Transient Sailboats in So-Cal

[SailingHarmonie]

Slips are a scarce resource in all of California, but especially the south coast.

Given that there are more boats that want slips than there are slips, you need a system to allocate the slips. I can think of three ways:

Let the market determine the price. The cost rises until the number of boat owners who can afford it match the number of slips. This is how it works in most of the US where marinas are private businesses.

Maintain a waiting list. This is more or less how the city Santa Cruz does it. The prices re artificially low, and the waiting list is decades long. If your ten year old child shows an interest in boating, you need to sign the up for a slip now! It’s only fair to those who can afford to wait and keep a boat elsewhere until the slip becomes available in the distant future.

Or you have some kind of lottery. Only the people who win the lottery think this is fair.

Which of these you consider fair, says a lot about your values.

But, of course, none of these are a solution for the vagrant boats. They are homeless. Ooops scratch that, the word police insist they are now to be called “the unhoused”. They can’t afford to care for the boat, they can’t afford a slip.

[GordMay]

Aren't the “tarp draped derelicts” inhabited by real cruisers homeless, doing real cruising surviving, with the means, and the boat, they have?

[Benz]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Aren't the “tarp draped derelicts” inhabited by real cruisers homeless, doing real cruising surviving, with the means, and the boat, they have?

Sure they are. The difference is that the tarp draped derelicts, most of which have very little if no money or effort put towards maintenance, often break loose or drag anchor and wind up ashore, abandoned by the squatter, and someone else's problem to clean up. Every time I pass through Key West I see this, and these are the situations that have grabbed the attention of the powers that be.
The cruisers/liveaboards, however ratty their boat may look, are usually invested enough in it to care what happens, and to secure their boat against ending up washed ashore.
I, for one, love the scene of a crowded, vibrant, shantytown anchorage like Richardson's Bay or Marathon--I've lived in many, sometimes for months, and the only regret I have about the tarp-draped derelicts is the negative attention they draw from regulatory authorities.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Benz

Sure they are. The difference is that the tarp draped derelicts, most of which have very little if no money or effort put towards maintenance, often break loose or drag anchor and wind up ashore, abandoned by the squatter, and someone else's problem to clean up...

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
~ Don Hélder Câmara

Poverty is lack of cash, but not [necessarily] a lack of character.
Contrary to popular mythology, the single most influential factor, in upward mobility, is something over which no one has any control — the circumstances into which they are born.
The world is not a meritocracy, where anyone can rise, from any low, to any height, and anyone, who doesn’t do so, just doesn’t work hard enough.

But, suggest to [many] people, that maybe there’s something they could do, to help people get out of poverty, to lessen it, or even end it? Get ready for some pearl-clutching, and horrified looks, for revealing yourself to be an ungodly socialist, who doesn’t properly worship Mammon, as you should.

[grantmc]

An interesting documentary about the 'transients' near Sausalito in San Francisco Bay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_4o2DIl7TA

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by grantmc

An interesting documentary about the 'transients' near Sausalito in San Francisco Bay.

Videos like that glorify a really bad situation. It's propaganda that doesn't represent the reality of the situation.

Drawing comparisons to homeless on land. On land, progressive groups will stop authorities from arresting or removing homeless camps because being poor isn't a crime. The same groups say that you can't force them into drug rehab, force them to get mental help, because that is their choice if they want that help. By trying to "help" those on the streets, the progressive groups are preventing real help from getting to the people that need it the most.

That propaganda video is by the same sort of group.

[boatman61]

Ahh.. The land of the free, where nothing is..

[Don C L]

In my youth I spent some time living aboard in the anchorage, along with a couple of other people. While we may have had a tarp or two draped over the boom, since we were living there, we were all careful to be sure we were well-anchored and if storms were forecasted we brought our boats in to stay in visitor slips. These are not the folks causing a problem IMO. It's the abandoned or rarely visited boats, with sketchy ground tackle that need to be addressed. The land the anchor is set in is either state or federal property; the land owner sets the rules.

[mikereed100]

Originally Posted by grantmc

An interesting documentary about the 'transients' near Sausalito in San Francisco Bay.

Richardson Bay, Santa Barbara, San Diego. The issues and the players are one and the same. Having lived aboard at anchor in Santa Barbara for the best part of a decade, first on my 24' Seabird Yawl and later on a Catalina 30, my impression of this video is that it rings true. At it's core the issue is between the monied powerful and the weakest members of society. Guess who comes out on top? Spoiler alert, it's the money.

When I was living in the anchorage in SB the population was a mix. These ranged from the drug addicted and mentally ill to transient cruisers. Seamanship ranged from menace to highly skilled. Boats from floating dumpsters to meticulously maintained. What nearly everyone had in common was a love of the ocean and living free, with all the benefits and hardships that came with it. Looks like it's still the same in Richardson Bay and, I suspect, everywhere else where long term anchoring is allowed.

While I, personally, am annoyed by derelict boats and their owners sharing my anchorage, I can't bring myself to condemn them as they are just doing the best they can with what they have, which is often very little.

[Onthewater222]

Originally Posted by wholybee

Videos like that glorify a really bad situation. It's propaganda that doesn't represent the reality of the situation.

Drawing comparisons to homeless on land. On land, progressive groups will stop authorities from arresting or removing homeless camps because being poor isn't a crime. The same groups say that you can't force them into drug rehab, force them to get mental help, because that is their choice if they want that help. By trying to "help" those on the streets, the progressive groups are preventing real help from getting to the people that need it the most.

That propaganda video is by the same sort of group.

So basically, anyone who wants to live on their boat and be left alone is a drug addict who needs help?

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Aren't the “tarp draped derelicts” inhabited by real cruisers homeless, doing real cruising surviving, with the means, and the boat, they have?

Points at Gordie yelling socialist, socialist, socialist!
Next you'll be suggesting universal healthcare.

Originally Posted by Onthewater222

So basically, anyone who wants to live on their boat and be left alone is a drug addict who needs help?

No I don't think that the post meant just that single issue!

I understood the post to mean that all people living on boats could alternatively be alcoholics or have mental health issues (or any combination with being a drug addict), and will also typically be a criminal and poor.

Surprised really that lazy benefit freeloader wasn't included too but there you go. Other pejoratives? tattoo'ed, sickly, old, young, black, gay, left, trans?

And yeah I know alcohol is just another drug and perhaps the post was using 'drug addict' as a blanket for both addicts and alcoholics. And he/she makes no differentiation between illicit and legal, so a nice broad brush there at least.

Let's be real, those useless boat people all think they're one up on trailer trash, but really they're just boat trash.

But definitely that doesn't mean us and our boats here on Cruiser Forum. And that's really obvious to anyone given we're special and cos we have the internet, and we all have really nice and expensive yots. Where as those poverty struck, drug addicted, nut bar, criminal, lazy, alternative lifestyle scum, never would.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by grantmc

Points at Gordie yelling socialist, socialist, socialist!
Next you'll be suggesting universal healthcare. ...

See ➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3946636

[Happ]

I’m in Beaufort, NC. We have the same issue except the boats here are mostly not occupied. The town invoked a 10 day rule. 10 days and you are gone. After a hurricane a few years back one of the boats on anchor broke loose and ended up ashore. The boat was an old beat up boat before the hurricane so hardly worth anything. When the owner of record was contacted he said he had given the boat to his brother, When the brother was contacted he said yeah but i never go the title so I don’t own it. The city ended up paying to remove the boat from the island it was on with a crane to get it on the water and dispose of it.

[cuthbert]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Poverty is lack of cash, but not [necessarily] a lack of character.
Contrary to popular mythology, the single most influential factor, in upward mobility, is something over which no one has any control — the circumstances into which they are born.

That needs a tweak...

Poverty is a (comparative) lack of cash.....etc, etc.

The very definition of poverty used in most countries is a measure against the average/minimum wage. In absolute terms poverty in the USA is doing ok in many other places.

[Lewis Harry]

All of your rants about people "below" your social status are bigoted and offensive.
Saying that all people that anchor their boats instead of putting them in marinas are trash and homeless bums is untrue as well. With rents for a single bedroom apartment at least $2500 a month, lots of low income people just can't eat on what they make.
Also, Federal law says the local and state governments have no legal authority to have a maratime police force, or pass or enforse and laws on bays, rivers, etc etc.