SPRING PARK, Minn. — The saga of an old yacht left precariously on a county-owned boat landing on Lake Minnetonka appears to be over, or close to it, after the Seanote was slowly towed to a new location overnight.
A video posted on YouTube late Wednesday shows a tow truck and large support crew rolling the 58-foot boat away from the parking lot and boat launch in Spring Park and down Shoreline Drive, reportedly towards a storage site owned by one of the boat's managing partners.
The drama began in December, when court documents say Seanote owners Paul Berquist and Benjamin Fields Wilson removed the yacht, previously used as a charter boat, from Lake Minnetonka. The big lake had already begun to ice over, and when the yacht was finally removed it was propped on a makeshift flatbed trailer and left in the lot of the heavily-used landing.
(Video courtesy Nathan Hofer)
Legal filings by the county said the boat, estimated at 45 tons, posed a serious danger to both county residents and the high-profile lake, maintaining it could tip off the trailer or leak hundreds of gallons of fuel into the water. Crews set up concrete barriers around the Seanote in an effort to keep people away until a resolution could be reached.
Watch Seanote being moved from the boat landing on YouTube:
County prosecutors and owners filed claims and counterclaims in court, and took part in a failed mediation process designed to seek a solution. Finally, on March 21 an obviously fed-up Judge James Moore filed an order of injunction giving Berquist and Fields Wilson 10 days to remove the Seanote from the public lot. He criticized prosecutors for not concentrating on what really mattered, public safety, and said the owners of the boat failed to address "predictable" concerns when they waited too long to remove the boat from the lake.
"The bottom line is that the defendants left a large, potentially unstable object on public property without claim of right to do so," Moore wrote.
At this point it is unclear if removing the boat will end the legal bickering. Some who have been to the lot posted on social media the immense weight of the old craft has caused significant damage to the pavement of the parking lot.
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