By Richard Roesler
There are some folks in Port Townsend who wouldn’t be too surprised to see the ghost ship Palisades return, silent and low in the water, on some dark night.
That’s how the ship showed up back in September 1999.
A man had brought it up to an abandoned railroad trestle outside the port’s marina and illegally tied the leaky old ship alongside.
The tide went out. The boat sat in the mud.
Port director Larry Crockett got on the phone, trying to find someone who could get the ship moved.
He called officials with the city, then the county, the state, the Coast Guard and the Navy.
“Nobody wanted to take responsibility for it,” Crockett said.
That’s not unusual in Washington, where anyone trying to deal with a problem boat faces a legal thicket and little hope of reimbursement.
From Bellingham to Olympia to far up the Columbia River, there are scores — perhaps hundreds –of leaky or sunken vessels, boating officials say.
They usually are far-gone hulks bought by starry-eyed rookies for as little as $1, officials say, and soon become hazards.
New law
A law designed to start cleaning up these boats will kick in next year.
It won’t be a moment too soon for Crockett, who sees about a dozen vessels abandoned in his port each year.
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The rest of this story appears in Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News. Click on “Subscribe” to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.