Boat disposal

This week I received a letter (recorded delivery no less) from a well known outer London club telling me my contender 473 had been found in the boat park with no membership sticker on it and no record of any fees having paid since winter 2007.  The message was basically, pay all you owe or you boat is matchwood.  All well and good, but contender 473 went from London to Oxford as soon as my winter membership expired, and now resides somewhere in North America, having been exported there last summer.

Clearly the club in question is acting properly in trying to rid its dinghy park of the countless unpaid, un-sailed boats that clog up dinghy parks all over the country, but obviously this is a case of mistaken identity, so whose boat is it that is about to be chain saw massacred?  How does the club find out?  And where do they stand legally if they destroy the wrong boat?

Obviously the owner is at fault for not displaying a sticker and therefore probably not paying fees, but life is never as simple as that, is it....


Edited by winging it

Sure you didn't export the wrong boat?!

 

That's another option I guess, if they have not paid to store the boat at the club simply deliver it to the owner's address. Or just push it out of the club gates onto public land, depending on how mean you feel!

Most club rules allow for the sale or distruction of boats with unpayed fees after a predetermined time limit & you accept this when you join.

It is proberly writtern in the joining terms & conditions.

The RYA publish advice to clubs on actions to take when boats are abandoned. Its all fairly common sense stuff, eg trying to notify the owner first,  and if this doesn't work then ensuring that the best price possible is achieved in selling the boat and retaining any club fees that are due from the amount achieved with the remainder going to the boat owner where possible. In practice we're never had to go this far at my club, as in most cases someone has known who the owners were and a quiet word of warning has sufficed. I think we have destroyed abandoned boats before, but only when they're in the flowers growing through the hull stage so are only fit for 5th November!