Two Vietnam-era amphibious vehicles that pulled up in Brigantine when one suffered a ruptured hydraulic line departed just before noon on Friday.
The two amphibious vehicles had previously made stops in Island Beach State Park and Barnegat Light as they tried to make their way from New York to Virginia on a trip marred by breakdowns and repairs along the Jersey Shore.
Under fog and mist, the crew of five started the engines of the two vehicles — called “Wild Sally” and “Big Jack” — and slowly backed off the beach as a small crowd gathered to watch.
The massive vehicles drove up onto the island’s Cove beach Monday afternoon when “Wild Sally” experienced steering problems, the operators said.
“We realized that one of the old steel hydraulic lines had ruptured,” John Hennage, one of operators, told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday as he was picking up the needed parts in Virginia.
The amphibious vehicles, which were previously used by the military, are called a LARC, for lighter amphibious resupply cargo, or sometimes LARC-LX.
Hennage said only 60 of the LARC-LX amphibious vehicles were built, beginning in the 1950s. The two his sister purchased from a company in Staten Island, known as #48 and #49, were built in the early-to-mid-1960s.
He was one of five crew members helping motor the two vehicles to Aberdeen, Maryland, from Staten Island for a company his sister is starting for marine construction. The vehicles will then motor to Tappahannock, Virginia, he said.
They left May 16 for what was supposed to be an approximately 36 hour trip to their first stop in Maryland, but a clogged fuel line forced them to stop at Island Beach State Park. They did enough work to get up and running before making a stop in Barnegat Light to finish up, Hennage said.
It wasn’t long before they were back on land in Brigantine for additional repairs.
With the holiday weekend approaching, Hennage was told by city officials the vehicles had to be off the beach by Friday.
Their next stop will be Cape May to fuel up, Hennage said before pulling out. Motoring into the wind and a storm coming up the coast could slow them down.
The massive vehicles stood out on the beach. It proved to be a perfect photo op as people pulled up their Jeeps close for a quick picture just to show the size difference.
“Big Jack” was the first to slowly back into the Absecon Inlet as crew member Jack Boyd waved to the crowd. A few minutes later “Wild Sally” followed.
Mark Collins and his wife, Kristie, of Winslow, pulled alongside the massive vehicles in their white Jeep Rubicon just in time to catch the show.
“Seeing them launch was really impressive and brought back a lot of memories of standing on the pier watching the ships pull out,” said Collins, who served in the Navy from 1989 to 1995.
Collins, who is a pilot for Spirit Airlines, compared watching the vehicles leave to watching airplanes take off.
“Something that large can be on the ground and then in the air a couple minutes later. Same thing with something such as this … driving across the beach into the ocean,” he said.
As the vehicles slowly motored past the Brigantine Beach jetty, they disappeared into the fog leaving behind only their massive tire tracks in the sand as a reminder of their stay.
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