Residents and staff at Packwood Home are ‘over the moon’ after good Samaritans cleared their beach of two abandoned sailboats.

In less than six hours, Jim Butterfield and four others this Sunday solved the problem that has plagued the Somerset nursing home for more than ten years.

Packwood Home manager, Nelda Smith, said she came to work on Monday morning to find the beach as good as new.

“I was over the moon!” she said while examining the beach yesterday afternoon.

“Oh my gosh, look at it! Look at this! We have an annual picnic here, but it hasn’t looked like this for over ten years. We have all the relatives and friends of Packwood come down and now we can say: ‘Look! We have a full beach!’”

After reading the story in The Royal Gazette last week, Mr Butterfield decided to call a friend and see if they couldn’t move the boat themselves.

“Clive Hook is a friend of mine. He’s always doing stupid things like this with me,” said Mr Butterfield. “So I got Clive to go and look at it and we realised we needed some planks to make rails to get the boat to slide into the water.”

From there, said Mr Butterfield, it was only a matter of digging out the sand surrounding the sailboats and pulling them into the water using his personal boat.

“We shovelled out the sand behind the boat — that took an hour, an hour and a half — then put the planks down.

With the help of three others, Mr Butterfield said the job could easily be done by the Bermuda Regiment.

“I thought: ‘Why wouldn’t the regiment take a look? It’s not a private enterprise. This is an old folks home! The regiment also has what I have, which is a pretty powerful boat.”

One of the sailboats, which is now moored off the beach, was taken into the hands of another resident who came to help out.

The other, said Mr Butterfield, sank while under tow.

“We all love our boats, they cost us a lot of money, but suddenly they’re a liability and it costs more money to get rid of them.”

“We have systems in Bermuda for cars and refrigerators, we have a method, but on a boat we don’t. I have to confess, and the environmentalist won’t be happy ... I’m not either. But I’ve dumped a boat in deep water in Bailey’s Bay, I’ve dumped a boat in the sound. Yesterday’s boat sank just as I got to Dockyard on the Western side. It was about 40 feet of water. That little boat went to straight to the bottom. Where am I going to take a boat that’s sinking? I’m not about to beach it, I just got it off the beach. It sank in 40 feet of water, but eventually you can’t keep sinking these boats.

“I realise Bermuda has bigger issues than punts, but my first question is: why wouldn’t the regiment help out an old folks home? When you look at the bigger picture, we pay the registration to Marine and Ports for our moorings and for our boats, and surely they should get involved, either to advise, or to warn, or to encourage the owner that he’s got to deal with his boat.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Marine and & Ports said: “The Department of Marine & Ports will continue to actively contact licence owners and issue Wreck Removal Notices where appropriate. They will soon post a public status update on their website covering all the wrecks that they are aware of Island-wide.”