Beachcomber stumbles onto eerie, seemingly abandoned sailboat, Texas video shows
.png "Jace Tunnell, the Harte Research Institute’s director of community engagement, came across the sailboat while riding his bike along the shore, he said.")
A beachcomber was riding his bike along the sand and surf in South Texas when he stumbled across a stranded and seemingly abandoned sailboat, video shows.
Jace Tunnell, of the Harte Research Institute, stops at the eerie sight and yells out to whoever might be on board, but nobody answers, the video shared May 12 to Facebook shows.
“It’s rough conditions out here today,” Tunnell says. After checking out the area around the boat and discovering its small dinghy — which is generally used when needing to abandon ship — Tunnell grows more worried about the fate of the boat’s occupants, and he decides to climb aboard.
He scans the deck first, video shows. He calls out again and hears nothing in return.
The sails are still up and the ship’s wheel turns periodically, and fruitlessly, as if trying to free itself from the sand, video shows. Below deck, cutlery, cookware, bags and other supplies are strewn about, left behind.
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“All their stuff’s still here,” Tunnell says, adding “the running lights are still on.”
Tunnell called authorities to tell them about the vessel but learned the boat had washed up days earlier and the owners were OK and were working to get it towed away and repaired, video shows.
“Maybe I should’ve called before I tried to get in there, but I just wanted to make sure everybody was safe and there was nobody, like, stuck in there,” he says.
“I’m just glad everybody is safe and they’re going to get their boat back,” he added.
A father and son were sailing together and got caught in “terrible, terrible conditions,” Justin Nesloney, owner of TowBoat US Corpus Christi and Port Aransas, told McClatchy News.
“They were out in the Gulf in conditions they really shouldn’t have been in,” Nesloney said, adding that there were 45 mph winds and 5-foot waves to contend with — bad news for any small vessel.
Their boat lost steering, which left them more or less dead in the water and at mother nature’s mercy, according to Nesloney. At that point, they abandoned ship.
“I believe they got in their dinghy and they made it to the beach,” he said, and they landed on San Jose Island, a barrier island roughly 20 miles northeast from Corpus Christi. From there, the father and son walked 3 miles to a jetty to meet the Coast Guard.
“A bit of a hike, especially after going through all that,” Nesloney said.
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Nesloney says he got a call from the owner around 9 a.m. the same day, and later on, a crew towed the sailboat away for repairs.
The Harte Research Institute is in Corpus Christi.
This story was originally published May 13, 2025 at 3:20 PM with the headline "Beachcomber stumbles onto eerie, seemingly abandoned sailboat, Texas video shows."