There’s a popular phrase among boat owners: The two best days of their life are the day they buy a boat and the day they sell it.
But across Maine’s coast, a growing number of people are refusing to do the latter, instead abandoning their old vessels in harbors, marinas and channels.
An abandoned sportfishing boat currently sits in a channel in Arrowsic, leaving the town to figure out how to obtain $27,000 to remove it.
A 36-foot lobster boat in Tremont has been allegedly abandoned on its mooring, and will be auctioned off if its owner does not pay the town, according to the Bar Harbor Story.
And a boat recently sank on its mooring in Lubec, bringing another boat with it, according to Daryen Granata, the vice president of the Maine Harbor Masters Association.
“We’ve had them where they rip the registration stickers off. They grind off the hull identification number. We can’t find any owner. We can’t find any information,” said Granata, who is also the harbor master for Scarborough. “They abandon these watercraft and they say, ‘Oh, you know, instead of me paying to get rid of it, which is going to cost me $3,000 to $4,000 to $5,000, I may just abandon the thing and let the state deal with it.’”
The growing number of abandoned and derelict vessels found on Maine’s coast has put increasing strain on the government agencies that must deal with them and created environmental hazards in the areas where they’re left.
It has also demonstrated how the steep investment that many Mainers make in a boat for fishing or recreation can quickly turn into a liability given the rising costs of maintaining and disposing of them, as well as the difficulty of finding second buyers.
While precise data is not available, the number of abandoned boats found on Maine’s coast has increased over the last several years, according to John Noll, the director for the state’s Submerged Lands Program, a branch of the state agriculture and conservation department.
Noll estimated that over the last five years, there have been 40 to 50 recreational boats abandoned and left for municipalities to clean up. Granata estimated that as of Thursday, there are 10 to 15 large removal projects and 20 to 25 small removal projects currently happening along the coast.
Among the reasons that more people are abandoning boats are that the costs of disposing have grown in recent years, which has made it harder for owners getting rid of vessels to pay for that work, according to Granata.
Numerous boat dealers have also reported that there was an uptick in boat-buying during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s not clear if the growing number of abandoned boats is a direct result of those same people getting rid of their vessels. But it does generally get harder to sell or maintain boats the longer they’ve been in someone’s possession, which means more people may also be deciding to just ditch them instead, particularly given the growing cost of many other goods and services over the last few years.
Ryan Derby, a retail sales consultant for the Rockport location of Port Harbor Marine, said as boats get older, they get more and more expensive to repair. Eventually, they’ll pass a line where the cost to repair or dispose of the boat is higher than it’s worth.
“Like anything else, you know, it comes to a certain point where you either upgrade it, or it’s going to start kind of nickel-ing and dime-ing you,” Derby said. “An old boat is a lot like an old car. The longer you hold on to it, things are going to get weaker and they’re going to break and all that.”
Abandoned boats cause several problems, Granata said, including pollution, wildlife disruption and navigational hazards. Oil and fuel can leak into the water. Fiberglass and plastic can break off and float into channels and other properties. Wildlife can get trapped in the boats and the chemicals they shed.
The problem is, as in Arrowsic’s case, if municipalities lack a harbor master or an abandoned boat ordinance, it’s difficult to enforce the removal of abandoned boats. Walter Briggs, the Select Board chair for the small coastal town, said while the state has approved the removal of the derelict sportfishing boat off its coast, the town doesn’t have the money to pay for the work.
There isn’t much available state funding to help towns remove these boats, either. Noll said that while the Submerged Lands Program has a small fund that has helped towns remove abandoned boats in the past, that’s not the primary purpose of the fund — that money is for working on other coastal infrastructure. And, there isn’t enough money in it to help all towns remove the boats, anyway.
“If we were to use that money for removing abandoned vessels, then those are dollars that cannot go towards actually building something to help commercial fishermen and recreational fishermen, recreational boaters, hand carry boaters, all of it,” Noll said.
Granata said that coastal municipalities can prepare for such a situation by making sure they have appointed a harbor master and have an ordinance regarding abandoned vessels. He said since harbor masters can enforce such an ordinance, and since they have intricate knowledge of the registered boats in the area, they can more easily spot a vessel that may be abandoned before it sinks and becomes a hazard.
The Harbor Masters Association is now pushing for state legislation that would both provide funding for towns to help remove these boats and increase legal repercussions for those who abandon them. Granata said Maine could, perhaps, set aside portions of the excise tax for registering boats to pool into a fund that could go toward abandoned boat removal. He added that the Gulf states, especially Florida, have laws on the books that Maine could use as a model for this potential legislation.
“Florida [and the Gulf states] are the biggest models for abandoned and derelict vessels, and the legislation that they have is very punitive, and that’s where we need to go and do something with in the state of Maine,” Granata said.
Florida’s statute gives permission to the state and law enforcement to remove any abandoned vessels that have been deemed a hazard. It also puts all the costs of removal onto the owner of the vessel or whoever is legally responsible for it.
Allison Hepler, D-Woolwich, said she’s been in conversation with her constituents about drafting such a bill. She said nothing is set in stone, though, and that any proposals would have to wait until next year.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member.Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.
