Where do dinghies go to die

[Mhvoiceuk]

My 26 year old tender may be ready for it's last rights. I keep it on the dinghy chain at Emsworth and it's a ten foot polypropylene twin hull thing. I bought it with my boat for £50.00 and it has been very useful. As it's none too pretty it's not very nickable. It will just about last another season I think. If I want to get rid of it where do I get rid of it? Would a dump take it or a car scrapyard. Asking other folk on the beach has drawn a blank.

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[Rabbie]

Suggest putting it on the 'For Sale' board as 'Free to taker'. Somebody may want to do it up a bit. Or else ask Sid the ferryman.

<hr width=100% size=1>A day not spent on my boat is a day in my life wasted.

 

[wicked]

Why don't you lock it up - someone is bound to nick it then.

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[Phoenix of Hamble]

Take it to your local sailing club, or to your back garden.... half bury it, fill it with earth.... makes a great feature flowerbed.....

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[Mhvoiceuk]

I could ask Sid but I am curious to know what people do with old boats once they are past the give away/selling on option. No one I speak to seems to know. The day will presumably come when all those 60s and 70's cruisers will start to be scrapped - Westerly's going west as it were. I've seen US forums where people have advocated stripping all the gear off their boats and then floating them somewhere, opening the seacocks and sinking them. GRP boats are big things and not the most environmentally sound vehicles ever devised. Breaking them and meeting guidelines must be a problem.

My tender would look vile in someones garden BTW - unless they wanted a beige and orange rectangular shrubbery.

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[Amgine]

Here in North America there have always been "breakers", companies who take apart boats for salvage. They generally charge a fee, exhorbitant in the small-boat ranges, and they do not like stripped boats. They are usually over-burdened with business, and do not advertise. I do not know if they take dinghies.

Ask a marina owner. They're usually the ones who need to remove a derelict boat abandoned by her owner to rot at the dock.

<hr width=100% size=1>Amgine
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://wiki.saewyc.net/>SailWiki</A>

 

[ShipsWoofy]

In Pwllheli it seems you just tie old dinghies near the slipway so they float on the tide and dry on the rocks at low water.

After a few months of this mother nature will do her bit and start the breaking process. Some time after that the Harbourmaster will do his rounds, though this can take upwards of 24 months. He will remove whats left tethered to the wall and sell it off in aid of the RNLI or skip it.

hope that helps.

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[Piere]

Try the folkestone yacht club dingy cave.
Every two years as the cave officer I ask all members to take all their belongings home for the winter layup to enable the accumulated junk to be cleared away for the next season .

This year we have a jabsco style toilet which appears to be in working order and two dingies that look though they may be servicable !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With no known owners?????

The mind boggles at what some people throw away or discard as unservicable!

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[Trevor_swfyc]

Chainsaw ...... Bin, easy. /forums/images/icons/cool.gif

Trevor

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[Birdseye]

Whatever you do - dont burn it. We had some idiot do that to a dinghy at our club and the disposal of the remains was horrible and dangerous. Cahin saw and the dumpit is probably the best solution.

Mind you, when I want to get rid of anything I leave it at our gate for the binmen. They dont take it, but passers by do! Had rotten old garden furniture, old vacuum cleaners, old bikes, buggered batteries, even a bag of grass cuttings all knicked before the bin men get there. Amazing.

Real question is what is going to happen to all these grp cruisers that refuse to die like the wood ones did. Like old cars, I reckon they will end up a liability rather than an asset.

<hr width=100% size=1>this post is a personal opinion, and you should not base your actions on it.

 

[aitchw]

If it still floats put it on e-bay with no reserve. Someone will want it.

BTW, what is it that makes you believe it's knackered? Is it waterlogged between the skins or what?

Howard

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[Mhvoiceuk]

but then where does it go?

Seriously it's interesting that no one has a real answer. I just found this by Googling:

http://www.solentcrisis.co.uk/page107.html

(there a 3 pages so, if you're interested, click through them all). The piece only touches on the subject of boat waste management in general. I am astounded that there isn't legislation already which covers leisure craft breaking. It'll be ten years apparently before boat builders are required to build recyclability into their costs - which the car industry has had to do for a few years now. Most boat yards are caked in toxic old antifoul and oil and have discarded hulls lying around. I am sure that most yacht clubs are concerned about cleaning up their acts but environmental measures and upgrades are expensive and it's likely that nothing, outside of the odd token gesture, will really get done until the law says that it has to be. My club is self help and must have the most toxic earth imaginable. God knows what runs off into the water when it rains. Club members are responsible and clear up their sites after the winter lay up but they are not going to pick up every paint fleck or to dilute spilt chemical cleaning agents or diesel. There are a few GRP boats at my club in the yard of which it is thought that the owners have died. They sit covered in guano and mould but are not decomposing. GRP is, I suspect, going to present real environmental problems in the future.

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[Mhvoiceuk]

There is water between the skins which I regularly tip out, a fibreglass patch on the bottom , car filler in the bow and a crack in the transom!

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[Sheerline]

Mine leaks and needs new gunwhale reinforcing. After years and years of ignoring it, I finally lifted it into the back of my ute last weekend. It's so bashed, hacked and bruised I reckon I've got lots of work ahead.

I parked the ute at the railway station for the last two days while I went to work 7am-8pm - but alas, the dinghy is still there.

If it lasts the week, I'll have no choice but to start work on it on Saturday.


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[aitchw]

You're right, it's had it!

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[snowleopard]

i'm not alone in wanting a dinghy i can leave by a public slip to get out to my mooring across 20 yds of sheltered water. requirements are (a) it floats, (b) it's tatty enough that no one will want to nick it and (c) it's cheap enough that i don't care if they do.

if we were anywhere near brighton i'd come and take it off your hands but i know there are others who are also looking for similar.

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[Evadne]

'sfunny but when I looked for a second hand dinghy to use as a tender I found none. I surmised that people only get rid of their tenders when they're completely knackered, and hence unsaleable. When our last tender (cracked transom and gunwhale, to put it mildly,) fell into that category I donated it to the boatyard's annual dinghy sale. It's not a big boat yard but nearly every year he gathers up all the unclaimed dinghies and auctions them off with proceeds to the RNLI. Some would be hard put to do service as plant pots or firewood, but some are quite useable. I don't know which is the more amazing, what some people will throw away or what others will pay good money for!

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[gjeffery]

Is it that old Bic dinghy of cursed memory that occasionally goes off on its own? It has more lives than a cat. Last see moored at the bottom of South Street but last season full of water and in the middle of the landing stage?

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[Mhvoiceuk]

No!! Mines on a nice new chain with a marine padlock securing it and I bale it fairly regularly. It doesn't look too bad. Sid actually said "that's a nice dinghy you got there, keep it locked up." It is fine for it's purpose at present which is to get me to my mooring but like everything it will have an end - and when the end comes I wanted to know what do with it (outside of encouraging someone else to have the same ultimate problem). I'm not fortunate enough to have a garden big enough to tinker which is annoying - so working on the boat means doing it in situ (an extra two or three hundred thousand would buy me that in Brighton and I'm not quite there yet). GRP can be patched but polypropelyne is more difficult. It flexes all over and nothing seems to adhere permanently.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Mhvoiceuk on 07/12/2004 17:31 (server time).</FONT></P>