A Year Later, The Boat That Crashed On Lake Of The Ozarks Hidden Island Has Disappeared

"The boat is gone."

Carl Payton, with Service Pro Marine, says his team took care of the boat that had sat on the shoreline below the Lodge of Four Seasons for the better part of a year.

The boat crashed into an underwater ledge on May 26, 2023. Service Pro removed the boat on Monday, May 14, 2024.

"It floated, we were able to float the boat," Payton said in a brief interview with Lake Expo on Wednesday, May 15; a bystander added they saw the Service Pro team adding airbags to help suspend the boat.

Payton shared few details with Lake Expo about the process of removing the boat, other than that they pulled the boat out at a nearby ramp.

Boat Stuck On Shoreline - Being Removed - Aerial

Payton did not share the current location of the boat but said disposal would require cutting the boat into 4'x4' squares.

Service Pro Marine removed the boat from the shoreline free-of-charge; Payton said he did it to help clean up the shoreline. "It’d be nice to see more people become active in keeping the Lake clean," he added.

A spokesperson for Ameren, which regulates the Lake's shoreline and owns/operates Bagnell Dam, said Service Pro Marine had approached them with an offer to remove the boat for free, but he said Ameren had no formal agreement with Service Pro Marine. The company approached Ameren offering to remove the boat for free, and then the boat was gone, he said.

Ameren had demurred to take responsibility for removing the boat, since abandonment of a vessel is a crime under Missouri law and arguably the boat's owner (who had allegedly abandoned the vessel) would be liable for the cost of its removal.

The underwater ledge that claimed the boat is infamous for boaters familiar with the Lake of the Ozarks' idiosyncrasies. It is marked with a handful of buoys, indicating the danger beneath for boats with much of a draft. In the winter, when the Lake of the Ozarks water level drops by five to six feet from its summer high point, the ledge becomes a visible island for a few months. Then, Ameren allows the Lake level to come back up in time for the boating season to begin in May, and the island disappears, ready to snag more hapless boaters on its submerged, craggy surface.

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