Hey there. My name is Mike Jablonski. I had a 1964 26′ Pearson Commander. It was named “Allegro.”

I bought it two months ago. It was my first boat and a great boat. Recently restored in 2003. She was built like a tank. It was one of the first fiberglass boats to be built. They didn’t know how much fiberglass they needed back then so they “overbuilt” them.

I met a lot of good people out there on the Anchorage. They are of a different breed, those people. My favorite guy is Captain Jack. He owns the 41-foot black tug boat at the end of everyone. He gave me a lot of good advice about being out there on the Anchorage. If you put a pirate hat and patch over his eye, he could pass for your classic pirate character.

My boat was the last one to wash up on the shore. I believe it was the 11th one. It survived the first three days of the storm. Twelve hours before the storm broke, my anchor line broke. My anchor line consisted of one 45lb anchor, two10lb anchors, 100 feet of chain. Captain Jack was on his boat and called me. I drove to the beach and got there right when the boat came onto shore.

It landed keel towards inland, with the cabin facing towards the ocean. So the cabin quickly filled in with water and sand and I had no chance of saving it. It’s too bad. It was a really good boat. What hurts the most is that it almost survived the storm. It would have felt good to make it through the storm when all those other veteran boaters washed up onshore. I would have felt like I earned my Anchorage badge.

I don’t have money to have a contractor demolish it for me, so I am doing it myself. I am at the end of East Beach, just below the cemetery. The boat is blue. At first I was going to try to tow it back out to the sea. I put an ad on Craigslist and I got a lot of people willing to help for free. If this makes it to the paper, I REALLY APPRECIATED THE OFFERS FOR HELP. But, I saw it wasn’t possible to save the boat, so now I’m tearing it up piece by piece and taking the pieces to the dump.

The harbor patrol have been nice to me so far. Steve, the harbor master, is the one in charge of taking care of cleaning up the boats. He has been very cool with me. If anyone has a working sailboat they would like to get rid of for almost free, can you let me know? My email is lehula@gmail.com. Thanks.—Mike Jablonski

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