Prelude 19 Scrap Yacht Collection

Our Boatbreakers team was back out in the local area this week to remove a small yacht from Hardway in Gosport. The boat was a small Prelude 19 Yacht. She had been on a swing mooring but had suffered damage which caused her to sink.

Her owner had received a text to tell him that the mast had come down and the boat had sunk. Judging by the damage to the mast it looked as if the another boat may have struck her. With her mast down and some skin fitting smashed off a hole in the hull caused her to sink.

The owner did manage to get her in alongside the public jetty and patch up the hole to get her re-floated. However at the Hardway public pontoon boat’s can only stay for two hours. This meant the owner was under pressure to make a decision to keep her or not. Especially as she needed plenty of work to get her back to being safe to be used or on the mooring.

Ultimately the insurance company decided she was a write-off. They were also willing to cover the cost of disposal. Even though it’s a a hard situation for the owner at least he wouldn’t be out of pocket.

Our original plan was to collect by water. But when we saw the size of the boat and the hull/keel type we realised dipping a trailer would be best. The trailer we had lined up for the job was in the end slightly too small.  We quickly swapped to our larger roller trailer instead.

Once the trailer backed down near to the slipway we walked the boat across. There was enough tide to gently float her across and guide her into place using the lines attached. With the boat in front of the trailer we backed the trailer down under the boat. One of the team sat on the back of the truck and winched the boat further up onto the rollers. With the boat still floating this was all relatively straightforward. The only concerns we had was slipping and dipping our wellies in too deep.

With the boat winched up as far as we could we added a strap just to make sure the boat would stay on the trailer. We then pulled the trailer up and clear of the water before strapping her down properly.

When the boat was secure the team set about removing anything that was hanging down the side. Or anything that could fall off in transit.

The boat was brought back to the office in Gosport where the team quickly stripped anything worth having. This was just simply to save time when the boat got to the scrapyard.

As the boat had been pre-stripped it was simply unloaded at the yard onto the scrap quay. We usually hold the boats for a couple of days until there are a couple to crunch together.