The Haines Borough has begun imposing new penalties on boats moored in the Small Boat Harbor that are not seaworthy.
The regulations were first put into place in August, requiring boat owners to prove their vessels could go to sea under their own power. Boats that can’t are moved to transient moorage and owners are required to insure the boat and also purchase a significant marine pollution liability insurance specifically indemnifying the borough. Otherwise, they pay an extra $100 per month.
Those penalties are a rough deal, some have argued, for boat owners trying to get their vessels back in working shape.
Two boat owners applied to the assembly for exemption from the fines and insurance requirements after the rules went into place.
One is Mark Sebens, owner of the M/V Buccaneer. His request was denied Tuesday night by the assembly.
The Buccaneer is a houseboat that Sebens said he has lived on at least seasonally, in Haines and Juneau, since 2009. It’s also a boat that Pollan described to the assembly as “extensively blistered from rust.” And late last month, the boat began to take on water due to a “rust-related hole in the hull,” as Pollan described it.
Sebens, however, says he is actively working on replacing two engines on the boat, and should be given time to do so before facing penalties. After getting news of the hole in the hull, he said, he flew back from Texas to address the problem, including running six bilge pumps to keep the boat afloat.
Perhaps more significantly, Sebens said, he has nowhere else to go with the boat.
“I’m trying right now to repower the boat,” he said this week. “They basically just kick me out. I have no clue what I’d do. It’s my home. I live on there six, seven months of the year.”
Borough decision makers have said the move is necessary to protect the borough and other harbor users from damage and liability should the boat sink and spill fuel.
“It’s not to intrude on private property, it’s to protect our infrastructure,” said assembly member Gabe Thomas.
Pollan also said Sebens had been receiving notice of the impending penalties for more than a year — further reason to not grant an exemption, the harbormaster said. If Sebens were to do out-of-water metalwork to repair the boat, Pollan said he would “reassess this completely.”
“I want to be flexible here,” Pollan told the assembly. “I don’t want to twist people’s arms, but at some point our flexibility is exhausted.”
That flexibility was on display for the other exemption request, submitted by Dan Hotch for his gillnetter, the F/V Priscilla Dawn. Hotch wrote in a memo to the assembly the boat hadn’t sailed due to unforeseen consequences, not neglect.
According to the letter, Hotch expected to be fishing this year, and documented the boat with the state and Coast Guard. But after spending $5,000 in repairs on his old engine, it still didn’t run, and the boat stayed moored.
Hotch has purchased a new engine and is repairing his trailer to be able to take the boat out of the water, he wrote in his letter.
Pollan also cited a “fairly legitimate medical issue” Hotch had been addressing, and said Hotch had been “cooperative and responsive throughout the process.”
As of late November, seven boats in the harbor had been issued letters of noncompliance, though harbormaster Henry Pollan said a number are now back in compliance.