Dock master towed his dilapidated tugboat out to sea and left him there, miles fromshore, with no radio, no pumps, no steering or propulsion, and no foodor water.Using the last few minutes of airtimeleft on his cell phone Stephen Freer would explain how the dock masterat a Stock Island marina had towed him and his 150-ton dilapidatedtugboat out to sea and how he had left him there, miles from shore, withno radio, no pumps, no steering or propulsion, and no food or water.Stephen, 66, is retired and lives on $800/month social security and until that afternoon had never been on aboat at sea before. He’d used all of his savings to buy into this greatCraig’s List “bargain”: a 1943 tugboat called “Tilly”.It could be just a matter of days beforethe tug crashes and sinks somewhere on the reef. Incredibly enough itcould’ve been a lot worse: the same people who sold the Tilly toStephen also tried to “donate” a gigantic steel barge as a bonus. Thebarge is only kept afloat thanks to continuous pumping. When we firstmet with Stephen he was seriously debating whether or not to add thebarge to his collection.As insane as this story may sound it hasactually become a common scenario on Stock Island. With the rapidgentrification of Safe Harbor (Stock Island) some unscrupulous dock andboat owners have resorted to callous practices to evacuate, at no cost,the old fleet left over from yesteryear and the Keys’ shrimping era.They “generously give away” these floating marvels of rust and rot toany willing homeless person or unsuspecting amateur.Over four months ago The Blue Paper thebluepaper.com/article/where-do-derelict-vessels-come-from She too was given a great deal: a 45- foot wooden sailboat that hadbeen abandoned for six years at a Stock Island boatyard. The onlycondition was that she had to take the boat away as soon as it had beenlowered into the water.“It started to sink right away,” saidSonia, “I pleaded with them to haul it back out, so we could try to fixit, but they said that was not the deal.”Somehow Sonia, who works at a laundromatin Key West, and her son, who’s handicapped, managed to get towed allthe way to the Wisteria Island anchorage where the US Coast Guard andfellow mariners have had to rescue them twice from sinking. Nowabandoned, the boat waits to sink to the bottom and to be disposed of atthe county’s expense.Arguably, that cost could seem nominalin comparison with what it will cost to dispose of the enormous TugTilly. A lesser boat, the “Lady Luck” casino boat, which groundedduring Hurricane Wilma cost around $500,000 for disposal.Last Monday, the 81’ Tug Tilly was stillrolling from side to side in the swells a few miles south of Fort Zach,all alone, with no lights, no bilge pump and an inadequate anchor.Tilly had been idle at the dock for so many years that the barnaclesthat cover her hull are about a foot thick, so ample in fact thatmangroves have now taken root at the waterline. Quite a sight! Thecabin was once red with an enormous black smokestack but everywhere therust has exploded through the metal and spread like dark cancerousflowers.The only thing that looked new was abizarre gizmo at the stern of the tug – some sort of giant bracket madeof 2X4’s which supported a miniscule outboard engine that no longer had acover; the strange contraption was completely shattered and everypassing wave submerged the little motor.According to Stephen, this absurdapparatus was what was supposed to keep the dock owner out of trouble.How so? “Well, you see,” says Stephen, “they believe that if they canclaim the boat has propulsion, it’s not a derelict and so they didn’tactually abandon a derelict boat out at sea.” According to Florida lawany person who stores, leaves or abandons a vessel in a substantiallydismantled condition is criminally liable under the “derelict vessel”statute. Stephen claims that the marina was so eager to get rid of himthey installed the engine at their own expense. “But look at the size ofit,” says Stephen, “that would only move a ten foot dinghy.”There’s a good reason dock owners aretempted to “give away” abandoned or derelict boats: The cost ofdestruction can be astronomical. Last year dock owner Eric Dickstein hadtwo abandoned shrimp boats sink at his dock on Stock Island. The boatsweren’t his. Dickstein says FWC arrested him anyway just for having asunken derelict vessel at his dock. The key element was the fact thatDickstein had moved and re-moored the two boats, thereby making himselfthe last person who had been in control before they sunk. It cost himover $100,000 to have the two sunken shrimp boats removed and disposedof.It will be interesting to see if thesame rationale will be applied against the dock master of Stock IslandMarina Village for towing the Tilly to sea and leaving her there. Afterall, wasn’t the marina the last one in control of the Tilly?To be fair, it is not hard to see howStephen and his tugboat were enough to drive the owners of the marinaout of their minds. On January 25, 2014, the day of the Stock IslandMarina Village grand opening celebration, he crashed the dock’s cocktailparty by having a group of Haitian fishermen tow his tug and wonderfulworld of rust right up to the dock where more than likely the fancyguests felt like getting a tetanus shot after just looking at it.The marina called the police only todiscover, to their horror, that they had signed a dockage agreement withStephen for his 81-foot “yacht” two days earlier. Of course they hadhad no idea what this “yacht” looked like. “Tilly is a yacht to me,”explains Stephen, “my yacht.” If Pirates of the Caribbean had atugboat, it would be Tilly.So far, in these cases, the FWC hasconcentrated on going after the unfortunate people who got lured into a“great deal” and assumed ownership of a derelict vessel. “That is justbad judgment on the part of those people,” Captain David Dipre of FWCtold The Blue Paper. He says they should have known better than to buy a derelict vessel.But that could change. We interviewed Phil Horning, Tallahassee based FWC Statewide Derelict Vessel Planner.“If someone can prove,” said Horning,“that the seller of the boat knew the boat was derelict and was going tobe stored as a derelict vessel on the waters of the state, the judgemight hold the seller liable.” In other words the seller could be heldliable as an accomplice to the crime of storing a derelict vessel onstate waters. That could certainly help to curb the practice.Will the county continue to pick up thetab? There are a considerable amount of derelict vessels sinking orready to sink in Safe Harbor. Not the least of which is a 150-footyacht called the “Platinum” which belongs to the same people who soldStephen the Tilly. Platinum was formerly one of the largest mostluxurious yachts on the market, but today requires regular salvageintervention just to stay afloat. Under the current trend, if StockIsland continues pushing to sea all of its burned out hulks andderelicts, the cost to the county could be astronomical.Many proactive solutions have beenproposed to help curb the derelict vessel problem. For example, makingsellers liable when they conveniently transfer derelicts to proverbial“dead beats”, creating emergency moorings to process these boats beforethey run aground or sink, providing immediate response rather thanwaiting months while costs and environmental damages escalate when andif the vessel is allowed to sink. But, like so many practical ideas,these remain lost in the bureaucratic maze.Meanwhile, for the past week, the USCoast Guard has been issuing radio broadcast warnings about the TugTilly being precariously anchored and abandoned halfway between FortZach and Sand Key. What will happen when the weather picks up and the150-ton iron lady crashes onto the reef blowing holes in her rustybottom? Who is going to pay for the removal, and what about the blow tothe reef?Will our government finally be able to react to an obvious crisis before its too late? Stay tuned.....