Boater rescued during Irene has trouble on land

NORFOLK

The sailor rescued from the Chesapeake Bay during the hurricane needs another life-line.

A day after Michael Calabrese, his girlfriend and cat were pulled by emergency workers from their battered 42-foot yacht, police arrested him Sunday night for trespassing at a city shelter.

On Monday, a judge lowered Calabrese’s bail but the city issued him a citation – move your yacht in the next week, or we’ll chop it up and take it away.

“I’m about to lose everything I own,” Calabrese said during an interview Tuesday in the jail. He was unable to come up with a $50 down payment to make bond.

Calabrese, 48, does not know where to find his girlfriend and cat, Meeka. Calls to his girlfriend’s phone Tuesday were not answered.

The boat came to rest on the beach near 9th View Street in Ocean View, between two stone jetties and a row of condos, cottages and beach homes. Beachgoers have flocked to the wreck. City officials say some have hopped over the yellow police tape and climbed aboard.

Deputy Norfolk City Attorney Cindy Hall said the wreck posed a public nuisance and needed to be removed.

“We don’t want anybody to get hurt,” she said.

Calabrese was cited Tuesday for a misdemeanor accumulation of solid waste and given until next Monday to remove it.

City and Coast Guard officials met with Calabrese in jail and discussed ways to get it off the sand, Hall said. The city does not have money to remove the boat in one piece, she said. Workers would have to dismantle the vessel and haul it out over the beach, she said.

Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Angela Vallier inspected the sailboat and said it had a small amount of diesel fuel aboard and few hazardous materials that pose an immediate threat. Vallier said it's unclear how much damage the boat suffered.

“It was thrown around, it was beat up,” she said. “It’s not seaworthy.”

Calabrese never thought Hurricane Irene would catch him. He has been sailing for 20 years and had taken the craft, a Hunter sailboat known first as Bella and later as Maybe Tomorrow, through rough weather in Florida and along the East Coast.

He said the couple bought the boat outright for $140,000 two years ago, and invested another $25,000 to make it their home. They were afraid their boat might get tossed around in a smaller marina and end up on a deck, he said. So they sailed north, ahead of Irene, to a more secure port. “We decided together to try to beat the storm,” he said.

Early Friday night, the couple started out from Portsmouth up the Elizabeth River, he said. He knew it was running late, he said, “but we can fly. We can get out of here.”

They had to move under sail power because the diesel engines were disabled, he said.

The ship cruised up the river, but struggled as they reached the bay. The sea was choppy and about three feet high, he said. They anchored in the bay not far from Willoughby Spit, he said.

They slept. “Somewhere in the middle of the night we started rockin’ and rollin’,” he said. He threw a second anchor over the bow.

At about 6 a.m., everything started to go wrong. Calabrese said he tried to adjust the rigging. A sail tore and hardware broke around the deck. The anchors failed to hold in the hurricane driven waves. Below deck, the boat started taking water. Furniture thrashed back and forth with the sea.

The storm pushed Maybe Tomorrow toward a set of stone jetties. At some point, Calabrese said he called “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” on his radio.

The beach filled with rescue workers. The boat slammed into the jetties again and again, he said. Finally, the sea popped the boat over the stone breaker and onto shore.

Rescue workers surrounded the couple and their pet and took them to an ambulance, he said. The couple suffered a few cuts and bruises, but no serious injuries, he said.

“We made a bad decision,” he said. He was not drinking during the trip, he said.

On Sunday, the couple returned to the boat to get some of their possessions, he said. They had a nice meal and relaxed, and Calabrese said he drank a couple of beers. His girlfriend returned to Bayview Recreational Center, where they were staying, he said. Calabrese tried to see her, but the employees at the rec center smelled alcohol on his breath, he said.

Court records said Calabrese was “nasty (cursing everyone) and very argumentative.”

According to court and police records, Calabrese has been charged with alcohol-related offenses several times in Hampton Roads. In 2009, Hampton police arrested him on Buckroe beach for taking a swim, naked and intoxicated, according to a public police account. Calabrese was found guilty of indecent exposure and a charge of drunk in public was dropped, court records state.

Calabrese, a disabled Air Force veteran, said he went through a difficult divorce in 2004, lost custody of his children, and struggled in his personal life. Now, he has another struggle.

Calabrese does not know exactly what damage the ship has suffered. He has a few ideas about how to have it removed, he said. He does not want to see it chopped up.

“If the world wants to call me crazy,” he said, “I thought could beat that storm.” Louis Hansen, (757) 446-2341, louis.hansen@pilotonline.com