A sailboat appears to have been left to sink off the beach at Seymour Bay.
“It’s atrocious,” said Bruce Russell, speaking by phone on Monday.
He emailed photos of the boat to the paper, as well as the Bowen Island Municipality on the weekend.
“It’s totally, totally unacceptable,” said Russell.
He said the boat was first spotted in Mannion Bay being towed by another boat last week.
He took note, saying, “a sailboat without a mast says something to me.”
His concern was justified when someone alerted him Sunday, saying the boat in question was beached.
The Coast Guard was called, and confirmed there are no hazards like batteries and hydrocarbons on board the boat, said Bonny Brokenshire of the Bowen Island Municipality.
Removing it from the shore isn’t so simple though.
The municipality is also following up with the last-known owner of the boat, she said, and working with federal and provincial bodies.
“Let’s say there’s no assistance from the province or the federal government with this particular vessel,” she said. “Then what the municipality has to do is we have to apply to Transport Canada to gain authorization to actually do anything with the boat.”
That could be expensive.
“The problem being, this is a fair sized boat,” she said. “So we’re speaking of up to, probably $5,000 or more dollars to deal with this particular vessel.”
In the meantime, the boat is there in plain view.
“We just want to keep our shores safe and unpolluted,” she said.
Last week, the paper reported that Bowen Island Municipality has applied for $10,000, under a federal abandoned boats program, to remove and dispose of two derelict vessels from Mannion Bay.
The federal government announced last week the first funding recipients under its abandoned boats program, but Bowen is still waiting to hear where it stands.
