[caption id="attachment_630" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="via Boatnerd"][/caption] More than 50 people gathered at Port Huron's 13th Street boat dock Friday afternoon to watch as an ailing tugboat was lifted with a crane and drained of water. For the Blue Water Area's devout water worshipers, the Coast Guard's effort to save the Gotham, which has been sinking in the Black River since Monday, was a sight not to be missed. "How long has it been since we saw a boat sink?" said Ken Whitican, 82, of Port Huron. Whitican occasionally glanced through binoculars as crews on the water prepared to hoist the ship. He remembers when Gotham, docked west of the 10th Street Bridge, helped with a volunteer-driven Black River cleanup effort nearly a decade ago. The tugboat, he said, was the largest boat on the water during the cleanup and was used to drag large, fallen trees out of the water. Whitican said he and his wife have been dropping by the waterfront periodically this week to check Gotham's status. "We haven't seen (something like) this in a long time," he said. Crews lifted Gotham's stern out to the surface about 3 p.m. -- hours after Malcolm Marine of St. Clair motored a barge carrying a large crane up the St. Clair River. Seconds later, the vessel was floating, and external pumps were flushing water from the boat as it leaked in. continue reading source: thetimesherald.com