Boats Too Costly to Keep Are Littering Coastlines

Not that having one is necessarily proving much of a deterrent. Mr. Santos took a spin on a friend’s motorboat the other day and saw a newly abandoned catamaran within seconds of leaving the dock.

It had been run aground at an awkward angle, a weathered “for sale” sign testament to the owner’s inability to get rid of it. Local watermen said the boat had abruptly appeared one day in February, and had not been touched in weeks.

“Boats are luxuries,” Mr. Santos said. “This isn’t a good moment for luxuries.”

South Carolina’s unemployment rate in February was 11 percent, the second-highest in the nation after Michigan. The online classified ad service Craigslist in Charleston, S.C., features dozens of boats for sale every day. “Wife’s employer is downsizing and we are forced to do the same,” read one post.

Mr. Santos, 50, grew up in this well-to-do community on the northern side of Charleston harbor. In his youth, he never saw an abandoned boat. As recently as a decade ago, they were no more than an occasional nuisance.

Now they are proliferating. Crab Bank, a protected bird rookery in the harbor within sight of Fort Sumter, is home to a dozen derelicts — two sunken, two beached, the other eight still afloat. They range from houseboats to a two-masted sailboat.

State officers have placed placards on each, warning that the vessels have been identified as abandoned. Thanks to a local ordinance sponsored by Mr. Santos, the Mount Pleasant police are also tagging the vessels. After 45 days, they will be removed and junked.

California is taking a more benign approach, with plans in the Legislature for a boater bailout of sorts. Under a law proposed by State Representative Ted Lieu, owners of marginally seaworthy vessels would be encouraged to surrender them to the state. If they abandoned the boat, the bill would double the fine to $1,000.

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The legislature passed the bill last year, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger returned it and many others unsigned during the state’s long struggle to settle on a budget. The measure has been reintroduced this year, and unanimously passed the assembly’s transportation committee last week and could become law as early as this summer.

Kevin Ketchum, general manager of California Yacht Marina, which operates six marinas in the state, predicted that the law “is going to be phenomenally popular. It will help honorable people who want to do the right thing but can’t afford it.”

The cost of the disposals would be paid by existing fees on boat owners. Mr. Lieu said that “in a perfect world” the fear of punishment would be enough to get people to stop abandoning boats.

“But to actually enforce that would take way more governmental resources than we have,” he said.

This story originally appeared in The New York Times

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