A crowd of sun-kissed onlookers clapped, cheered and chanted, "Go! Go! Go!" as the Joyce Lynn II crept back into the ocean after spending the weekend lodged in the sands of Fort Lauderdale beach.
Crews from a marine salvage company spent the better part of Monday using a backhoe to free the 63-foot crab- fishing boat that ran aground Friday after hitting the rocks of a jetty north of Port Everglades.
"That was quite an effort," said Kevin Collins, director of operations for Fort Lauderdale-based TowBoat U.S. "Everything finally came together for us. We got it moving.
"That's the hardest thing when these things get stuck in the sand. The water creates such a vacuum with the sand to break it free, to get it moving — that's the hard part," he said.
The towing company had spent three hours attempting to pull the vessel from shore Sunday before suspending its efforts. Crews returned just before dawn Monday to try again, Collins said.
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