Boats Too Costly to Keep Are Littering Coastlines

[groovedaddy]

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Boat owners are abandoning ship. They often sandpaper over the names and file off the registry numbers, doing their best to render the boats, and themselves, untraceable. Then they casually ditch the vessels in the middle of busy harbors, beach them at low tide on the banks of creeks or occasionally scuttle them outright.

The bad economy is creating a flotilla of forsaken boats. While there is no national census of abandoned boats, officials in coastal states are worried the problem will only grow worse as unemployment and financial stress continue to rise. Several states are even drafting laws against derelicts and say they are aggressively starting to pursue delinquent owners.

“Our waters have become dumping grounds,” said Maj. Paul R. Ouellette of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It’s got to the point where something has to be done.”

Derelict boats are environmental and navigational hazards, leaking toxins and posing obstacles for other craft, especially at night. Thieves plunder them for scrap metal. In a storm, these runabouts and sailboats, cruisers and houseboats can break free or break up, causing havoc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01boats.html?th&emc=th

[Sagan]

1. I was wondering how they dispose of these...

Auctions?

[amitten]

2. Assholes. Call the authorities and learn how to dispose of these

properly. People need to take responsibility for themselves.

[groovedaddy]

4. It's the "trickle down" effect of those at the top who fail to take responsibility or of officials

who fail to hold them accountable. People start thinking: "hey, if they can get away with it, maybe I can too!" Such a sorry state of affairs!

[LiberalFighter]

3. I bet there are other ways to trace ownership of the boats besides the registry.

[madaboutharry]

5. The upkeep on a boat is

very high. The recreational boat industry was one of the first to be hard hit.

I really would love to see some prosecutions of this kind of activity. It is so dangerous on so many levels.

[Warpy]

8. A boat is a hole in the water, surrounded by wood, metal, or fibreglas

into which you pour money.

That's the way the old definition goes, anyway.

Some of the owners of the traceable ones probably died. The rest thought they'd made it to the middle class retirement with the house in Florida and the recreational boat only woops! it wasn't really there.

I'm surprised some of the owners haven't kept them and used them for fishing, selling the fish to make up for lost income. I'm also surprised smugglers haven't grabbed the no name boats to use.

As for disposing of them, there aren't many options when nobody's buying and you can't really get them trailered into the yard of a foreclosed house and an apartment manager would get really, really stuffy if you took up five spaces in the parking lot for it.

The only option would be to pay to get it out of the water and pay for storage in a boat yard until the market improves, which could be more years than a lot of people have.

[SurfingScientist]

9. We had a similar saying in Germany ...

... where sailing was limited to the North and Baltic Sea with their notoriously gnarly weather:

"Sailing is like standing under the cold shower and tearing up 100 Deutschmark bills..." :)

[Warpy]

10. I did my sailing of the coast of Massachusetts

so I can relate to that completely.

[SurfingScientist]

11. Living in Boston now, I understand ;) !!! (n/t)

[benld74]

6. Just tow them in and auction off AS IS.

[MineralMan]

7. If the states would allow registration of salvaged boats,

rather than making it almost impossible to get a new title on such a boat, entrepreneurs would quickly round up these abandoned boats and store them for repair when the market returns.

Unfortunately, if you do salvage an abandoned boat like these, you cannot gain title to it, so there's no reason for people to salvage them for resale. The boat market has diminished, but it is not gone, and it will return.