Posted: February 7, 2013 | By: Jack Sherwood [Soundings]
I am a boatyard prowler drawn to distant, weed-filled corners where neglected old boats on jack stands are left to wither and die. You don’t see many of these vessels nowadays because wise boatyard operators have become wary of overly ambitious projects heavy on dreams but light on finances and boatwork skills.
Even when a boat is abandoned, breaking it up and hauling it off to a trash bin can be a complicated bureaucratic procedure. So some boat owners who have an emotional attachment to a vessel stubbornly pay storage fees year after year and refuse to let their rehab dreams die. They may return from time to time to patch, peel and putter, but often they get nowhere. Of course, they always have the option of turning the project over to the yard pros.