Dumped Yacht Collection
Our boat disposal team were on the road to Surrey last week to collect a dumped yacht. The dumped yacht had been left in a sailing club in Surrey. Originally it came to the club so the owner could “do her up” as a project. But as the years rolled by nothing was done to the boat she quickly fell further into disrepair.
Sadly the problem that sailing clubs have is the cheap rates for storage. This is obviously great for people who want to store and use their boats. But it also means there is a heightened chance people will abuse the cheap storage and dump their unwanted boats there. In the case of this dumped yacht it had been there for ten years and the owner had paid £68 a year storage. Our team couldn’t believe how cheap it was to store a boat there, especially on the River Thames!
Similar To Fly Tipping
Subsequently this meant that the club were out of pocket when it came to disposing of the boat. The cost for us to take the boat away for disposal was more than they had ever had from the owner in storage. Luckily we were told the club are in a healthy financial position but there are plenty of clubs out there that might not be. It is always a real shame to see sailing clubs with limited funds having to foot the bill for boat disposal. Having a dumped yacht on their land is bascially the same as being the victims of fly tipping.
Our plan for collection was our standard routine. Turn up with the flat bed trailer, winch it all on and then bring it back to the boat scrapyard. We knew there was nothing to save on the boat as anything worth having was already cut out. Probably by the former owner before he disappeared.
When we arrived in Surrey we could see the trailer she was on was on its last legs. However with our trailer we can usually winch most dumped yachts up. Annoyingly for the team there was a problem with the winch on our trailer. So, what should have taken 10 minutes ended up taking close to 45 minutes as we had to deploy some straps to help pull the boat up. The old trailer was also quite wide so we had to be really careful getting it up the ramps.
Brute Force & Ignorance
With a lot of brute force and ignorance we eventually wrestled the boat up onto the trailer and strapped her down for the journey home. The sailing club members were visibly relieved to see the old dumped yacht go. They are now set to tighten up their membership requirements to try and avoid a repeat of this situation.
