The season’s biggest storm plowed through Southern California late last week, choking creeks and rivers, flooding roadways and reservoirs, and agitating the Santa Barbara Channel into a muddy torrent. As high seas and south winds developed in the early morning hours of February 17, the storm’s first casualty — the 30-foot Coronado sailboat Tim Kirshtner called home — washed up on the rocks at Butterfly Beach just up the coast from where it had been anchored for the better part of 21 years.
“[The wind] was only blowing 20 knots that night,” Kirshtner said. “I’m very surprised my boat went to the beach; it’s been through much worse.” He suspects a sudden flip in wind direction caused the anchor lines to snag and fray between the rudder and hull.
Racked by a lingering cough, Kirshtner had spent the night on shore and got the bad news from a friend who had spotted the shipwreck early Friday morning. At the peak of the storm — as Mission Creek reached biblical stature and a century-old stone pine crashed across Anapamu Street — friends and strangers helped unload the boat, saving the radar, outboard motor, and some personal photographs. Most of the rest — waterlogged clothes and bedding, electronics, kitchen and office supplies — was lost. Late Friday, a friend of a friend with a crane hoisted the battered Dream Quest to Channel Drive, where on Saturday morning in another heavy downpour, a handful of fellow watermen winched it into a 40-yard roll-off dumpster.