A yacht caught fire near the Marquesas, and it has spilled fuel, the Coast Guard says

A 100-foot yacht caught fire near the Marquesas, leaving a diesel fuel spill to clean up, the Coast Guard said.

The yacht was carrying nearly 4,500 gallons of diesel, but it wasn’t clear Thursday how much of it had spilled into the waters, the Coast Guard reported.

Six people aboard La Dolce Vita were safely evacuated on the yacht’s small boat and were escorted to shore by a Station Key West rescue crew. Tuesday’s fire reportedly started on the starboard generator, the Coast Guard said.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. The yacht’s captain radioed Coast Guard Sector Key West to report the fire.

The Marquesas, a group of six islands about 17 miles west of Key West, lie within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges Complex.

“The owner of the vessel is taking responsibility to contain and remove the resulting diesel spill,” the Coast Guard said in a statement on Thursday. “A commercial salvage crew deployed boom Wednesday to contain a visible light sheen.”

The Coast Guard is overseeing the cleanup.

“Right now, the Coast Guard’s main concern is the environmental threat,” said Chief Petty Officer Thomas Goggans, Coast Guard Sector Key West’s incident management supervisor.

This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 12:28 PM.

Gwen Filosa

Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa covers Key West and the Lower Florida Keys for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald and lives in Key West. She was part of the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune that in 2005 won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Indiana University.