The Villages Daily Sun

THE VILLAGES — The Amsterdam was in a bad situation.

The waters were rough Tuesday, the occasional waves and spirals recklessly tossing about the ocean tugboat. Then, suddenly, the Amsterdam started

floundering.

“We all turned around and here the boat was, already down low in the water,” Mike Trottier said. “I yelled at Bob (Hawthorne), ‘Quick, get it to shore.’”

But Hawthorne, the ship’s owner, was unable to get it back to land before it went down, with all hands aboard.

Fortunately, the Amsterdam is a model tugboat that sank in Lake Mira Mar on Tuesday, so the crew members were, in fact, plastic figurines.

But Wednesday morning Hawthorne gathered with a support team of fellow Castaway model boat group members to watch The Villages Scuba Club perform a search and rescue mission.

The three scuba divers, David Bigelow, George Perkins and Steve Gray, had a challenge ahead of them, said fellow club member Madeline Helbock, who had participated in a previous search and rescue.

“It is dirty, it is mucky, it is yucky,” Helbock said of the water. “Once you touch the bottom, everything roils ... you can’t see anything”

“Envision yourself in a closet, the door shut, and you’ve got to find a pair of shoes,” she added. “That’s what it’s like.”

But the three scuba divers were willing to brave the low visibility of the water in an attempt to rescue Hawthorne’s ship. In fact, Bigelow has experience diving in murky waters.

“I dive in this sort of environment all the time,” said the Village of Country Club Hills snowbird, who does a lot of diving in Michigan. “It makes all the difference.”

So slowly, the three men waded into the water, secured their masks and mouthpieces, and dove to the bottom of the lake. The only evidence that they were in there was the occasional bubbles rising to the surface.

Then a white, wooden structure suddenly bobbed to the surface.

“That’s it,” people shouted, pointing at it. But it was only the top half of the vessel.

Bigelow then came up carrying the bottom, much heavier, half of the ship.

He victoriously brought the bottom half to shore where, as he emptied it, water came out of areas that it generally shouldn’t, suggesting a hole caused the ship to sink.

Meanwhile, Perkins and Gray continued to dive under the water as people frantically pointed to the upper portion of the ship, casually floating in the middle of the lake by a buoy.

Unfortunately, the men weren’t able to understand what people were yelling, and kept diving to look for the rest of the ship.

Finally, one of them spotted the other half floating, and the two men came to shore.

“It just tickled me that it got out of the water in as good a shape as it is,” Hawthorne said, carefully inspecting the ship for damage and missing parts. To his amazement, there was minimal damage. “I can’t believe they got it out of the water without more damage than that; I really can’t.”

And to the delight of everyone there, no crewmen were lost in the accident.

Katie Evans is a reporter with the Daily Sun. She can be reached at 753-1119, ext. 9067, or katie.evans@thevillagesmedia.com.