How to give away a boat?

[Sailor647]

Originally Posted by dreadpiratk

I need to find someone who understands how expensive a free boat can be, and will actually do something with the boat. A

WHY? Why do you care what happens to the boat after you no longer own it? What is the emotional after-the-fact-attachment people have with boats?

If you sell a house, do you require the new owner make it a show place?

If you sell a car, do you want the new owner to restore it to "like new" condition?

If you break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend, do you want the next guy/girl to develop a relationship with your ex that is superior to the one you couldn't pull off? And then follow them on social media?

If you adopt out a horse or a dog or a cat, do you expect the new owner to train it? And then update you on the progress?

I don't get it. I really don't. Give it away, sign away your legal rights to protect yourself financially, and move on. Happily!

[boatpoker]

There was a fella here in Ontario some years back who was grinding up FRP boats and mixing them with cement to make curb stones and patio stones. If I remember they 30% lighter and 50% stronger than just cement.

[Dooglas]

Originally Posted by Sailor647

WHY? Why do you care what happens to the boat after you no longer own it? What is the emotional after-the-fact-attachment people have with boats?

Are you serious? Are you actually a cruiser or live aboard? Surely you see the damage caused by abandoned boats. Doesn't anyone who owns a tired old boat that is at the end of its useful life have an obligation to see that it is properly dealt with. Anyone who sells an "end of life" boat to a naïve kid for $50 in order to get a bill of sale and title transfer, deserves a special place in hell IMO.

[dreadpiratk]

Originally Posted by Sailor647

WHY? Why do you care what happens to the boat after you no longer own it? What is the emotional after-the-fact-attachment people have with boats?

If you sell a house, do you require the new owner make it a show place?

If you sell a car, do you want the new owner to restore it to "like new" condition?

If you break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend, do you want the next guy/girl to develop a relationship with your ex that is superior to the one you couldn't pull off? And then follow them on social media?

If you adopt out a horse or a dog or a cat, do you expect the new owner to train it? And then update you on the progress?

I don't get it. I really don't. Give it away, sign away your legal rights to protect yourself financially, and move on. Happily!

No emotion, just simple practicality. The boat is in the marina we continue to use. While I may not have any ongoing legal responsibilities for the boat, people at the marina know it was mine and will look to me if it just sits and rots. Plus they’re good people and I don’t want them burdened with yet another abandoned boat. It someone takes it and moves it elsewhere I couldn’t care less what happens after that.

I suppose I do feel a certain level of responsibility to try and move it on to a responsible owner in the same way I wouldn’t abandon an old car in the woods just to be rid of it.

[Cadence]

I donated. Health got me. I can't remember who they were but they got a survey sent me a copy and a check. A donation also works as a tax right off if you need it.

[jmschmidt]

Give it to charity. But first give it a current fair market value (FMV) by a surveyor who has a history of having his FMV surveys accepted by the IRS. Then write off the surveyed value on your taxes.

[garyfdl]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

There are no channels for recycling worn out sails however

Actually? There are. GOOGLE 'used sail recycling'. You will find several places that will take them. You may have to ship them at your expense, but a couple of them will send you an item they make, with your sails, for the donation.

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

The really hard part is the hulls. Given that they are glass reinforced they are, presumably, as dangerous as materials containing asbestos and will need special handling.

It's not anywhere near as dangerous as asbestos. Look at industrial standards for handling the two - asbestos requires containment, special hazmat gear including special respirators, labeling ot the waste product, etc, etc, etc. None of that is required for FRP.

I scrapped out two glass boats. Once stripped, I hauled the hulls to a local waste company. They took them off the trailer(s), smashed them down with the bucket of an excavator, and pushed them onto a pile that was later loaded into trailers and hauled to a landfill. Disposal cost for both was less than $75 USD.

[TrentePieds]

Yes, Gary. Here in the Gulf Islands there is the odd - very odd - superannuated hippie chick who will take old sails and turn them into funky shoulder bags for wannabe hippies, but handicraft is hardly a long term solution for disposal of the relics of conspicuous consumption :-).

Boatpoker's post reminded me that once was a roofing material called "Eternit" - because it was indeed eternal. Sort of like siding: "Vinyl is final". 'Cept it ain't. Eternit was asbestos reinforced concrete. Corrugated sheets about 1/8" thick and maybe 2 x 3 feet. Use of asbestos fibre in it was outlawed some thirty years ago, although the trade name is now used for material produced with other reinforcing fibres, some of which are just asbestos under another name, a name that hasn't yet been made to put the wind up the general public. Scrap Eternit is now classified as a hazardous material, and there are very stringent regulations regarding disposal of it.

I expect the same circumstances to arise in regard to scrap GRP boats, for they will become of increasing concern as time marches on. Therefore we had better figure out what to do with the poor things. Sooner or later there will be regulations governing the rounding up of dead boats from our bays and beaches, and even from our marinas. When that becomes a reality, the bureaucracy, I shouldn't wonder, will insist on something more apposite for their disposal than simply smacking them with a backhoe.

Whatever the cost of that may turn out to be, the general public should not IMO have to bear the cost of the process. 'Tis time to turn a new leaf :-)!

TP

[Sailor647]

Originally Posted by Dooglas

Are you serious? Are you actually a cruiser or live aboard? Surely you see the damage caused by abandoned boats. Doesn't anyone who owns a tired old boat that is at the end of its useful life have an obligation to see that it is properly dealt with. Anyone who sells an "end of life" boat to a naïve kid for $50 in order to get a bill of sale and title transfer, deserves a special place in hell IMO.

Hi Doug,
I completely get your point, so my sincere apology for misinterpreting the meaning of the OP. I read it from the perspective that the owner (previous?) cared about the boat...not the marina it was in. My mistake. So sorry.

Yes, we are liveaboard cruisers. And believe me, we have seen more than our share of abandoned POS boats in Mexico. People (Americans and Canadians for the most part) literally just walk away from them.

According to the owner of the marina where we keep a slip, Mexican law says the marina owner must hold onto the boat for 7 years - yes SEVEN YEARS - before they can haul it out and destroy it. In unpaid slip fees for an average slip here that's $600 x 12months x 7 years = $50,400... more than the "average" abandoned boats are worth here. And after seven neglected years in the hot sun, they quickly become worthLESS.

We're all for taking these derelict boats, stripping any and all usable parts off, including the lead in the keel, and either recycle the hull or send it to the landfill. We have two sailboats right now on our dock that are taking up needed slips and generating NO money for the marina.

[hamburking]

If its absolutely free, then the new owner will not value it, and at the first problem won't hesitate to walk away, having lost nothing.

So ask for $100. This is enough to scare away the dreamers. The new owner will be vested.

If you post for free, you'll have dozens of replies, most of which will be "I'll take it". At $100 you will have already filtered most of the people you don't want.

And if they offer you $75, be sure to to accept anything over $50...LOL.

BTW, I bought a Paceship 29 at ABYC (Toronto) for $100. A few weeks of minor repairs and it was a great boat. The biggest issue was an electrical problem which kept the batteries drained. I found the solution HERE on these forum pages...THANKS GUYS!!!!

[garyfdl]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

in the Gulf Islands there is the odd - very odd - superannuated hippie chick who will take old sails and turn them into funky shoulder bags for wannabe hippies, but handicraft is hardly a long term solution for disposal of the relics of conspicuous consumption :-).

I fail to see the relevance of a persons chosen lifestyle to the topic. Personally? I'd rather give my old sails to an artisan for repurposing than just throwing them away.

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

asbestos fibre... was outlawed some thirty years ago.

I expect the same circumstances to arise in regard to scrap GRP boats

Expectations notwithstanding, the track record of FRP/GRP is far better than that of asbestos, meaning that it is no where near the health hazard that asbestos is. The reclassification of FRP/GRP to the level of asbestos highly unlikely.

I would suggest the lead in the keel of old boats poses a higher health and environmental risk than the boat itself.

[salfarina]

Originally Posted by garyfdl

What about donating it to a charity?

We have several local charities that will accept boats, cars, etc. In many cases they even move the vehicle to their location.

And you get a tax write-off.

The write off can be substantial- usually BUC book value plus 20% or more. Google sailing foundations, sailing educational organizations and Maritime schools. Most will take a boat in any condition.
Good luck

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

Scorpius:

I believe the Handicapped Sailing Association is still viable and operates out of Jericho Sailing Centre in Vancouver. TP came to us via them and I dare say that in the fullness of time she will go back to them :-)


Shanachie:

You said: "I wish someone would come up with a way to make money recycling used-up boats. Think of what it's going to be like when all of the cheap powerboats out there now are used up in 10 or 15 years."

So do I :-) Here in the Salish Sea we do have a bit of a problem. Every so often our Federal Government provides grants from the "General Revenue Fund", i.e from taxes, to sundry local authorities so they can collect and scrap abandoned boats.

But that is only half a solution. Fuels and other chemicals can be recycled through existing channels as can the metal components and any electrical gear left aboard. There are no channels for recycling worn out sails however, but they could presumably enter the stream of waste textiles which, as far as I know, tend to wind up in garbage dumps in undeveloped countries.

The really hard part is the hulls. Given that they are glass reinforced they are, presumably, as dangerous as materials containing asbestos and will need special handling.

The only "technology" that has suggested itself to me is to pulverize the hulls in some machine like an ore crusher and then dispose of the crushed material by mandating that construction contractors must incorporate a certain amount of it in such things a the concrete foundations for large buildings and in road surfacing materials.

I think the long and the short of it is that it will ALWAYS COST money to dispose of unwanted "frozen snot" hulls. I am skeptical that it could ever be made into a money making venture.

What we might do, of course, is mandate that every seller of a new boat be required to collect an "eco fee" sufficiently large to deal with that boat's "end of life" disposal costs. Just as we do with car batteries and such.

I'm sure you can work out for yourself what such a system would to to the supply/demand equation for yachts.

Avanti Popolo ;-0)!

TP

Thanks for the tip about the Handicapped Sailing Association at Jericho. I know them well (I used to live just a couple of blocks away and walked down there for a beer and sandwich many, many times) but hadn't thought of them.

As for disposing of old boats, Jack's Boat Yard here is offering it as a service. They'll do it for you for I think somewhere around $125Cdn a foot. They have all the equipment to do it.

I can't see the feds paying for all the derelicts that have to be dealt with. There were two very old, about 40' tugs anchored in Whisky Slough in Pender Harbour for many, many years. One sank, and the "owner" disappeared. I believe it was the first project for the federal fund. It cost over $80,000 to deal with just those two relatively small boats, not counting the cleanup of the fuel, etc. from the one that sank - and that was a straight-forward job in a very accessible location. It would cost over a million dollars just to clean up the junk in Porpoise Bay!

[Scorpius]

People need to be aware that the US has VERY liberal and generous charitable donation laws. I volunteered for a time at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in California for a time. When people brought items in they were handed the tax form and told to fill it out themselves. They could write in anything they wanted and it became a charitable receipt for tax deduction purposes. I understand this is common practice in the US.

Here in Canada, and I'm sure elsewhere in the world, charitable donations (and the resultant tax deductions) are much more regulated and onerous. For something like a boat you would have to have a professional valuation done before you could use the donation as a tax donation.

[PJHoffnet]

https://www.kars4kids.org/

Doesn't get any easier than this.