Where boats die

[Jeff F]

That is brutal.
Would have killed for something half as good as that as our first vessel.

Not enough people like you to soak up the vast number of old boats here. First time buyers these days don't want the problems, or underestimate the time and money required to rehab, or even just to keep afloat. That defers the trip to the graveyard by a few years, but it's almost inevitable beyond a certain point.

 

[Simi 60]

Not enough people like you to soak up the vast number of old boats here. First time buyers these days don't want the problems, or underestimate the time and money required to rehab, or even just to keep afloat. That defers the trip to the graveyard by a few years, but it's almost inevitable beyond a certain point.

Everything that's wrong in the world.
Cars, boats, houses, no one wants to start at the bottom anymore,
No one is interested in working for anything when you can get yourself in debt for instant gratification
Resources squandered
World rooted.

 

[Marco Flamingo]

Here is the winner at my marina. I think it is a Cheoy Lee. This was taken a while ago showing the 2020 Washington registration. The boat now has a current 2021 sticker. It appears that the yearly affixing of the registration sticker is the extent of the "maintenance" in the past 10 years.

The teak deck and trim is obviously being recycled naturally. The fiberglass not so much. But the bristles on the deck brush have fallen off because of UV and are now microplastics. The hull will likely began to seriously decompose in another century.

I think that the "natural" recycling of plastic into microplastics will be the cause of our end times. People don't want to hear it, but the only "green" thing that might possibly save us is to reduce breeding. Start with a ten year moratorium? Or maybe something like whelping is only allowed in odd numbered years? Yes, I know that will affect the economy. But if you think that Covid-2019 is causing a financial disaster, wait until you see the effect of Plastic-2119.

Oh wait, I won't be here. Never mind.

 

[dennismenace111]

I agree Tom but our generation hasn’t thought much about the future. But we’ve sure shown how pollution is a very bad thing. And now that there’s way too many people it’s becoming very evident we’ve dropped the ball and didn’t even know we had it.

We all can't agree whether or not to wear a mask in public...How the heck would we agree on the best way to dispose of fiberglass boats?

 

[Shrew]

To help solve the recycling problem, I wonder when a company will come out with a line of "new" boats based on rebuilds of existing hulls?

When it costs more to either dispose of one or to layup a new hull, than it does to salvage an old one.

 

[BandB]

The problem is, there is no incentive to recycle plastic bottles. When I lived in the states, the blue recycling bins - for which we pulled the labels off the steel and aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles - they were just put all together into a truck - which then took the stuff right to the dump. It never got recycled - just crushed by D9 Cats. And you as the homeowner had to pay extra for that. The only thing they sent to recycling was paper and cardboard.

In most areas, the recycling bins now get a fairly large percentage of recycling. The issue is that most recyclers are not set up to sort and handle everything. Some cities do better than others. We go to the trouble of separating our plastic and insuring it all gets to a plastic recycler. For them there are profits in recycling plastic. Where the system doesn't work is there's not financial incentive in getting the plastic to them.

If we depend on people caring and doing the "right thing", then it won't work. There has to be financial incentive, either through reward or penalty. Fort Lauderdale really performs well as a municipality when it comes to what happens to what a home puts in the recyling cart. A lot of money is spent cleaning, sorting and baling the recyclables and the final product is easily marketed. The problem is getting compliance by home owners. A substantial amount of contamination (food and other non-recyclables) ends up in recycling and recyclables end up in the regular trash bin. There is limited enforcement and few fines. The city did a waste composition audit and over 50% of the recycling was paper, either in the form of paper or cardboard or newspaper. Then the next largest group was glass. There was a substantial quantity of PET and of other plastics. Far more than aluminum and then very little steel.

However, commercial recycling is far less successful locally. It is not required in Fort Lauderdale or in most of the communities in which we operate. We do recycle even though it's not a cost savings to us but many do not. Businesses need incentives that they don't have today. A few will recycle because it's the right thing to do, but more will do it if it's financially to their benefit. Cardboard gets done routinely, but most other items do not.

One other problem we encounter is licensing of both trash and recycling companies. Every location has different licensed companies. We often cannot use the same people for two stores located 3 miles apart. It's not even county wide. Fort Lauderdale has 26 licensed haulers. A nearby town has only 1.

 

[TexasBryan]

I live in the heart of Great Plains wind generation and if you want to talk about fiberglass disposal, you should Google windmill blade disposal. 260 feet long, 36 tons each, and there are thousands of used, worn out blades stacking up. Our regional landfill had an open acceptance policy payable by the ton until the blade trucks started showing up filling the landfill cells. They quickly changed the rules. The windmill blade problem makes the fiberglass boat problem look like a tiny speck. Don't get me started on "green energy" boondoggles. Appalling environmental damage for centuries to come, but hey, it's green. Dead boats are nuthin'.

Wyoming just passed a law that will allow windmill blade disposal in old coal mines....

 

[Woodland Hills]

We all can't agree whether or not to wear a mask in public...How the heck would we agree on the best way to dispose of fiberglass boats?

And some posters seem to think the public will agree to a moratorium on children!