The waterways of San Francisco Bay have been plagued by an unusual invasive species: yachts abandoned by owners unable or unwilling to pay maintenance and storage fees.
Many of the abandoned boats are requisitioned as makeshift shelters in communities known as ‘anchorages’, while others, set adrift and often filled with rubbish, eventually wreck or sink.
With their registration numbers scratched off to conceal the owner’s identity, it is often impossible to hold irresponsible boat owners to account, an in-depth investigation has found. Mercury news reports on the issue this week.
Earlier this year, boat owners in the Oakland Estuary faced a crime wave from “pirates,” blamed on residents of illegal anchorages, who launched flights to marinas to strip vessels for parts.
In addition to the crime problem, the abandoned boats also pose navigational and environmental hazards, clogging waterways and spilling fuel and waste into the bay.
A sunken sailboat can be seen near a rock jetty on January 11 from this drone shot in Alameda, California. Most abandoned boats in the Oakland Estuary and other waterways pose a hazard to boaters
A front-end loader breaks an abandoned boat out of the waters of Oakland’s Alameda Estuary in Oakland in December. The Oakland Police Marine unit removed the boats from shore and towed them to the parking lot of the Jack London Aquatic Center where they were destroyed
“They essentially become a floating dump,” Sejal Choksi-Chugh, executive director of the environmental group San Francisco Bay Keeper, told the Mercury News.
According to the California Division of Boating and Waterways, there are nearly 800,000 recreational boats registered in the state, one of the highest numbers in the country.
Inevitably, the owners of some of those boats will lose interest or not have the money to continue paying for required maintenance.
When owners fall behind on payments for a marina slip, the marina owner is left with the outdated and dilapidated vessel.
But to own the boat, marina owners must obtain a lien on the vessel, which could mean paying thousands in back taxes and registration fees.
Instead, some marinas quietly sell the boats for as little as a dollar to unscrupulous new owners who fail to register the vessels and anchor them in the waterway to use as free shelter.
Such “anchor communities” have sprung up in Richardson Bay near Sausalito and elsewhere in recent decades, in response to the Bay Area’s housing shortage and skyrocketing rents.
Anchorages don’t charge you to dock at a marina, and they often live in decrepit, outdated boats without functional propulsion.
In late December, the Oakland Police Department launched operations to remove 13 abandoned boats from the Oakland Estuary
Video from last month’s OPD removal operation shows police dragging derelict ships ashore and destroying them with a bulldozer
Conflicts between bohemian anchor communities and angry harbor masters date back to the 1960s in the Bay Area.
But the problem of abandoned boats in the bay appeared to be exacerbated by the pandemic, as boats with missing or false registrations began washing ashore, according to a 2021 report from SFGoes.
The report notes that when cars are left on the roadside in California, responsibility for their removal falls to the Abandoned Vehicle Program, funded by vehicle registration fees.
But when boats are abandoned, the responsibility for removing them is less clear, as a patchwork of jurisdictions, including the Coast Guard, local marinas and parks departments, are all in play.
Police evacuate anchorage in Oakland after ‘pirate’ crime wave
In late December, Oakland police launched operations to remove 13 abandoned boats from the Oakland Estuary, which separates Oakland from Alameda.
Police said the boats had all been abandoned for more than a month and were removed after their owners failed to respond after being tagged with a 30-day notice.
It followed a piracy crime last summer, which locals blamed on the estuary anchorage camps.
Dozens of small boats and dinghies were stolen from the estuary’s marinas, stripped of parts and sunk, police said. Mercury news.
Howard Terminal and the Oakland Estuary can be seen from this drone view in a file photo
Outraged members of the boating community began vigilante patrols to stop the pirate plague, sometimes leading to physical conflict.
“Piracy is the only way I can describe it,” local boat owner Jonathan Delong said at a public meeting reported by the newspaper. “In some cases it’s hand-to-hand combat.”
Video from last month’s OPD removal operation shows police dragging derelict ships ashore and destroying them with a bulldozer.
Local resident Robert Nelson, who lives near the river mouth, said KPIX TV that the removal operation is long overdue.
“We can’t have all these abandoned boats dumping all this – I mean, the sewage problem is big – there’s the oil, batteries and pollutants going into the water on all these boats,” he said.
“I have been advocating to get rid of these boats because of the environmental damage they cause and the other problems they cause.”