16 
 COURIER LIFE, MARCH 25-31, 2022 
 BY KEVIN DUGGAN 
 The small boat that sank into  
 Brooklyn’s toxic Gowanus Canal  
 March 18 was a city contractor’s  
 vessel, and one local mariner  
 spotted it taking on water for a  
 week before it met its demise in  
 the noxious waters. 
 The vessel, a so-called safety  
 skiff contracted by  the Department  
 of Transportation, was stationed  
 in the polluted waterway  
 just south of the 3rd Street Bridge  
 when it became submerged. 
 “As soon as DOT crews noticed  
 the boat was taking on  
 water, the DOT immediately  
 contacted the boat owner and  
 the vessel was removed,” said  
 agency rep Vin Barone in a  
 statement. “We have advised the  
 contractor  to  take  appropriate  
 measures to protect the public  
 in the use of safety skiffs.” 
 DOT oversees the five bridges  
 spanning the canal, some of which  
 are more than a century old, including  
 the 3rd Street Bridge. 
 The Environmental Protection  
 Agency has banned recreational  
 boating on the canal north  
 of the 9th Street Bridge since late  
 2020, to make room for the federally 
 managed Superfund cleanup,  
 dredging a century’s-worth of industrial  
 and wastewater pollution  
 from the canal.   EPA  spokesperson  
 Stephen McBay said the incident  
 had no effect on their work.  
 The boat appears to have been  
 The sunken boat seen on the morning of March 19. Gary Francis 
 moored at the sheet pile bulkhead  
 at the end of the Whole Foods parking  
 lot since December, according  
 to  a post on Twitter. Firefighters  
 responded to the scene Friday  
 night, and the boat was still about  
 two-thirds submerged the next  
 day, but it was gone by Sunday.  
 One local canal enthusiast  
 and experienced boater said he  
 spotted the little watercraft take  
 on water and go below its waterline  
 about a week beforehand. 
 “It looked a little stern down  
 on its waterline,” Gowanus resident  
 Gary Francis said. 
 Francis is a member of the  
 local canoe club the Gowanus  
 Dredgers and has paddled down  
 the canal and all over the Five  
 Borough’s waterways for years. 
 He has also twice set sail from  
 Maine to the Caribbean, and the  
 Brooklynite was surprised why  
 no one warned the owners over  
 the past week, despite the heavy  
 barge traffic from the ongoing  
 federal cleanup. “It’s pretty crazy  
 and embarrassing,” he said “It’s  
 just an easy thing to spot.” 
 Francis watched men trying  
 to figure out how to move the boat  
 Saturday, which is when this reporter  
 first spotted the drowned  
 vessel, but he wasn’t there to see  
 what they ended up doing to get  
 out of the noxious channel. 
 He speculated that if the boat  
 was left unattended, its batterypowered  
 pump might have died,  
 slowly  leading it to  become waterlogged  
 in the filth.  
 On  March  22,  this  reporter  
 observed a boat back at the same  
 spot, and a worker aboard said it  
 was the same one and that they  
 were  able to make it canal-worthy  
 again.  
 STINKING  
 FEELING 
 Sunken Gowanus Canal boat took  
 on water for a week, local says 
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