. But lubrication time. Got to love the Dawn Diso. You ready? Amazing. Come on, let's squirt, baby.
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Time to squirt. Lubed you guys up. All right, they're starting to inflate these front bags.
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You can see those things starting to fill up, start to press against the boat. So, once those things are all the way inflated, hopefully they'll start lifting that thing up a little bit.
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doing this now. It should start opening up towards us, right? Dude, do you think we need to evacuate the air and set them up a little different?
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All right, so the divers are down inspecting now after 1 minute. If you scoot back, you'll see the pumps that we've got set up here. put some access holes in the roof to put the uh hoses down in to try and get water out of the
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main living area. We've got 2-in pumps. One, two, three, four, a 3-in pump over there. So, once they come back up and say, "Hey, the buoyancy is working, the lift bags are correct, we're going to fire all these pumps up and start
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evacuating water while we lift." Hopefully, we're going to see a lot of progress soon.
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Good morning, y'all. Start of day two. We made really good progress yesterday. We got that thing raised about 8 ft. It held overnight with the lifting bags.
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So, we know we've got enough lifting power if we need it. So, now we got to start thinking about the ride in. We're 50 mi up this lake to the nearest launch ramp. So, we're going to put two more
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saddle bags up the middle, a little bit forward of midpoint. So, it's going to be lifting the front and the back. Once we get this thing up, we'll monitor it for a couple hours, make sure everything's nice and tight, staying
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where it should. Uh, pumps keep up with any water that's coming in, and then we'll uh tie the the house boat and the barge to it and start towing it in.
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Until then, we'll show you guys how we're going to make a lot of good progress this this morning. All right.
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So, we've got the 12,000 lb on each side hitting the pop offs. And then we've got the two 7 7200 lb in between the tunes hitting their pop off. So, now we've got two more, these ones up here. So, we've
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got one in the water that we're sinking right now that's just like this. And we're going to saddle it to the the pontoon style that's under the water, the bag that's in between the pontoons, and then wrap it up the side. So, it's
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going to lift this up on the side now on both. So, we'll have the 14 from under and the 14. So, seven on each side and then 12 on each side. So, this next set of bags should start bringing us up.
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We've gained about what do you think? 2 and 1/2 ft. 3 ft. Three feet.
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3 ft of lift so far. So, this next set of bags will probably bring us up. Let's go see if it will.
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All right. So, we uh don't have enough horsepower to pull this big huge house boat off of the beach. You can see how far it takes. So, we've uh got these 20 ton jack decks. One on the starboard
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side, one on the port. You can see we've stabilized it so it's at an angle. So, it's actually lifting and pushing at the same time. 20 tons. Watch how much we move. Hey, get ready. One, two, three, four.
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Ronnie's choked out. Boat's starting to float now. Got both sides pumped out. Bows dry.
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Pon tunes. on the side of the boat. Port pontoon. Starboard's already on. We'll go over there and give you a look. But the starboard pontoons on and then the barge is next to it. We need to put these
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pontoons on the port side or on the sides of the boat to get the the right width because we got so many bags in the back. So, we're using the pontoons to fill that gap so we can get the big
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barges up next to the boat. Once the barges are set, we'll get the coach boat behind the house boat, pull it out, and start heading in.
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Okay, so it's been over a month since the house boat sunk. Uh we have airbags under it. We have pontoons strapped to the side. And Aramark is here with barges and a tugboat. And they are getting ready to
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move the boat for the first time. They anticipate that this will take 3 days to get from dangling rope Back to Stateline launch ramp.
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Jacks are doing their jobs. Got some bags deflated to give them more leverage. Hooking up the boat, the barge to the back of the house boat. We're going to try and pull it back down as we jack the
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boat back off the beach. Hopefully it does what we want it to do. Heat. Heat.
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Heat up here. Just coming up on the house ball that tugs. pushing it in.
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They're going about two knots. Very slow. Everything looks safe. You're good. There it goes.
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They got it this time. There it goes. There it goes. Woohoo. The only person in video that Did you see him just do a willie?
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Yeah, the only person on video. Let it go. Just let it go. That's all right.
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Let it go. All the way up. Yeah. Just go. Well, here she is, guys. The final resting place. Finally got it up top of the hill and all blocked.
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It's been sitting here for about a week drying out. Been cleaning it up a little bit. Let's go see the interior of this thing. I'm sure everybody will be excited to see this.
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Let's jump up. Check this out. just kind of moving through, taking everything down, taking it apart.
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I don't think we're ever going to find out what actually happened to sink this boat, but I can tell you it wasn't anything to do with the extension that put we put on the boat. The surveyor has been here
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and the boat has been totaled, but the owner has to get rid of the boat, which is unfortunate. So, now we need to put a bunch of money into taking everything apart to get it broke down. But we do
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know that this compartment was the last thing to take on water. the engine compartment vents started taking on water and there still wasn't any water in that compartment.
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So, we do know that nothing back here had anything to do with sinking the boat.
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It's pretty wild. It actually doesn't stink too bad anymore. It's been drying out, man.
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This just breaks my heart. It really does. Can't believe this happened. And it couldn't have happened.
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It shouldn't have happened. Just such a beautiful boat. I think the pod up here is probably still in really good shape.
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I can't get into it right now, but nothing really happened in there. Maybe a little bit of water, but not much.
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Yeah, there's still a lot of good components left on this boat for sure. It'll be useful.
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Actually, there's some parts on here that are worth some money still. Out drives. I think the engines can probably be saved. Generators, not so sure about. I don't even know if it's worth trying.
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I'm going to ask Dusty. He knows a lot more about that than I do. But now it's time to start breaking her down. And we got to do it pretty quick before wintertime because this yard will fill up fast.
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But can't believe it, you guys. I just can't believe it. Did so much work to this thing. Made it such a beautiful boat.
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And boom, it's gone just like that. So, final thing I want to do is just give some love and a huge shout out to everybody and every company involved to make this thing happen. You got companies like uh Pavati obviously they
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always support us with boats. Owner Pavati Chuck like one of my best buddies was down here um just grinding through the nights with us. Just he's not a salvage operator. He just likes to do cool stuff and so huge shout out to him.
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Redmond Salt uh they came and cooked for us on this trip and without them we would have starved. Um without their electrolytes and their relight which if click the link description below you can get your hands on those. Um, you had
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companies like Yankham Ropes who provided us with the ropes, the rigging, all the for pretty much every recovery that we do. They're our guys. Um, you got Whan Lights, that's uh whose lighting we had on not only the heli
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barge, but also on my uh riverine patrol boat. Without those, we would not have been able to light up the night that we the way that we did. Lake got Dan with Lake Palm Marine/ Lake Palac, the one
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who bought my heli barge. If you need access to the barge for any reason, whether you need to land a helicopter or have a dance party, look him up on Instagram, uh, Lake Pal, just one of the best dudes ever. Trent with Lake Palm
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Marine, obviously the operator, um, who was working with the family on this boat from the very beginning. And Trent's obviously the one who was able to get the recovery finally done and get the boat safely out of the water. So, huge
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shout out to Trent and for working with us on the footage. Huge shout out to Milemarker Winch. Also, Milemark Marker is the company that uh we run their winches on the front of my river patrol boat. They've got really heavy duty
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24volt winches that just absolutely kickass 18,000lb winches that dominate projects like this. Also, shout out to Joe Muth. Um came out of Elco, Nevada with his big salvage lift bags, dropped everything um he and his guys were doing, drove through the night, showed
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up and made it happen for us. Shout out to Doc Holiday. They make the inflatable like dock materials that you can basically tie around your boat, your house boat or your dock to extend your dock. Uh that's whose house boat we
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stayed on. Great dudes. Um awesome product. Super pumped to be able to work with them and actually have somewhere to sleep while we're down the lake, too.
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Also, shout out to my buddy Dodge Pullman for bringing his boat out and for supporting this. He had the big go fast uh boat cruising back and forth, so we're able to shuttle people and materials back and forth very quickly
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with that boat. Honestly, just everybody who came out and supported this, this was such a community effort. And again, everybody you saw in our video was here just out of the goodness of their hearts. They just wanted to help, wanted
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to try to solve the problem this houseboat owner was having. And we all gave it our all. One cool thing about this whole experience is the owner of the boat was so mad about how this all went down and and some of the dumb
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things that kept him from being able to recover this boat that he basically is now starting a nonprofit to be able to do what we love to do to be able to salvage more boats for more people on
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the lake without having to pay ridiculously huge, you know, salvage fees. I mean, it costs money, don't get me wrong, and you can't salvage everybody's boat for free. But there are situations where somebody either doesn't have enough insurance coverage, so they
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don't have a way to pay to get their boat recovered. Uh there's situations where people don't have any coverage at all. There's situations where people need help, and that's where we love to step in and kind of fill the gap between
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what the insurance can do and what the owner's capable of doing. And uh thanks to you guys for watching the videos because it's with the revenue from these videos that we use to do projects like this. And I'll tell you right now, the
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video revenue doesn't fill the entire gap. We have to pull in uh you know, resources and funds from other places like sponsors of the videos and different things like that.
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But without you, we don't do any of this. Hope you guys enjoyed the demonstration. I hope you enjoyed the video. This is a long one. There's a lot to take in. And uh we'll see you guys out on the next one whenever something
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like that happens again.
Topics:houseboat salvageLake Powellmarine recoveryheavy lift bagsboat sinkingsalvage operationunderwater cliffHeavyDSparksboat pumpingmarine engineering
