The white cabin cruiser that first washed ashore on City Island last year eventually made it across Pelham Bay and onto the mainland of The Bronx, where it remains washed up today.
The boat is covered in rust, with small holes all along its left side. What looks like a blue rug drapes over the front railing, and a can of Coffee-Mate and a few plastic bags are strewn across the floor, along with a pile of wooden planks.
Abandoned vessels like this are a threat to other boats and boaters while drifting and can cause environmental damage as oils, fluids, gasses and fiberglass leach out.
There are at least 600 abandoned boats citywide, according to the Parks Department, which has removed 350 boats and 5,000 cubic yards of marine debris since 2006. Many others linger, or are eventually removed by property owners.
At 520 miles, New York City’s shoreline is longer than those of Miami, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined, but the ghost boats tend to be clustered in a handful of locations, including City Island.
THE CITY counted six abandoned boats in January along the shores of Pelham Bay Park and City Island in the Bronx. Four were directly on a beach while one was split in half in shallow water and another was almost completely submerged below the City Island Bridge.
Responsible owners can sell unwanted boats or dispose of them legally in a salvage yard, but others choose to ditch them illegally in the city’s waterways.
“The saying in the boating industry is the two happiest days in their life is the day they get their boat, and the day they get rid of their boat,” Parks Department Chief of Waterfront and Marine Operations Nate Grove told THE CITY in a phone interview.
One reason why is that boats are expensive to maintain.
“A brand new 496 engine now could go for 20-plus grand,” Chris Thomas, office manager at City Island Yacht Sales & Marina, told THE CITY. “And that’s just the engine.”
Boats over 30 feet tend to need two engines, he added. Other costs include waxing, cleaning and winterizing.
‘It Broke Free’
Thomas first spotted the white cabin cruiser in November of 2022 when it became unmoored during a storm and was headed towards a collision with two of his company’s boats before his crew steered it away and tied it back to the dock where it had been, near Johnny B’s Marina by the City Island Bridge.
Thomas said a man had been living in the boat for some time prior to then.
Later, Thomas received a call from a City Island resident who wanted to know if a boat that had washed up belonged to his company. When the resident sent a photo, Thomas knew it wasn’t their boat. But he did recognize it as the one his crew had dealt with a year earlier.
Eventually, Thomas said, the City Island resident got the derelict boat off their property, after which it drifted along Pelham Bay before eventually washing ashore again on the Rodman’s Neck peninsula of the Bronx mainland, just north of the NYPD’s firing range.
Not every boat is intentionally abandoned.
If a boat isn’t properly secured, preferably with rope lines, when docked at a marina, it can drift out into the water. And catastrophic events like hurricanes or less powerful storms can also unfasten even the most secure lines.
That’s what happened to the cruiser, Thomas said, during a fall storm. “It broke free from his mooring, which was by the restaurants. But it has no engine. So it just went with the current,” said Thomas. “It came in sideways against my south dock in between two boats, almost hit two boats, almost damaged two boats that were there.”
“One of our guys went out in the storm and directed him and tied him up onto the dock so he could at least stay there, stay put,” he added. “And then a couple of days later we got him out of there. We got him towed out of there. And they took him back to his mooring and they tied him up.”
Catalog of Ships
North on the shoreline at City Island Bridge lies an overturned, rusty dinghy that’s been there for more than a year, according to Thomas. Letters are missing from its license number, normally located at the front of a boat. Its engine, no longer connected to the boat, is embedded in the sand nearby, along with a bumper. Beside them lies, face-up, an action figure of one of the basketball players from the movie Space Jam.
Directly across the bay from the dinghy, facing City Island, a lonely sail protrudes out of the water. In December, a full sailboat washed up against the rocks next to the City Island Bridge. A recent storm elevated the water, almost completely submerging the boat, according to Mike Carew, owner of Captain Mike’s Diving Services on City Island.
How often boats wash up varies, he said. He might hear about two in a month, or two in the course of a year.
There are two other boats, one of them on Department of Transportation property, washed up on the other side of City Island Bridge, heading towards Orchard Beach. A graffiti-decorated boat can be found in Pelham Bay Park, hidden behind a pillar of rocks along the beach at the end of a trail near a dog run.
It’s not clear how long each boat has been derelict, but Grove told THE CITY that it can take considerable time, effort and cost to remove these boats.
More Boats, More Money
If a New Yorker finds an abandoned boat, their first step is to call 311. Grove and others involved in the Park’s Department’s marine operations will try to track down the boat’s owner using its license number if that’s still intact, he said, adding that some owners intentionally scrape the numbers off of a boat they’re abandoning to avoid identification.
“Anonymity poses a challenge,” said Grove. “There are issues when some people scuttle their boat.”
Fed up with costly upkeep, owners will sometimes sell boats without recording the transfer, Carew told THE CITY. The new owner may then experience their own buyer’s remorse and ditch the boat.
“It could also be a legitimate person that owned a boat [and] didn’t have insurance on it,” said Carew. “It breaks loose in a storm. It’s a total loss, and they don’t have the money to retrieve it.” All boats docked at New York City marinas are required to have insurance.
If the owner can’t be found, the Parks Department awards contracts to the lowest responsible bidder among pre-approved contractors to dispose of abandoned boats, helping avoid storm-chasers who come to the area to charge onerous fees.
That process enables “the city to budget for and address these hazards as they arise, rather than needing to bid each individual job out separately,” Parks Department spokesperson Gregg McQueen told THE CITY.
It cost about $8,000 to remove a sunken sailboat under the City Island Bridge about two years ago, said Grove, while towing a vessel from the shoreline could cost about $3,000.
Most of the money for those jobs has come from grants from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, as well as from discretionary funding from local Councilmembers to cover what are usually four-figure bills. Mayor Eric Adams is also allocating $500,000 to address derelict vessels and marine debris this year, according to the Parks Department.
That will mark the first time the city has dedicated money for boat removal, doing so to support a law passed last year by the City Council that established a new Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering. That office will run a turn-in program, launching next year, encouraging people to bring forward their boats instead of abandoning them.
“We look forward to better being able to proactively respond to shoreline and waterway issues as they arise, as well as head-off potential vessel abandonments before they become environmental, navigational and public safety hazards,” said McQueen.
For his part, Thomas won’t be contributing to the list of abandoned vessels anytime soon.
“Before I started working here, I wanted a boat,” said Thomas. “After I started working here, and I started doing the repair bills and maintenance for boats, no chance.”