Photo Essay – Saving A Sailor’s Home

When Tropical Storm Debby blew through Florida in 2012, a sail boat called the Promise was driven onto the beach in a small seaside town called Gulfport, its keel buried in sand. The boat is owned by a former Navy SEAL who is retired and has been living on it; he has no other home to go to.

Gulfport gave him an ultimatum: it would chop up the boat and haul it away as scrap unless a way was found to move it.

So Steve Smith, a marine line-rigger, organized volunteers to push the boat off of the sand and anchor it in deeper water. I spent the whole day in the water with my Nikon D90, photographing the salvage operation, and captured some amazing images of total strangers coming together to help a veteran, bonding with one another in the process.