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May 18, 2006 -

Dying Boats and DIY Moorings

From the San Luis Obispo Tribune:

A mooring is a permanent anchor on the floor of the bay, with a chain leading to the surface, and a floating marker at the end. It allows a boat to tie up to something in the middle of a bay rather than at a dock.

Over the past three decades, boaters in the Windy Cove area have made their own moorings — sometimes from a chunk of concrete, Hileman said — and installed them in an area where it’s illegal to anchor boats.

The article discusses case of a sixty-footer named Voyager that’s been illegally moored at Morro Bay since at least 2000, with no registered owner since 1999, as well as the problems of illegal moornings and abandoned boats generally. Local jurisdictions want to remove the now sinking boat, and are currently running pumps to keep it afloat at taxpayer expense, but are stalled by a maze of laws in their efforts to remove the boat they describe as unsalvagable.

The article discusses the problems of disposing of the environmental toxins on board as well as the lack of a clear path for government agencies to claim title and order the boat destroyed. Given the costs of berths and moorings, the incentive for the original moorers DIY is clear, but the question is how people have gotten away with it for so long.

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