Tales from the boatyard: Abandonment issues, not abandoning ship.

Picture the scene, boat is hauled, usual work to be carried out, bottom cleaning, anodes, maybe a polish and then back in the water, business as usual, except, the owner of the boat does not answer the phone when called to come and collect their boat and pay the boatyard.

Not to worry, leave a message and send an email, still no reply, this now drags out for months, all the while the boat is racking up hardstanding charges, welcome to abandoned boats, the boatyard nightmare.

Abandoned boats take up valuable space, if they are in poor condition they do not make a good image for the yard and can end up costing the yard money to do something with them.

The most common scenario for why boats end up abandoned in yards and storage facilities is underestimating repair costs, the repairs are almost as much as the boats value and so the boat is parked, never to be used again.

What happens next?

That depends, a process begins of trying to contact the owner, including sending registered letters, when that process is up, it goes to court, then an order of destruction is issued. The owner of the boat can actually end up being blacklisted for non payment of invoices. The boat is then recycled and destroyed.

An alternative is, depending on the circumstances, the yard ends up keeping the boat and selling it with the intention of recovering some of the debt owed, this can only usually happen after a court awards in favour of the yard. In some rarer circumstances, the owner of the boat contacts the yard and they come to an arrangement where the boatowner hands over the title of the boat to the yard.

There was once a time when abandoned boats were a great source for those who liked restorations, I haven't seen that in a long time....The reality is that by the time someone can obtain the boat from the yard it can be months or even years that the boat has been standing around. Then the potential new owner is into a restoration or refit, with once again associated costs, some can carry it off, but others fall into the same trap as the original boatowner.