A solution for derelict boats!

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by CaptTom

I totally agree. The problem is that there is a right to navigation, which actually pre-dates the constitution. There are also federal laws pertaining to navigation which preempt state and local regulations. It's complicated, and there are competing rights and lots of grey areas.



Although I also agree with this statement, I think it's over-used by the boating community to vilify the "rich waterfront land owners." It's true that they do tend to be over-zealous and have political clout. Ever notice how the "manatee" zones seem to cluster around the areas of highest property values? I wonder how the manatees know?

I'd love to own property overlooking a nice anchorage. But I'd hate to see that anchorage filled up with near-homeless boat bums permanently anchored in derelict boats. My point is we can only solve this if we're all respectful of the real issues and each others' concerns. We (boaters) should be on the same side of the issue as property owners. We both really want the same thing.

Not gonna happen. Florida is blessed with just derelict boats. Check out the cities in CA where the sidewalks are converted to tent cities. Unable to do anything about that so what to expect where it comes to boats? Nada.

[MicHughV]

Speaking of less traffic, the ICW on the east coast Florida is dead. Hardly any through traffic.

Might be because I’m early season to had north though.

That's exactly my point....the ICW...especially this time of the year, Nov-thru April, used to be thick with boats, both power and sail..these days it's a desert...

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by ranger58sb

Sean's right. The whole system of American jurisprudence depends on that whole reasonable articulable suspicion (probable cause) thing. Anchoring somewhere is generally not a crime in and of itself*, ergo generally no law enforcement cause exists to stop and search and so forth.

(*In places where it might actually be prohibited by ordnance, I'd expect serious signage all over the place making that clear to everybody and his brother in advance.)

Of course there's a time and place to assert citizen's rights, and sometimes "go with the flow for now" is prudent.

Otherwise, inviting a system where you're treated as guilty until proven innocent is well past the "slippery slope" idea.

-Chris

That system is long gone.

Take a drive through your Chesapeake tunnel up there. You don’t think your identity is immediately apparent on those databases? They are scanning your license plate as you drive around your hometown. The police cars continuously scan. They pull over people who they think might have a warrant. They know exactly who you are when they are driving behind you. They use machine vision cameras to spot the plates and it immediately shows the identity of the person who owns the car. They take drives through parking areas with that plate reader on too.

These rights were lost long ago..

I’m pretty sure just the local town getting the identity of the person that owns the boat anchoring, so they can clean up messes they create, pales in comparison to everything else actually going on that stripped away your rights to privacy long, long ago.

https://www.police1.com/investigatio...zQspcwFhyolUn/

A link in case you aren’t familiar. And these ones are just at every intersection. Every cop car has these on board as well.

And responding to a few previous posts, not yours in particular, I did not see any boat bums on this trip (partial circumnavigation of Florida). They are gone.

The anchorages are choked up with jerks using them instead of keeping their boat at a marina. That’s what’s going on. Absentee owners thinking they can just anchor and take up all of the anchorages. These are the boats that are dragging in storms now. I don’t know where the boat bums went, but I think the life wasn’t very popular with them because it’s a lot easier to use a tent or even a van.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

Speaking of less traffic, the ICW on the east coast Florida is dead. Hardly any through traffic.

Might be because I’m early season to had north though.

That's exactly my point....the ICW...especially this time of the year, Nov-thru April, used to be thick with boats, both power and sail..these days it's a desert...

That’s what I have noticed as well.

I didn’t know the reason behind it however. Maybe the economy finally died? It seems like it has in a lot of ways. I know I’m not making any money.

There are very few boats passing through. There are a lot of weekend boats however. Small little runabouts making lots of noise and wakes. Plenty of those.

But the through traffic is pretty light. Very light

[sailingunity]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

Speaking of less traffic, the ICW on the east coast Florida is dead. Hardly any through traffic.

Might be because I’m early season to had north though.

That's exactly my point....the ICW...especially this time of the year, Nov-thru April, used to be thick with boats, both power and sail..these days it's a desert...

The way I see it, most of the boats head south between Nov, Dec, and Jan, then start coming back north starting in April/May/June. I came north end of Jan and I passed at least 7-8 boats a day who were going south. But maybe that's not a lot.

[MicHughV]

I live a stone's throw from the ICW.

True, around Oct-Nov, there used to be a steady parade of "Snowbirds" heading south, 6-7 a day...more like 6-7 an hour "back then". These days it's rare to see a sailboat on the move.
Same goes for spring/summer time.

I'm often at the beach, I might see 1 sailboat per month heading somewhere, whereas in days past, I'd see many.

I'm no expert on the matter....just relaying what I see.

I can remember some years back ( 1991, I think) , when some dimwit local politician thought it would be a good idea to introduce a 10% luxury tax on boats.
Literally overnight, the entire boating industry came crashing to a halt. It was a cluster of humongous proportion. It took years for the boating industry to recover. That tax was repealed in 1994, but the damage had been done. Countless boat builders, etc were put out of business.

I see all these mooring fields, astronomical marina rates, etc, doing the same thing.
Even the very wealthy people are saying....whoa, enuff already...

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

...I see all these mooring fields, astronomical marina rates, etc, doing the same thing.
Even the very wealthy people are saying....whoa, enuff already...

I don't see that at all. At least in the Northeast, the wealthy are buying boats and renting resort marina slips faster than ever before. Money seems to be no object. Safe Harbors is buying marinas and cranking up the rates as fast as they can. Customers are flocking to them, happy to pay for the "upscale" resort marina experience.

Boating seems to be a secondary consideration. "Cruising" is just scheduling a quick transit to another resort marina where they can plug in and head right to the spa, pool or golf course. I'm sure it's a lot of fun, but it's not my definition of boating. I guess times change.

[paralog]

If it is like here in Canada you will find most of the abandoned boats have gone through a few owners and have never been registered. When you investigate the hull numbers etc you find out that the boat was last registered correctly about 20 years ago and that owner is long dead.

Here our Coast Guard are too busy looking cool, running around in their zodiacs to be out checking boat registrations paper are up to date. I know that there are a number of boats here in the marina i live in that do not have registration numbers displayed so probably are not even registered. The Coast Guard are not interested unless there is an oil leak. So its over to Transport Canada and they are totally useless. I have dealt with both agencies in my past employment in trying to remove abandoned boats.

In the end its up to the taxpayer to get rid of them and that becomes a nightmare as the environmental issues become a PIA.

I personally would not have any issues with paying a "small" annual fee into a fund to remove wrecks.

[Fore and Aft]

Blueh20bound last time they did a wreck clean up here every unregistered boat had a very large yellow sticker stuck on it with a phone number and warning that the boat needed to be moved within a certain time or it would be disposed off. Funny enough I never heard any complaints that the wrong boat was crushed. True it's hard to identify if the disposer is the real owner. But if a vessel is unregistered then it's fair game in my opinion. No different to having an unregistered car towed away.
The $500 bounty works as it encourages owners to dispose of their boat rather than just abandoned them. I can think of 5 boats anchored near us that the owners cannot give away and I bet if they could take them to a wreckers it would save them a lot of headaches.
Cheers

[two-rocks]

About to set off from the north east. It’s these posts that are driving the desire to cruise vs park in a water based rv parking lot that is FL.

We owned rv’s - they are fun but regulated.

Maybe winter has advantages.

[dwedeking2]

Florida has a derelict boat program. You get a water cop to mark your boat as a derelict. Then sign over the title and they crush the boat up. No cost to the owner (the costs come out of the boat registration fees). A number of boats in Key West did that when Ian came through.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Shanachie

And yeah, it hurts people who live on boats and don't have any money. But really, in the 21st century, you have no business owning a sizeable boat if you don't have a thick wallet.

It costs so much to maintain a boat these days that if you don't have money, it is inevitable that your vessel will end up an eyesore.

Not really agreeing with this statement. I have been doing this since 1975. Your back in the day theory only proves that people who started out early "messing with boats" learned how to do there own maintenance. I have been able to build boats from nothing, go cruising and do this to multiple vessels. Marinas want nothing more than people who do not know which end of a screw driver to hold to drop their boat off and write a blank check.

I have built 2 sailboats from steel, the ground up and restored 5 run down boats and now working on my 6th. I do this because I like to work on them. I do this because I enjoy the comradery. I do this because I get a sense of accomplishment of self, that I can do what most here cannot.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by Chotu

That system is long gone.

Take a drive through your Chesapeake tunnel up there. You don’t think your identity is immediately apparent on those databases? They are scanning your license plate as you drive around your hometown.

The police cars continuously scan. They pull over people who they think might have a warrant. They know exactly who you are when they are driving behind you.

That's a different thing. Simply being in public causes some assumptions about right to privacy... but stop and search isn't one of those... without probable cause. The scanners/computers might actually provide a reason for probable cause, as might erratic driving, but a license plate simply being scanned isn't actually much of a deal.

Sorta like think about all the people you might see on a daily basis. And how many of those you immediately ignore. You haven't violated their privacy.

If there's not a statute that says John Q can't do something, he can.

If there's not a statute that says Govt can do something, it can't.

-Chris

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by ranger58sb

That's a different thing. Simply being in public causes some assumptions about right to privacy... but stop and search isn't one of those... without probable cause. The scanners/computers might actually provide a reason for probable cause, as might erratic driving, but a license plate simply being scanned isn't actually much of a deal.

Sorta like think about all the people you might see on a daily basis. And how many of those you immediately ignore. You haven't violated their privacy.

If there's not a statute that says John Q can't do something, he can.

If there's not a statute that says Govt can do something, it can't.

-Chris

so apparently you actually just don’t understand the idea.

you don’t get what I proposed.

what I proposed is just making sure the local town gets the ID of people that are in their Anchorage. That’s it.

nobody’s getting stopped and searched.

Nothing different than when you go into a bar and have to present your ID.

and that’s just it. You’re missing the point again. I think we should dump anchoring restrictions and gain freedom. Take those statutes off the books.

replace them with local statutes that allow the town that surrounds the Anchorage to account for who is leaving the boats behind in it and hold them responsible for messes they create.

are you one of those people? Do you have a boat down here in Florida just sitting in an Anchorage? That’s the only reason I can think that you’d be so dead set against this.

are you one of the people causing the problems?

I can’t believe you don’t think the state and federal government tracking the identity, whereabouts and movement patterns of every driver in a giant database is " no big deal" and simply asking for the identifying information of someone in a small town's anchorage to hold them responsible for their boat is this huge problem. Lol

You definitely have some reason in your life for feeling this way. What causes you to feel like this? Why are you so happy to have state and federal government tracking your every whereabouts on a highway system but not willing to say who you are when you are in Anchorage? What are you hiding?

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by Chotu

so apparently you actually just don’t understand the idea.

you don’t get what I proposed.

what I proposed is just making sure the local town gets the ID of people that are in their Anchorage. That’s it.

nobody’s getting stopped and searched.

Nothing different than when you go into a bar and have to present your ID.

and that’s just it. You’re missing the point again. I think we should dump anchoring restrictions and gain freedom. Take those statutes off the books.

replace them with local statutes that allow the town that surrounds the Anchorage to account for who is leaving the boats behind in it and hold them responsible for messes they create.

are you one of those people? Do you have a boat down here in Florida just sitting in an Anchorage? That’s the only reason I can think that you’d be so dead set against this.

are you one of the people causing the problems?

I can’t believe you don’t think the state and federal government tracking the identity, whereabouts and movement patterns of every driver in a giant database is " no big deal" and simply asking for the identifying information of someone in a small town's anchorage to hold them responsible for their boat is this huge problem. Lol

You definitely have some reason in your life for feeling this way. What causes you to feel like this? Why are you so happy to have state and federal government tracking your every whereabouts on a highway system but not willing to say who you are when you are in Anchorage? What are you hiding?

Geez, chill.

I have no opinion on your idea. Only saying that it presents legal issues. Just being in a given location (as in anchoring in Bumscrew, Florida) doesn't usually break the probable cause threshold.

I don't think it's "no big deal" -- and that's why I mention that whole "reasonable articulable suspicion" thing.

-Chris