Northland Regional Council harbourmaster Jim Lyle is urging vessel owners to have wreck removal insurance as ratepayers cannot afford to pick up the tab.
Photo / Jenny Ling
Northland Regional Council harbourmaster Jim Lyle is urging vessel owners to have wreck removal insurance as ratepayers cannot afford to pick up the tab.
Photo / Jenny Ling
Eye-watering bills from the disposal of abandoned vessels in Northland have prompted the regional harbourmaster to plead for their owners to have wreak removal insurance or to sell them before they start sinking.
The Northland Regional Council is being forced to spend upwards of $100,000 to recover a sunken launchor a big fishing boat when its annual budget for such work is a mere $35,000.
NRC regional harbourmaster Jim Lyle said the council, as part of its Long Term Plan, was reviewing its charges as the disposal of wrecked or abandoned vessels was becoming a very expensive exercise.
"People should keep up with the maintenance of their boats and they should also have wreck removal insurance. Often they have third party liability but the biggest expense if boats sink is getting the divers in.
Lyle has placed an advertisement in the Northern Advocate for owners of four abandoned and wrecked vessels to come forward and claim ownership after payment of debts.
They include Zig Zag, a 10m steel yacht located in Opua, a 12m wooden yacht named Rival in Windsor Landing that NRC staff transported to dry land on Wednesday after she started sinking.
The vessel's mast and other parts would be removed before she'd be disposed off.
Ramage, a fiberglass yacht in Paihia and a wooden yacht Bilbo Baggins in Te Wahapu, are the other vessels.
Lyle said the abandoned vessels were derelicts that verged on wrecks and came to the NRC's attention when they start falling apart.
"It costs around $20,000 to recover a standard size sunken yacht and another $10,000 after that for trucking and disposal and with an annual budget of $35,000 it often doesn't cover our costs.
"If we get a bigger fishing boat or a launch that has sunk, it would cost over $100,000 to recover it and in most cases, NRC ends up disposing abandoned vessels.
"The charges are something we are reviewing to see how we can keep pace with looking after the boats. Abandoned vessels are an ongoing problem. They are local boats. People abandon them on moorings for years, to the point of sinking.
"We can't find their owners and sometimes the ownership changes hands so we don't know who owns them.
"They may have died, they could be too old and are in hospital, they may have forgotten, or are facing financial hardship. There's all sorts of reasons why they've abandoned their boats.
"But the end result is the vessels are sitting there and in most cases, they are in such bad state that they become a navigational hazard. If they sink on their moorings, they'd be sticking out and other vessels could bump into them."
The wooden vessel Rival had to be brought to dry dock after it started sinking and its owners are unknown.
Photo / Jenny Ling
Lyle said NRC tried to get the problem sorted before wrecked vessels went underwater as getting divers and barges to recover sunken ships wasn't cheap.
NRC could consider selling them only if they were in sellable condition but if derelict vessels were sold cheaply, it would be back to square one as they would end up on the moorings.
He said new owners often misjudged expense associated with the repair and restoration works before looking for a place to moor their vessels.
If the owners of the four vessels advertised failed to contact Lyle by September 19, the Maritime Transport Act 1994 gives him powers to dispose them off.
Under the act, NRC may require owners of wrecked vessels to remove them within a time and in a satisfactory manner otherwise the territorial authority could destroy, dispose of, remove, take possession of, or sell them.
