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Houseboat beached 3 weeks at Lake Mead rescued by YouTubers

Updated June 27, 2022 - 9:02 am

A houseboat stranded for three weeks at Lake Mead when water levels quickly dropped earlier this month has been rescued and returned to the water.

Videos of the rescue created by YouTube content creators — Sin City Outdoors of Las Vegas and HeavyDSparks of Salt Lake City — have gone viral.

Houseboat owner Craig Miller said he brought his houseboat, which is his residence, in early June to a place for engine repairs. But rapidly declining Lake Mead left him with nothing but wet sand under his boat.

Filming a different video on the decline of Lake Mead, the operators of Sin City Outdoors saw Miller’s plight and spread the word via social media. Responses flooded in they say and HeavyDSparks, who rescues stranded vehicles, came in to help.

Three weeks later with the sand turning dry, he faced a Friday deadline from the National Park Service to get the boat removed from the Calville Bay area or the government was going to salvage it, reportedly by cutting it into pieces.

The teams received a permit from the NPS to attempt the removal of the boat and succeeded on Thursday well after sunset.

Working for hours, HeavyDSparks was able to use a powerful boat and several attempts to pull the houseboat off land and into the water — much to Miller’s relief as he avoided having his full-time home destroyed.

The boat was towed to Calville Bay.

Several videos of the rescue are posting Saturday on YouTube.

Lake Mead was at 1,043.57 feet (above sea level) as of 4 p.m. Saturday, down 5.5 feet in a month.

Contact Marvin Clemons at mclemons@reviewjournal.com. Follow @Marv_in_Vegas on Twitter.

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