Abandonded Vessels

[Be Free]

This discussion started in reference to some derelict vessels that ixneigh described on his latest Keys trip. I'm splitting this discussion off to limit hijacking his excellent trip log.

To recap:

Are people abandoning their boats or did the captain sink it?

I hear abandoned boats in FL is a big problem.

I wonder what the ‘salvage’ rules/laws are in that area ….
One sees pictures of boats with lots of stainless steel tubing exposed, masts and cables…

It is a crime to take possession of an abandoned vessel without first getting title to it. It is a crime to take anything off of an abandoned vessel without first getting title to it.

If you want to get ownership of an abandoned vessel you must first pay an investigative of fee of $300 to $600 and wait 45-120 days for the state to give you clear title. While you are waiting, less law abiding folks continue stripping anything they take a fancy to off the vessel. Once you have clear title to the vessel the clock starts ticking until you either move your new boat or it is declared derelict or at-risk.

Thanks Be Free!

I figured there was a legit process!
Last couple of years we’ve also seen obviously abandoned vessels in our area occasionally.
They seem to sit for about a year before I believe DNR has them removed but by then they have rain flooded, been banged about, driven ashore or illicitly vandalized by “yahoos” .

I’m wondering now where and how these vessels get scrapped as some of the videos I’ve seen just show them getting chewed up and crushed for landfill…. Which after a year is probably all that can be done with them as they get pretty scuzzy after sitting (sinking) for that amount of time. (Yucky…. )

Just seems a shame..

Best Regards,
Over Easy

It may just be due to the fact that all of my boating experience has been in Florida or that Florida has, by far, more boats than any other state, but it seems that the problem of abandoned and derelict boats is particularly bad here. A few years ago, legislation to address the problem was working its way through the state legislature. I took the opportunity to engage with the process and actually had several of my concerns addressed and a few particularly troublesome provisions removed in the version that was passed.

While the original discussion was prompted by vessels in the Florida Keys, the problem of abandoned vessels seems to be ubiquitous so please feel free to add your local perspective. I'm particularly interested in some of our non-American member's experiences.

[Be Free]

The really sad part is that there is no reason for these vessels to be abandoned. In Florida, there is a no-cost process for turning in a vessel that has been cited as at-risk of becoming derelict. In broad terms, the program works as follows.

An vessel at-risk of becoming derelict has one or more of the following:
(a) The vessel is taking on or has taken on water without an effective means to dewater.
(b) Spaces on the vessel which are designed to be enclosed are incapable of being sealed off or remain open to the elements for extended periods of time.
(c) The vessel has broken loose or is in danger of breaking loose from its anchor.
(d) The vessel is listing due to water intrusion.
(e) The vessel does not have an effective means of propulsion

That will get you a non-criminal ticket and make the vessel eligible for the voluntary turn-in program. The ticket is somewhere between $100 and $250. It is a very good idea to take this opportunity before the boat is found to be derelict

A derelict vessel has one or more of these conditions:

a. A vessel is wrecked if it is sunken or sinking; aground without the ability to extricate itself absent mechanical assistance; or remaining after a marine casualty, including, but not limited to, a boating accident, extreme weather, or a fire.
b. A vessel is junked if it has been substantially stripped of vessel components, if vessel components have substantially degraded or been destroyed, or if the vessel has been discarded by the owner or operator. Attaching an outboard motor to a vessel that is otherwise junked will not cause the vessel to no longer be junked if such motor is not an effective means of propulsion as required by s. 327.4107(2)(e) and associated rules.
c. A vessel is substantially dismantled if at least two of the three following vessel systems or components are missing, compromised, incomplete, inoperable, or broken:
(I) The steering system;
(II) The propulsion system; or
(III) The exterior hull integrity.

You don't want your vessel to be declared derelict. Once it becomes derelict it opens the titled owner up to criminal (up to second degree felony) charges and liability for all of the costs of removing the vessel and repairing any damage it caused. You can be assured that the utmost care (and expense) will be applied to the process and that the environmental damages will be mitigated in the most expensive manner. The cost of removing the derelict boat averages $30,000 to $50,000 as opposed to the hundreds it would have cost to turn it in earlier.

[Starscream]

While the original discussion was prompted by vessels in the Florida Keys, the problem of abandoned vessels seems to be ubiquitous so please feel free to add your local perspective. I'm particularly interested in some of our non-American member's experiences.

I've never been to Florida but I've heard a lot of good things and a lot of and bad things. Personally, I have never seen a derelict boat.

I suppose it's because no one can live on their boats year round up here, and anything that you left in the water over winter would be swept away in the ice sheet no matter how well it was anchored. Pros and cons of living in the frozen north.

[Be Free]

The problem is definitely worse in the US in coastal areas and increases as you move south.

Every abandoned or derelict boat was once someone's dream and joy. Some fall into disuse when the owner gets too old to take care of the boat and they don't have anyone to pass it on to; some are due to dreams of "some day" that never come. Sometimes the owner dies and the boat sits unclaimed in a marina or anchorage. Dead owners don't pay bills and sometimes these boats "break loose" and drift way to become someone else's problem as a derelict. Other times they get sold cheap just to get them out of the marina and a significant number end up moving south, slowly deteriorating and piling up deferred maintenance until they reach an equilibrium of weather, cost of living, and room to anchor. Eventually, the deferred maintenance piles up to the point where they move from "at-risk" to "derelict" and some locality adds another abandoned vessel to their clean-up list.

Florida has a lot of good things and its fair share of bad things as well. Florida has always been attractive to dreamers and folk who value personal freedom over safety. Sometimes dreamers succeed and we all win; sometimes they lose and we all have a mess to clean up. Florida is only just now moving away from a "frontier" mindset. Putting up fences to keep in livestock is a relatively new idea here. Florida was still open range eight years before I was born. Hurricanes are an inevitable fact of life here that you ignore at your own peril. It can be scary to live here. I see it as fun.

[OverEasy]

Hi Be Free!

Great idea on the separate thread!

When I spent a dozen years working in Texas there were still a lot of not so brilliant ‘frontier’ mindsets wandering around loose…
A good portion of that was the pseudo cowboys who wouldn’t know which end to bridle a horse that tended to cause the most ruckus for normal folks…
There was also a fair amount of the “all hat an’ no cattle” characters who’d get stuff but couldn’t take care of it that would get abused and ruined and abandoned wherever they thought they could get away with. In a couple cases I helped local LEO identify some of these errant vehicles and they then went after the prior owners for the cleanup costs which could be considerable. One of the best uses for the early trail cameras was monitoring some of the “favorite” dumping sites for private land owners so they could bring civil action for the cleanups.
Back then the GOB mentality wasn’t holding water with the county judges who really took the offenders to task.

In the fresh water lakes of East Texas most of them were under some sort of ArmyCorp of Engineering control or influence so there wasn’t much abandonment issues. Most sunk boats were recovered by owners pretty quickly to avoid running afoul of federal and state agencies, not just local jurisdictions. But must all the boats where all trailerable sorts so in a lot of ways it was easier to get a damaged boat out. There were always some legit local junk yard that could take in a boat past it’s prime. I think that the rules for junk yards have tightened up over the decades though…

It’s been a couple decades since my time there so I can’t comment on what it’s like today but back then there seemed to be a lot of enforcement actions that seemed to do wonders to clean things up which was a good thing for the normal folks.

The voluntary surrender program you described sounds like a great program!
That should help everyone to avoid the significant problems that can develope when a boat founders or obstructs a waterway or damages the environment. I wonder if SC has a program like that? I’ll have to look that up or ask our local DNR next time. It would be good if they did.