Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach adds new vessel to improve response times

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach has added a new vessel to its fleet, a move the company says will help reduce response times for boaters in the Cape Fear region.

“We provide on-water assistance, so if you break down on the water, we’re like AAA; we come out and get you and get you back home,” said Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach Capt. Ryan Saporito.

Saporito says crews respond to a wide range of calls.

“A lot of times, if the tide goes out, we’ve got a 4-foot swing, we’ll get a lot of calls for ungroundings; otherwise we see a lot of fuel deliveries, fuel gauges go bad quite often, other than that. Other than that, we get battery jumpstarts; maybe they’ve been playing the stereo for a little too long on the sandbar,” said Saporito.

Sea Tow Wrightsville Beach recently added a seventh boat to its fleet, a 27-foot Twin Vee stationed on the Cape Fear River.

Saporito said the vessel’s location is expected to significantly improve response times.

“We can probably cut down on our response time by about an hour; the closest boat previously was in Carolina Beach, and so this is about a 20-mile run from where that boat was,” said Saporito.

He said a faster response is especially important on the river, where disabled or drifting boats can encounter commercial vessel traffic.

“Unlike breaking down in the ICW, up here in the river we have a lot of commercial traffic, so time really is the essence up here. So, if you’re broken down and you’re kind of drifting right inside the middle of the channel, you’re posing a risk to getting, you know, potentially having a collision with a larger commercial boat,” said Saporito.

Saporito said the goal is to get stranded boaters out of difficult situations as quickly as possible.

“When people break down on the water, it might be their worst day of boating, and they don’t want to be in that situation; they want to get out of it just as quick as possible, so with this boat here, we’re able to do that,” said Saporito.

Sea Tow has also launched a new app designed to make requesting assistance easier.

“It’s the app for every boater; you don’t have to be a Sea Tow member to have it. If you do need to call for assistance, it streamlines the entire process because it automatically captures your GPS location,” said Saporito.

Saporito says the app then prompts boaters to call Sea Tow’s local office, where dispatchers can gather more information, assign the appropriate captain and get assistance on the way within minutes.