Melbourne Fl declares war on boaters

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

If the sand is dry, it can be privately held, only wet sand below the mean high water mark is public land. This means that while the wet sand is open to you, you may have to trespass to get there.

On a practical basis, who wants to spread a towel onto wet sand?

No, as a former Fl beach front property owner I can assure you I only owned down to the mean high tide mark, whether it’s dry or not is irrelevant.
Access is gained by walking down the beach, or of course at places meant to give access.
In some places the tide isn’t insignificant, during low tide there can be 100’ or more of beach that is open that is under water during high tide.

[danielamartindm]

I've seen quite a few localities in Florida attempt to gain credibility to their cause of outlawing overnight anchoring by lumping derelict boats together with live aboard boats in their arguments.

[a64pilot]

What I see mostly as derelict boats, are unoccupied boats, often striped of sails and Bimini etc., they seem to be either simply abandoned, or “Stored”, nobody is staying in them.
Many have topside damage where it’s obvious that they have collided with something.
Many times good accessible nice anchorages are so full of these seemingly abandoned / derelicts that people transiting through can’t use them.

Of course I have a tendency to avoid large populated towns when possible, and I assume this is where you find the essentially homeless afloat, cause I don’t see much of that.

[Dooglas]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

If the sand is dry, it can be privately held, only wet sand below the mean high water mark is public land. This means that while the wet sand is open to you, you may have to trespass to get there.

Individual coastal states have their own laws regarding public versus private ownership of beaches. In Oregon public ownership extends to 16 vertical feet above the low tide mark. Practically speaking that means to the foredune and vegetation line. (in South Florida is there anyplace that is more than 16 vertical feet above low tide? )

[alaskaflyfish]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

This could either be just some rather unfortunate wording, or, looked at more broadly, a significant or possibly the major part of the problem...

Not to nit pic, BUT, I built a 90 ft wide seaplane ramp that goes down into the water, Seaplane docks and boathouses that also extend over the water. 270feet of shore line developed for business. All deeded to me by the State at substantial cost. Do I own it? Do you own your boat mooring or your dock?

[Lost Horizons]

Originally Posted by Dooglas

(in South Florida is there anyplace that is more than 16 vertical feet above low tide? )

My house in Miami is surveyed at 14 feet above mean high water level, which is about 16 feet above the low tide. It is more than a mile away from the Biscane Bay waterfront.

[thruska]

Originally Posted by Lepke

It sounds like the usual rich home owner against the less rich boater. And the boaters may not be putting sewage into the water. We know there are other ways to handle sewage.
Farmers may have some runoff, but there's no money in it. With new technology farmers can predict what each crop needs to make the yield they have and what parts of their fields need more or less fertilizer. Any extra fertilizer is wasted money. In the past 30 years there's been much work done to keep cattle waste out of streams and grass boundaries that absorb runoff fertilizer and manure. Although hobby farmers are often caught using too much fertilizer or poisons and herbicides at illegal rates. Commercial farming isn't perfect, but less of a problem than cities and goat farmers.

I don’t understand. You are saying the small hobby farm is polluting more than the large farm ? Are you a farmer in denial?
20 years of phosphorous fertilizer and atrazine on 100,000s of acres is atrocious.
Do some research on Okeechobee. The lake is dead from leaching farm residue.
The Nubbin Slough area has spent 35$million removing phosphorus recently, removing 80% of it in runoff only, TONS of it,! Just in one runoff are of the lake. Which of course says nothing of other watershed areas AND the existing tonnage already in the lake.
Big farms are big polluters. You are welcome to point out any in particular by name, that are not.

[JUNKFLYBOY]

Currently there is a law to fix this, local government just needs to man up and do the job. If local law requires removal of the the vessel, and towing company sends the bill to registered owner, they will not be able to get drivers license when current license expires unless they pay tow bill. I know this is true because i was in the towing business and it works as advertised!! This is in Florida as this is the state that I had a towing business.

[Auspicious]

The unofficial motto of Florida is "we don't want you here - send your money and stay home."


Florida used to be a destination. For most cruisers it is now just a waypoint.



I have offered a discount for owner-aboard deliveries from Norfolk to the Bahamas for at least six years. Skip Florida and just go. Only two takers. Lots of whining about Florida being inhospitable but not many willing to vote with their wallets.

Take your provisioning, stores, and service dollars elsewhere. The numbers probably aren't big enough for Florida to notice but the principle really does matter.

[sailorboy1]

Actually I haven’t found Florida any different than anywhere else. If anything I’ve found it better far as being able to anchor out and still find a way ashore.

But they do have a LOT more derelict and abandoned boats.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by Chotu

I can guess why. I broke down in Melbourne last winter.

I anchored by the Eau Gallie library for a few days getting parts and getting some errands done.

There were 2 sunken boats with masts protruding and one sunken boat with no mast. I'm sure the losers that left the boats there ruined it for the rest of us.

That's really what it all comes down to. It's homeless jerks using boats to squat in places who have no responsibility or respect for the waters they are ruining or the towns they are forcing to clean up their mess.

Melbourne may be declaring war on boaters, but the first shot was fired by boaters.

I'm pretty sure this isn't about a few gallons of sewage. This is about people destroying their waters with old sunken boats.

As much as I'm anti regulation, they should set up a system at the state or federal level where we all have to pay $100 extra on our documentation or registration. Then holdthese proceeds for use cleaning up losers' boats that are abandoned.

At the same time, they should pass a federal law explicitly stating no state, city, town or other body can pass any law restricting the use of United States waters for anchoring a boat.

Meanwhile, if a town doesn't want boaters, they can just remove shore access.

Melbourne has a beautiful dinghy dock/pier they put in for visiting boaters. It's a nice place. (Eau Gallie). I'm sure they didn't do that because they hate boaters. They just hate irresponsible boat bums who fired the first shot at a welcoming place.

Regarding the proposed passing of such a federal law highlighted above, one would be crossing the line as to state versus federal rights.

In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess.

The United States of America are, not the United States of America is.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

No, as a former Fl beach front property owner I can assure you I only owned down to the mean high tide mark, whether it’s dry or not is irrelevant.
Access is gained by walking down the beach, or of course at places meant to give access.
In some places the tide isn’t insignificant, during low tide there can be 100’ or more of beach that is open that is under water during high tide.

Reference: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...208175159.html

"While many of Florida’s prettiest beaches are part of the state park system, and thus guaranteed to be open to the public, the state estimates about 60 percent of Florida’s beach property is privately owned. Private ownership extends down to where the sand gets wet, also known as the mean high water line, which is public.

In many areas where beaches are privately owned, tourists and even local residents frequently wander over and set up their chairs, collect sea shells and build sand castles.

A new Florida law [April 2018], HB 631, blocks local governments from adopting ordinances to allow continued public entry to privately owned beaches even when property owners may want to block off their land. Instead, any city or county that wants to do that has to get a judge’s approval first — by suing the private landowners.

Beach access ordinances are based on a legal principle called “customary use,” defined as the traditional use of dry beach sand for public recreation, even on private property.

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that if a private property owner tries to put up a fence or calls police to eject beachgoers who have been using the beach for years, the local government can cite “customary use” to allow the public to remain — but only if such use has been “ancient, reasonable, without interruption and free from dispute.”

Ordinances enacted by two of the three counties, St. Johns and Volusia counties, were left standing by wording in the new law.

The only beach access ordinance being abolished is the one passed last year in the Panhandle’s Walton County, where the list of beach homeowners includes such well-known names as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and ex-White House adviser Karl Rove. Last year when a similar bill was proposed in the Legislature but failed, it was nicknamed “the Huckabee amendment.”

In my state of Montana, the battle is over public access to streams for fishing recreating, boating and floating. The State essentially owns the water ways, so one is able to pass along a creek via within the high water line [high water being seasonally established or in the extreme extending some distance due to an infrequent flood event], sometimes private landowners try to claim trespassing when someone is wading their way through a stream bed that traverses private land. So long as one stays within the high water mark of the stream bed one is not trespassing.

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by dwedeking2

goddamn poors. just messing things up for the "common" folks...

I get the sentiment here, but it's not lack of funds which make some people undesirable to be around.

[resoluute]

Besides maybe getting a haircut and taking a bath once in a while ,some of the liveaboards could help themselves if they didn't have to be towed from place to place , as well as trying to keep their boat tidy, the days of living off the land, dumpster diving in marinas as you can tell are numbered, people are sick of looking at it.

[CarinaPDX]

Perhaps unexpectedly, at the other end of the continent we have problems here in Oregon, as has already been mentioned. There are literally dozens of floating wrecks that took over the Portland waterfront, necessitating the law requiring regular movement. One source of the problem is that just keeping a boat in a marina with required insurance costs thousands each year, and there are a lot of old boats that are simply not worth it. Hauling and dismantling costs thousands as well. Solution: anchor it near a homeless camp and hand over the title (presumably for $1) and be out from under the burden. Needless to say the new owners are in no way able to maintain the vessel properly. (And yes, this really happened.)

Because of the high cost of housing in Portland, driven by a large immigration, people avoiding homelessness or simply trying to make ends meet have moved aboard in droves. The marinas have set their own limits for liveaboards (AFAIK there is no law, unlike Washington). Finding a liveaboard berth in the Portland area is now Mission Impossible. On land, the same thing is happening with RVs: old wrecks are parked all over the city, permanent RV spaces are unavailable, and even the transient spaces are becoming difficult (RVs older than 10 years are often not welcome). And of course Portland has one of the highest levels of homelessness in the nation. This is what happens when 40% of the wealth of the nation is transferred from the middle class to the top 1% - just sayin'.

Greg