Unloved boats of Scotland

This is the first of an occasional series

keeping a boat in Scotland is relatively cheap

so neglecting a boat is muchy cheaper there than it is in the South. An unloved boats a touch of melancholy to any harbour

these ones were in Stonehaven

unloved boats of scotland

clean me 1

This is about Dylan Winter's Blog.

5 Responses to “Unloved boats of Scotland”

  1. 3 May, 2015 at 9:40 pmMark the Skint Sailor says:

    I hate to see larger yachts left like that. Why spend all that money and then leave it to rot?

    Move to it somewhere cheaper to moor or give the thing to someone that will appreciate it.

    It saves spending the value of the boat in mooring fees on something you’ll never use.

  2. 4 May, 2015 at 9:00 pmTed B. (Charging Rhino) says:

    From here in America, I have been shocked since I started watching KTL as to the sheer-number of dead and dying boats, yachts and workboats left abandoned at moorings, tied to crumbling piling and piers, and lying half-sunken in shallow-water along your rivers and by-ways. Here any navigable stream or river is the property of the people (read that the Guv’mint, but that’s another story) and the US Amy Corps of Engineers, the US Coast Guard, or the local authorities have been getting rather strict about policing such as “hazards to navigation”. And boat registration and State Licenses have made boat-ownership fairly traceable over the last few decades. Usually they get the owners for “pollution violations” of the Clean Water Acts, which can get quite expensive; potential fuel spills for on-board tanks, lubrication seepage, toxic corrosives from battery-banks, etc…

    Plenty of dead and dying boats on the hard here in the back of boat yards and marinas, but you don’t see that many anymore a-float at a dock or at a mooring.

    Are they abandoned out of lost interest? I wonder how many are due to poor health or situations where the caregivers hard-know the the boats existence and they get forgotten ’til the estate is settled. I’m involved with several antique car clubs and we’re seeing that happen more and more. The families or care-providers don’t even know what’s out in the shed — or can’t do anything about them — until the estate is settled.

  3. 5 May, 2015 at 8:32 amdylan winter says:

    Every boat has a story – or many stories. Most remain untold. You might get a distorted view of the state of UK boats because I find the old unloved ones more interesting than the latest scoop stern lozenge or dual wheel cheese wedge.

    You do not find many dead ones in expensive marinas but as I work around the country I am heading towards cheaper and cheaper places to keep a yacht. I also know that old blokes in hospital do not want to be badgered about what to do with their much loved boats. Swallowing the anchor is a tough life-time decision. When I was in Bembridge there were half a dozen boats at the back of the yard that will never sail again. The owners still pay for them to stay there. I asked the yard owner why they pay “It keeps the dream alive” was his answer so £200 a year to maintain a dream is a cheap investment. One of the other factors is that some moorings are on a use it or lose it basis. Anstruther has several boats there that are just keepers – ways of blocking up a cheap, much in demand, marina place. To my mind that is even sadder than a boat that is slowly rotting away.

    D

  4. 5 May, 2015 at 8:01 pmTed B. (Charging Rhino) says:

    Don’t get me wrong, I love old boats — especially the wood ones. It’s just that here so much of our marine and riverine history has been lost.

    One reason I’m tempted in the future to attempt to do something similar here for our Delaware estuary and Chesapeake Bay. Especially the Delaware since it’s gone from an essential highway of our Colonial and Industrial eras to a “wet inconvenience” that people ignore or just want gone… About 99.99% don’t even register our creeks, canals and rivers when they cross them on bridges except to curse the traffic back-ups when necessary repairs are being made.

  5. 6 May, 2015 at 1:04 pmdylan winter says:

    I am amazed at how fast the shoreline is changing – maritime based companies are dropping like flies, work boats in decline (apart from the windfarm vessels) the inexorable rise of the leisure lozenge, old wrecks ashore being cleared away, docks being turned into promenades. You can film this from the shore – but when shooting from the water it all looks very different.

    D

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