Skipper 17 Boat Disposal in Southampton

A little Skipper 17 presented an interesting morning for the team last week. She had been on the owner’s drive for a number of years and sadly he had passed away. His wife was now left with the task of removing the boat which was not in a good state.

After trying to give the boat away for free on Lonely Boats it was decided that the most responsible thing to do would be to dispose of her. To stop her being dumped by someone else somewhere else.

The challenges for the team (apart from the summer heatwave) were that the Skipper 17 was completely full of water. She also had a number of the garden trees growing up through her. And not to mention the trailer was a big stiff rusty pile. Which couldn’t be used to move the boat.

The first thing we did was to drill some drainage holes to empty the hull. We then set about slicing off the roof of the boat and her deck. This left us with the shell of the boat to cut into more chunks. We hadn’t realised that the Skipper had a strip of pig iron through the middle of the hull. But we soon found out when it snapped one of our drill bits!

Skipper 17s also have two drop keels that tuck up inside the hull. We had to made sure we cut around these and took care whilst loading them into the van. The back of our van looked was like a game of Tetris as we had to fit all of the boat section in as well as the trailer.

With the right tools and experience we had the boat sliced up and the garden cleared. It’s always great to help someone clear a boat from the garden as you can see their relief. If you have an old boat in the garden like the Skipper 17 then get in contact. Fill in the contact form and our team can do the rest.