Boats damaged from high surf in Santa Cruz

The big waves kept hitting the Central Coast in Santa Cruz County today.

Some people were out enjoying the surf, but others are cleaning up the mess it’s already made.

Fortunately no boats are a complete loss from the high surf at the Santa Cruz Harbor, but there was some damage. “Docks would all raise up five feet and then settle back down,” says Senior Deputy Harbormaster, Don Kinnamon.

Kinnamon tells us the surge waves that came through the Harbor were anywhere from five to eight feet high.

“We did have a few boats that did break loose from their actual slip, we found boats out floating, we did see damage to the docks where we had floats that keep these docks afloat actually missing,” says Kinnamon.

And while there was no massive damage, they had to prepare for the worst.

“We had the fire department down here, we had extra lifeguards from the city and the county, extra staff on hand to deal with the problems but we’re lucky enough everything stopped after a couple of hours.” Kinnamon also says the behavior of these surges mirrored the tsunami that came through several years ago.

On Thursday one boat was toppled onto it’s side causing roughly $20,000 worth of damage.

“Boats can value from a thousand dollars to five million dollars people are very concerned about their boats just like they would be their house or their car,” says Kinnamon.

Officials say though the water may not look that strong, the damage it can do tells us differently.

“Water is an extremely powerful force, you might not see like a breaking wave all the way through, but there’s yoa know beneath the surface it’s moving through pretty hard so anything that can be effected, will be effected,” says Deputy Harbormaster Sean Rothwell.

They say something as simple as tying boats up properly can be the difference between losing a boat or not.