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“T

hird Party” and “Pressando”, the two boats that burned at Sea Harbour Yacht Club – were towed to Deaton’s boat yard late yesterday. There, insurance adjusters can have a final say on what are expected to be totaled boats.

Meanwhile, the fire at Sea Harbour left many people grateful that the fire didn’t spread beyond slips 22 and 23 of “A” dock in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The firefighters who battled the fire and the man who initially called 911 to report the blaze were being hailed for averting an even bigger fire.

Some of those stories follow:

A finger pier separates the Hunter that was destroyed and the adjacent Hinckley that had some damage. The masts of the Hunter, and the Catalina came to rest on the finger pier and the Hinckley. Many who came to see the scene Tuesday had high praise for firefighters who kept the blaze from spreading further.

Sylvan Friedman had been up late, doing some work late Monday night. Sometime after 12:45am he went to his kitchen to make a cup of coffee. That’s when he saw flames through his kitchen window. At first he says his reaction was that it wasn’t a fire, but rather a reflection from the TV screen. He quickly saw that it was in fact two boats across the water at Sea Harbour. He called 911. Then he woke his wife Lynn and waited for the volunteer fire department to arrive.

Sylvan and Lynn Freeman outside their wine and flower shop Tuesday afternoon. It was Sylvan Friedman who first saw the fire while getting a cup of coffee just before 1am and noticing flames through his kitchen window. Many were crediting his 911 call as one of the things that kept the fire from destroying even more boats.

Sue Schneider and her husband live aboard a boat at Sea Harbour and was thankful that Sylvan was awake and looking out the window at that time. If he hadn’t she wonders how much further along the fire would have gotten. She and her husband, Dick, whose boat is on a different dock from the one where the fire happened, were asleep and woke to the sound of what they thought was a gunshot or a car backfiring. They opened their companionway to see the fire. As they called 911, firemen were arriving at Sea Harbour.

Firemen Eric Kindle and Peter Ritchie of the Southeast Pamlico Volunteer Fire Department. They and other firefighters spent more than three hours on the scene and returned in daylight to survey the damage. The marina says it is grateful for the firefighters’ work which kept the flames from spreading to the other 30 boats at the dock.

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Posted Wednesday April 15, 2009 by Melinda Penkava

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