Coastal Communities Float Plans to Halt Beached Boats

Local mariners call it Fool’s Anchorage, a choppy stretch of open water just outside the city’s scenic marina--a place where blue-collar boaters who can’t afford a protected slip often moor their aging vessels.

The name applies to the unlucky few whose often neglected craft--some without engines that are used strictly as live-aboards--break free of their moorings and are smashed to smithereens onshore by the sometimes fierce winter storms.

But Santa Barbara harbor officials fear they’re the real fools, forced to pay $50,000 to $100,000 every year to clean up after shipwrecked vessels when their owners either flee town, file for bankruptcy or simply say they have no insurance.

The city’s most recent cleanup involved a $44,000 bill in January when an uninsured boat broke apart in a storm, littering the city’s most popular tourist beach. Within days of the incident, the owner filed for bankruptcy.

“These boaters, by not being financially responsible for their debris or the danger they cause, have gone to the point of costing other people many thousands of dollars,” said Santa Barbara Harbor Master Julia Hazard. “And that’s just not right.”

State officials say derelict and abandoned vessels have become a major headache at many of California’s recreational seaports, where harbor masters fear their coastal safe havens are being turned into offshore parking lots. The neglected and under-maintained boats, they say, often leak toxic fluids into waters located near prime fishing and swimming areas.

Two years ago, the state Department of Boating and Waterways launched a grant program to help communities rid themselves of often half-sunken vessels that cause navigational nightmares or prompt massive cleanup efforts after they’re heaved onshore by churning seas.

While there are no figures on how many boats are driven ashore each year, officials say the number that have become safety and environmental hazards is rising.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these abandoned and derelict boats,” said David Johnson, a Boating and Waterways spokesman. “Many are half-sinking, leaky sieves.”

From San Diego Bay to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, officials say, the derelict boats create a hazard and property damage. “In the delta, many derelict boats are tied up at marinas and break loose during storms,” said Dolores Farrell, chief of the state Boating and Waterways operations division, who oversees the agency’s abandoned watercraft abatement fund.

“They float downstream and hit bridges or plow into other marinas. Who knows where they end up? Or they sink so low other boaters can’t see them until they’re right on top of them.”

All along Southern California’s coast, harbor masters are searching for ways to rock the boats of derelict vessel owners. In San Diego Bay, where officials clean up after a dozen runaway craft each year, boat owners are now limited to one specific area where they can moor their craft outside designated slips.

Despite a 19-year-old ordinance that requires all boats moored outside Avalon harbor to operate under their own power, the derelict vessels still cause problems, said Harbor Master Brian Bray. Each year several sink, forcing officials to clean up.

“They’re a pain in the neck,” said Bray, who once considered requiring permits for boats moored outside slips. “Are permits going to stop some derelict boat owner from leaving us with their trash after the thing has sunk to the bottom of the harbor?”

Santa Barbara harbor officials believe so. They are researching an ordinance that would require boaters to have a permit to moor their boats in Fool’s Anchorage and in all city regulated waters--a method of insuring that boat owners are keeping up their vessels, including up to date mooring and sewage equipment.

The area just east of Stearns Wharf has long been home to live-aboards--the hand-me-down boats that provide homes to struggling seafarers who want to beat high apartment rental rates in town. Fool’s Anchorage is also the temporary mooring site for wandering mariners just passing through or waiting out bad weather on their way to Canada or Mexico.

Harbor officials said the permit system would not affect travelers who temporarily moor their boats off the Santa Barbara coast for a day or two at a time.

Many local boat owners say the city is accommodating the bigger fish--wealthy, traveling yacht owners--by aiming its wrath at the little guy.

“It’s bull,” said Mark Hastie, a veteran high seas roustabout who lives and works aboard an old fishing trawler, the “Susan M.” “They don’t want us fishermen hanging ‘round here anymore. They want yacht people, rich people.”

In the thick accent of his native Boston, Hastie says he cannot afford the $18 a day to rent one of the harbor’s 1,100 protected slips. And so he takes his chances at Fool’s Anchorage, wary of the bad weather that three years ago broke his boat from its moorings and slammed it against nearby Stearns Wharf. Luckily, the damage to both was minimal.

“They don’t own the water outside the harbor,” he said of local officials. “Nobody owns the open water. It’s free out there, man. At least it used to be.”

Officials say the proposal must undergo a thorough study, including public comment, before harbor commissioners vote. The measure would then go to the City Council.