End of life boats - a new proposal from International Council of Marine Industry Associations

prv

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Although i'm still amazed there's no real equivalent of car scrapyards for boats,

Cars contain a lot of steel and so have intrinsic value even after the costs of processing. Boats do not. Selling a few corroded but salvageable fairleads and goosenecks to the three people in the country who have a similar boat and need that particular part is not going to cover the cost of safely and legally disposing of three tons of GRP.

Pete
 

Motor_Sailor

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Cars contain a lot of steel and so have intrinsic value even after the costs of processing . . .

Yes, the British 'enthusiasm' for cast iron keels is having a final laugh. In return for saving a few pence in the initial cost of the boat, we've had a lifetime of service from a material that's not very heavy, has rusted every year, has dictated the use of dodgy stainless steel keel bolts and now isn't worth enough to fund the disposal of the boat.

In contrast the Americans have enjoyed all the benefits of lead keels and now a typical 60s / 70s 30 footer will have £2,000 -£3,000 worth of scrap value in its lead keel which will go a long way to paying for the disposal of the rest of the boat. (Cast iron will be £2 - 300 ) The last Centaur I chopped up cost £400 for the skip and three hours of quite hard work with a chainsaw and JCB.
 

JumbleDuck

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Disposal bond though does nothing for the backlog of worthless hulks that are already there. I don;t think that licensing is the way - perhaps more a regional / HM levy. So for example the Hamble HM could add a small annual fee to every mooring holder ( Max £50) to pay for the cost of disposal of boats left abandoned.
That might well increase the number of abandoned boats. I recommend "Freakonomics" by Stephen Dubner, for - amongst other things - lots of good examples of unintended consequences. For example, a nursery which got so tired of parents turning up late to collect their children that they introduced a fee of $3 ... and immediately saw the number of late collections shoot up, because parents saw it as just another service.

So it might be with scrappage charges. "The Hamble's great if you have an old boat. It's only fifty quid more than it used to be, and if you don't want the boat any more they'll scrap it for you for free."
 

Vicarage

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That might well increase the number of abandoned boats. I recommend "Freakonomics" by Stephen Dubner, for - amongst other things - lots of good examples of unintended consequences. For example, a nursery which got so tired of parents turning up late to collect their children that they introduced a fee of $3 ... and immediately saw the number of late collections shoot up, because parents saw it as just another service.

So it might be with scrappage charges. "The Hamble's great if you have an old boat. It's only fifty quid more than it used to be, and if you don't want the boat any more they'll scrap it for you for free."
this is exactly the first thing that came to me as well. All that'll happen is that everyone will feel like they've 'paid forward' the costs of their boat disposal so the problem will only get worse!
 

jac

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this is exactly the first thing that came to me as well. All that'll happen is that everyone will feel like they've 'paid forward' the costs of their boat disposal so the problem will only get worse!

Not sure it will - People will surely still try and flog their boats if they are thinking of getting out and not sure that 5% on the mooring cost ( or less if a contractor mooring) will be that significant to change behaviour for those whose boats are truly valueless . ! In some ways it might make people abandon their boats earlier and potentially more viable as the costs will be slightly higher.

The issue here is that i suspect we don;t really know much about why people abandon boats and can only guess. There is probably little prospect of getting someone to pay for a study of why people are motivated to do it or even less to track down people who did it to understand their motivations

It could be combined with a "please take my boat away and top charging me" service that people do need to pay for - possibly subsidised by the charge to some extent
 

V1701

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Half the people who buy "project" boats or accept giveaways don't realise that they start paying yard fees or whatever other storage/berthing fee applies, as soon as they take ownership. That's the thing with boats, they're (usually) expensive to store somewhere while you work on them. Not long after I bought my first boat I found I quite enjoyed working on her, bought her for £16k & sold for £21k one year later so I had a plan to buy boats, do them up and sell them on but it was a non-starter as soon as I factored in storage...
 

Stemar

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So it might be with scrappage charges. "The Hamble's great if you have an old boat. It's only fifty quid more than it used to be, and if you don't want the boat any more they'll scrap it for you for free."
this is exactly the first thing that came to me as well. All that'll happen is that everyone will feel like they've 'paid forward' the costs of their boat disposal so the problem will only get worse!

Yes, but a scrappage fee paid up front does at least mean that the mooring owner or yard has the money to dispose of the thing. Add a clause to the Ts & Cs, something like, "A refundable scrappage deposit of £X per foot will be payable with the first fee. If fees are unpaid, the vessel may be sold to recover outstanding fees or scrapped at the company's option and the deposit forfeited. When the vessel is removed, the deposit will be used to cover any unpaid fees and the remainder, if any, will be reimbursed. I'd notice a couple of hundred up front, 'cos that's more than I pay for the mooring each year, but for someone in a marina, it'd be insignificant.

Alternatively, new boats pay a scrappage fee as part of the tax on the purchase price. It doesn't matter if the money ends up in general coffers as long as removal comes out of general coffers at end of life.
 

Refueler

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I've talked to a few people who abandoned boats and the common trait I found was lack of funds to carry on paying fees. Approx half were scuppered because of divorce .... some where they could no longer pay the credit for the boat itself ... and the creditors actually didn't move the boat ... technically boat was still being charged against the named creditee.

T&C for scrappage / disposal by a yard or club are not as easy as people think. I know one club I was in - they had boats at back of yard they couldn't literally touch ... they'd been told they had to write so many times to owner ... get replies ... make arrangements etc. In the end the Club gave up.
Another Club I knew made a formal statement to all ... posted notices in the yard that certain boats were going to be 'disposed off' if after xx months nothing was done by owners. Only 2 or 3 of the boats were disposed off before club gave up. The sheer cost and hassle was too much.
 

prv

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T&C for scrappage / disposal by a yard or club are not as easy as people think. I know one club I was in - they had boats at back of yard they couldn't literally touch ... they'd been told they had to write so many times to owner ... get replies ... make arrangements etc. In the end the Club gave up.

The yard we used to be in didn't seem to have such difficulties. From time to time a rash of notices citing the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act would appear on the bows of some unloved specimens, and after a few months it would change to one saying that the yard now owned the boat and bids to buy it would now be accepted at the office. Possibly this process is only available with suitable provisions in the Ts&Cs when the boat was brought in.

The bigger problem is that, having taken ownership of the boat, the yard still either has to find someone willing to buy it and take it away, or pay the costs of disposing of it. So it only really works for cases when someone stops paying the fees for a still-viable boat. If a customer is still paying to store a complete wreck, there's not a lot the yard can do if and when they eventually stop.

Pete
 

langstonelayabout

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I read that as end of lifeboats!

With the somewhat pompous attitude of the RNLI over this CV19 issue I wouldn't have been surprised.

They do a good job, but in doing so haven't been slow in creating an agenda that suits their own purposes rather than that of people who pay (lots of) good money to isolate aboard their own boats.
 

Motor_Sailor

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The yard we used to be in didn't seem to have such difficulties . . .

Indeed. The law surrounding these things is heavily weighted in favour of the boatyard. Centuries of refinement to enable shipyards and workers to get a lien put on any vessel that desn't pay its bills. Essentially, if you don't pay for your dockage or work and the yard owns your boat. And the process is pretty quick as it needs to be done before the boat disappears over the horizon.
 

25931

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The International Council of Marine Industry Associations is proposing that disposal of end of life boats should not just be an owner problem. In the EU there are estimated to be 6 million boats under 24 metres and about 80,000 reach the end of their life every year. Only about 2,000 are dismantled for recycling. Part of the proposals are for swift removal of these boats as abandoned boats are bad for the industry. Removal of these boats will help create demand for new boats as people move to newer boats over the whole secondhand market. The knock on will also be less conjested boatyards and berths.

End-of-Life boat disposal is not purely an owner problem says ICOBMIA
 

Lucy52

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It might be an idea if British Marine and other stakeholders came together and worked out a preferred solution.
It would be far better than leaving it for some manderin at DEFRA to come up with unworkable bureaucratic scheme that required a department of civil servants to run.
Even if such a scheme needed to get legislation for it to be implemented.
 

Refueler

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But it should be and the answer is for boats to be registered like cars.
Can you just abandon a car ?

UK is one of the last in Europe to leave boat owners to volunteer to register (Part 1 / SSR etc) and even for licences ..

How long it will be before UK follows others ?? But surely it has to come ?

As to abandoning a car .... that was certainly easy enough until SORN came about ...
 

JumbleDuck

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As to abandoning a car .... that was certainly easy enough until SORN came about ...
Still easy. Drive somewhere, dump it, send in the V5C with a new keeper's address (real or imaginary) somewhere near where you dumped it, practice saying "Good heavens, I sold that ages ago".

Or just leave it in Liverpool.
 

jac

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But it should be and the answer is for boats to be registered like cars.
Can you just abandon a car ?

The problem is how to identify a boat - We're talking here about old abandoned boats that aren't worth anything. So no HIN as too old for that. Might work once all the old boats have a HIN but that will be decades. You could register all those you can identify no probs but what of the "owner" is no longer the owner. "me guv? no mate - i sold her to some bloke in the pub called john. Don;t know his last name. Told him he needed to speak to the yard"
 

Keith 66

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In the end we will have to start somewhere so a combination of things will have to come about. Up until now a lot of people have used Ebay as a disposal route, its easy to stick a boat on there with no reserve, someone will buy it! We have seen this at our club where boats change hands to "some bloke off ebay". Of course the bloke off ebay as soon as he finds out he has to join the club & pay storage fees or remove it just evaporates into thin air. So the club now has another dead boat sitting there & has to advertise the disposal thereof. The bloke in the pub called John actually exists, he evaporated last year & thats another one we will have to chop up!
 
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