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8:57 PM Fri 26 Dec 2008 GMT
 | | 'Carmina Mare being destroyed by anthorities'
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For 25 years, Larry Beane dreamed of sailing around the world in his yacht Carmina Mare. 2009 was to have been the year it was to happen, but instead the boat is lost and the dream has gone with it.
Last month, with his 46-foot bluewater sailing boat ready to depart, it broke anchor in a fierce sea storm and ran aground on Dockweiler State Beach in Playa del Rey in California USA. Beane was not on the boat at the time. He was at his girlfriend's house and arrived the next day to find the boat had dragged anchor and disappeared. He then went to the beach and salvaged items from the boat.
Beane had lived on the Carmina Mare and chartered trips on it through his business, Free Spirit Sailing Adventures.
Immediately after it was grounded, the Carmina Mare was upright and in good condition. But as the boat was slammed over and over by strong waves, it fell on its side and began to degrade.
'When it flipped over, my stomach just turned. I knew it was over,' Beane said. He hired a tow company, but the boat wouldn't budge. 'I tried, though, for four more days to board up the broken windows. I was physically exhausted and on the verge of a mental breakdown. Finally I just had to walk away.'
It was a messy, unceremonious end to Beane's long-awaited dream of spending the next two decades chartering trips in Cabo San Lucas and Acapulco, Mexico, and then sailing westbound across the South Pacific and the rest of the world.
'I think it was definitely a message saying that I shouldn't go,' Beane said philosophically, 'But this was the dream of my life and the boat was rigged and ready to go. It was everything I worked for - my home, business and dream.'
It was also a fluke that he hadn't already departed. He had been prepared to begin his worldwide sailing trip a week before the boat crashed, but he broke his ankle and had to postpone it.
Losing his livelihood was traumatic, but now Beane said he believes it was probably for the best.
'It was like watching a loved one die a slow death right before my eyes,' Beane said. 'I did some soul searching after I got some sleep, and I came to the conclusion - only God knows - but I probably would have been drowned out there.'
County workers stepped in to move the boat, but it took several weeks to get the legal clearance before they could start work. Then last Friday morning, two Los Angeles county bulldozers smashed up the Carmina Mare and shoveled off loads of fiberglass, wood and metal.
County workers are still digging out debris left by the boat, piling it up away from the shoreline and hauling it off, said Dusty Crane, the county's Beaches and Harbors division chief for community and marketing services.
'The boat was so far down in there, we're still digging it out and making sure everything is cleaned,' Crane said. 'Once the hard material has been removed, then the (environmental) testing will be completed. If we have to remove (contaminated) sand, we will.'
The county was cleared to remove the boat last Thursday and workers arrived at about 6 a.m. the next day with straps and trucks to pull out the boat. They dug out sand around the craft and tried to push it out, Crane said. They also removed the mast to stabilize it, drained the fuel tanks and sterilized the boat to clear any hazardous materials.
They hoped to keep it in one piece, but as they pulled, the boat's stern collapsed.
'At about 4 p.m., the decision was made that it had to be crushed,' Crane said. 'It's just really unfortunate that it wouldn't withstand the pressure of being pulled across the sand.'
Without his boat, Beane said that he will return to the job he did more than 11 years ago, before he bought the Carmina Mare - computer programming.
by DailyBreeze.com/Sail-World Cruising
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