Dredging Ship Is Aground Again

For the second time in just over a month, a 165-foot dredging vessel has run aground in Newport Beach, U.S. Coast Guard officials said Saturday.

The Eland, a steel-hulled 298-ton ship helping dredge Santa Ana River storm-drain channels, was expected to be freed late Saturday after being beached for more than 24 hours.

“She’s on a sand bar with minimal risk of breaking up,” said Lt. J.G. Vang, a Coast Guard spokesman. “It’s safe enough to where the crew remained aboard.”

Lt. Tony Migliorini, another spokesman for the federal agency, said the mishap occurred about 8 p.m. Friday after the ship’s propeller became fouled by a loose line at the west end of the city near the river jetty.

For unknown reasons, he said, the ship then lost its second engine.

The crew dropped anchor, Migliorini said, but it didn’t hold and the vessel drifted into shallow water.

“We’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened,” he said.

The Eland attracted headlines and crowds of onlookers when it was in a similar predicament Feb. 7 and 8.

Eventually it was pulled free by a fleet of tugboats operated by a Long Beach company, but not before the ship’s owner, Nehalem River Dredging Inc., was fined $5,000 for waiting 24 hours before notifying the Coast Guard.

This time, Migliorini said, the mishap was reported immediately.