Nice old boat may be available soon

I saw this old girl while I was out kayaking last week. Dept of Natural Resources is about to take custody of her as a derelict and right now she's tied up to a piling in Marysville WA. I didn't see the inside, but from outside she looks to be in pretty good shape and will probably be available for cheap sometime soon.

 

That's one of the early ones with the steering on the port side

 

You were in Marysville and did not drop by for a visit? what day was it? Most of Saturday I was crewing on a sailboat in the Milltown yacht club spring regatta, so I was not available on Saturday anyway.

They say there is nothing as expensive as a "free" boat, I have been offered a number of nice size sailboats for free. I did not have a place to keep them out of the weather so it was not a good time to take them, and I am not sure any of them were worth the effort.

 

I was. Thursdays are my usual Everett / Marysville days. I was hunting for a derelict barge I found on Google maps, but apparently is no longer there. Next target, assuming the river ever goes back down, is one that is supposed to be in Ebey slough near the Highway 2 bridge. I walked the levy looking for it, but with all the brush I could well have missed it.

I'll be down Thursday this week and then I'm hoping to come down next Wednesday for the -2.4 tide to have a look at the Servant and see if there is anything more visible on her. I'm about convinced the entire superstructure must be buried in the mud, but I figure it's worth one more try. Might also go out to Jetty Island and check out the wrecks on the north end with the low tide.

I'd love to drop in and meet you some time (and see your boats) if our schedules ever line up.

 

just curious about what you are doing, i think finding old wrecks is fascinating, at the moment i am reading the sea hunters, clive cusslers account of the wrecks he has searched for, it is amazing how many ship wrecks are in american rivers. good luck with your searchs.

 

I've always been fascinated by shipwrecks and once I got my kayak last year, I sort of accidentally started discovering them. I use various resources including Google maps, a website called Virtual Globetrotting, the NOAA Wrecks and Obstructions list and the Dept of Natural Resources (DNR) Derelict vessels list to find them. I usually spend as much time on the computer finding and researching as I do in the kayak actually looking for them.

Once I find them I take pictures and capture the coordinates for my list. If they're relatively recent and not on the list I forward the information to the DNR folks who probably wish I would go away, but do sometimes provide helpful information. The link below is to my photo gallery of some of the wrecks I've found.

http://208.64.28.82/~cthippoc/cthippo/derelicts.html

Where in Australia are you? I might be able to come up with some for you to go look for if you're interested.

 

very interesting post, i am in gippsland , victoria , we are on the edge of bass straight, there are hundreds of wrecks throughout bass straight but most are well offshore around the islands. there are probably a lot of wrecks in the gippsland lakes but i haven't seen them.

 

Very nice. I was in Melbourne for a week on '04. Wish I had never left.

Surprising no one, most of these are in Port Phillip Bay...

OK, this one's not terribly close, but might be worth a look...
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/wreck-of-wwi-submarine-hms-j3/view/?service=0

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/hmvs-cerberus-shipwreck/view/?service=0

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/british-j-class-submarine-hmas-j7/view/?service=0

The J7 and the Cerberus are quite close together and you could easily do both in a day.

Remains of the SS Speke:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/80336234@N00/2348239851/

Granted, this is the low-hanging fruit, but hopefully it will whet your appetite.

Part of the problem is I don't know the area well enough to apply my usual filter criteria. Basically, you want to look for economically depressed towns with a current or former shipbuilding industry and then start poking around in the sloughs and small rivers around them. Most of the really good finds are boats that have been abandoned by their owners and shoved out into whatever backwater was closest.

I'll post more if I can find some.