TYBEE ISLAND — He goes by the name Huck. And, like another man of that name, Huck Finn, he lives his life on the water.
His trusty raft is a weathered and barnacle-encrusted houseboat that he’s named Castaway. For six days, Castaway sat just off the shoulder of the 5-mile-long causeway linking the beachside community of Tybee Island to the rest of civilization.
Carried there last Friday by Hurricane Helene, the vessel and its owner, along with his dog, Creed, had become an instant coastal curiosity. Many a Savannahian who ventured to the beach following Helene, seeking respite from hours of yard debris cleanup and home repair, pondered the boat’s journey. Huck’s plight had become the topic of conversation for those on the sand and in the island’s bars.
Most of those dialogues eventually got around to one question: How would Huck get Castaway floating again?
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
Huck, who wouldn’t share his full name and declined a formal interview on Wednesday, hadn’t seemed too concerned about his situation. For days, locals brought him food, water and all manner of supplies in exchange for the answer. He told them all a similar version of the same strategy: Every 12 hours at high tide, he’d try to shake the pontoon loose from the marshy reeds and the causeway’s gravel edge using the anchor, oars and his own muscle. If those efforts failed, the tide chart calls for abnormally high water — a king tide — on Oct. 19, and the surge that put him in the spot during the hurricane would carry him off.
On Wednesday, several Savannah-area Samaritans came to the rescue early.
Derek Adams, owner of Savannah Roofing Experts, and Tommy Solomon, of Solomon Landscaping on Tybee, teamed up to rent a crane and hoist Castaway from beside the road, place it on a trailer, truck it to a nearby boat ramp and position it to refloat on the next tide on Lazaretto Creek. The process took nearly three hours and attracted many an onlooker.
Operation Refloat was financed by an unidentified Tybee resident who’d reached out to Adams on Tuesday seeking ways to help Huck. He called Solomon, who’d been considering using one of his company’s backhoes to move the boat. Both came to the same conclusion.
“Only another hurricane would have gotten him free from where he was,” Adams said.
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
The refloating was a welcome end to a saga for Huck. In conversation while his boat was being rescued, he revealed he’d moved to Savannah from Tennessee a year ago intending to buy a liveaboard sailboat.
But he had no boat handling experience and purchased the houseboat instead. He was anchored in Tybee Creek, or the Back River as it is known locally, when the storm hit in the early morning hours Friday. The winds and waves were so strong the boat started to take on water, forcing him to cut the anchor and to go adrift.
The surge carried him more than a mile over top of the marshland before he ran aground on the causeway.
He called it his “wildest ride yet” and noted that his steep learning curve on the water had involved several trips adrift.
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
Credit: Adam Van Brimmer
Huck was already taking steps to avoid another misadventure as he climbed back aboard Castaway at the boat ramp. He called a marine mechanic to come repair his 70-horsepower outboard engine and was formulating a plan to move his boat south to Florida via the Intracoastal Waterway for the winter.
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