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After offers of boats and cash to recover their craft, former Summit County couple say they’ve got a lot to be thankful for

Tanner Broadwell and Nikki Walsh say they’re not giving up their sailing dreams

Joe Rubino / The Denver Post
Tanner Broadwell holds his dog with Nikki Walsh at Madeira Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018. The couple who abandoned their workaday lives to buy a sailboat for a once-in-a-lifetime adventure instead lost almost everything when it sank on day two of their journey off Florida. They escaped injury when the 28-foot boat hit something and capsized Wednesday in the Gulf of Mexico near Madeira Beach.
Jim Damaske/Tampa Bay Times via AP

A crowdfunding campaign that blew away its fundraising goal in three days. Multiple offers from people seeking to give them free boats. The support of friends, family and a ton of strangers around the world.

Tanner Broadwell, 26, and Nikki Walsh, 24, who moved to Florida from Summit County, feel like they have a lot to be thankful for, even if the sailboat they poured their life savings into is now sitting at the bottom of a Florida channel.

The couple made international news over the weekend after their 28-foot vessel, the Lagniappe, struck a submerged object Wednesday night and sank in John’s Pass, a channel off of Madeira Beach, Fla., east of Tampa Bay. The outpouring of support that has accompanied that news coverage caught the couple by surprise.

“We have been getting blown up with all kinds of people offering us their boats,” Broadwell said in an interview with The Denver Post Monday. “It’s amazing. It’s great that people want to help us.

“But before I can get a new boat, we have to deal with the old boat, which is what we’re doing right now,” he said.

Read the full story on The Denver Post website. 

A portion of Nikki Walsh and Tanner Broadwell’s sailboat, the Lagniappe, is visible above the water in a channel just off Madeira Beach, Fla. The boat struck a submerged object and sank on Feb. 7, 2018.


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