Fort Bragg”s most famous boat salvage yard is out of business and slowly slipping into oblivion. Hundreds of other picturesque, rotting former seagoing vessels in and around harbors all over the North Coast have no place to end their days.
Over the past decade, Bruce Abernathy”s South Noyo Harbor property became an outlet for dozens of dead and dying boats. Smithsonian Magazine, the LA Times and the Press Democrat were among the media outlets to feature Abernathy”s unique mountain of vintage boats in recent stories about the demise of the Noyo Harbor salmon industry.
“With fishing seasons lost year after year, there were boats people simply walked away from,” remembers Noyo Harbor Commission member Tommy Ancona.
Abernathy”s hodgepodge of semi-trailers, cars, a rusty steel crane, refrigerators, engines and dozens of beached boats blanketed the four-acre riverfront property between the marina and South Dolphin Isle.
Abernathy”s pile grew into a virtual mountain of metal and wood, bringing complaints and causing him to run afoul with a county planning department no longer willing to ignore violations. In January 2010, Mendocino County ordered Abernathy to stop operating a junkyard without a permit, remedy numerous building code violations and remove virtually all his vehicles and vessels. Abernathy is no longer selling items and is prohibited from using heavy equipment or bringing anything new on the property.
The county earned a state grant to fund cleanup and threatened Abernathy with a lien that would have forced him to sell his property. Aging boats were crushed on site and removed throughout last year. Rusty cars and motors were sold for scrap. A concrete-like sealant was sprayed on newly exposed dirt to prevent runoff, then straw. Freshly uncovered ground looks like an emerging moonscape. Twenty six boats and 14 vehicles have been reduced to a half dozen of each.
Last month, county code officer Angie Hamilton told the Noyo Harbor Commission the cleanup should finish before summer — depending on weather.
The county”s court order has expired. State and county officials who initially threatened that large property lien are working with Abernathy so he won”t lose his property.
Abernathy, 78, a boat broker and fisherman for 55 years, thought he had finally hit the mother lode when he acquired the property in 1991 and found so many boats at bargain prices, which he acquired along with their fishing licenses. He planned to fix and sell them to a new generation of fishermen.
“I thought the salmon industry would come back someday and I would be able to sell boats and parts to the fishermen again,” Abernathy said. “I had seen the industry lull and swell back again and again over the years. But bad went to worse and then to dead.”
The county, state, Department of Fish and Game (DFG) and U.S Coast Guard have differing jurisdictions over the property and/or Noyo River and each has demanded Abernathy remedy violations. Officials from all those agencies have found Abernathy to be affable and cooperative — but getting rid of boats turns out to be a very difficult process.
Fishing was clearly an industry that worried little about the declining years of its boats, much less commercial fishing itself.
After one of Abernathy”s boats sank several years ago, resulting in DFG violations and fines, the Coast Guard worked with a cooperative Abernathy to secure six more shaky vessels floating along his dock. Coast Guard Marine Science Technician Michael Nosbaum remembers Abernathy even removed the engines from boats he was required to remove the oil pan from; he then grounded the boats.
Bad luck struck Abernathy when the Tanga, the most seaworthy of his boats, sunk in July 2009. A leak — it had about 40 gallons of petrol — resulted in a $15,300 fine.
“I don”t know why that one sunk,” said Nosbaum.
Abernathy used the iron hulled 60-foot Tanga in tandem with his flagship two-mast schooner San Juan to provide security for newly installed fiber optic cables in the early 1980s. The two boats had to be on the water 24/7 in the early days and survived the worst the ocean offered. He suspects the boat, which has visible rust holes, was the victim of sabotage.
Nosbaum, whose Coast Guard territory runs from Point Arena to the Oregon border, says derelict boats are a looming crisis that goes way beyond one property.
He said it was not just the demise of the salmon industry but a recent federal buy back program that put many drag trawlers out of the business, but came with no plan for all the abandoned boats it created.
“This is more of a problem in Eureka and Crescent City Harbors. Many of these large fishing boats are in danger of sinking, especially as time goes on. The cleanup cost for these is significantly higher than what we”ve been discussing,” Nosbaum said.
And finding former owners can be difficult, with little chance for finding money to pay for the problems. Nosbaum currently deals with one or two sinkers in the Fort Bragg area each year, with up to eight in the entire area. He hopes those numbers won”t increase.
“You might want to buy a boat so you can go sport fishing, but you won”t want to buy an aging 60-foot commercial trawling fishing vessel for that,” said Josh Zulliger of DFG”s oil spill prevention department, another official who found Abernathy willing to take responsibility for cleaning up problems.
Noyo Harbor is full of stories of Abernathy helping boaters and fishermen in need, righting capsized boats and giving — rather than selling — to those in need.
Others say Abernathy became unwilling to sell parts or boats at some point, seeming to become a collector rather than parts seller. Dusty Dillion, a new member of the Noyo Harbor Commission, said critics expected Abernathy to part with his stuff for far less than their value.
“They would want to pay $5 for a port hole worth $250. He is a guy who is happy to give to anyone who needs, but he isn”t going to make a deal like that,” said Dillion.
Abernathy, for his part, doesn”t blame others and admits he overdid it.
“Mr. Abernathy is not a victim, he is a casualty of a dying industry,” Dillon said.
Like many in the harbor, Dillion has favorite Abernathy stories, like the time Abernathy helped rescue the Coast Guard rescue boat or the time he transported an entire circus on his small fleet of fishing boats.
Abernathy has stories for the things he still has, like the big towering iron crane now so rusted it could never be painted.
“It was made in the 1940s and still runs great. It was used when Everett Hamman developed Dolphin Isle in the 1960s,” he said.
Abernathy still gets obvious joy from working on the water. On Monday, just days after surgery, he greeted his current boat, “The Recycler,” as it arrived on the dock behind his home, piloted by friends and two dogs. The appropriately green boat is used to pick up discarded urchin material from a local processor and dump them beyond the buoy.
As he tied up the boat, Abernathy worked among a still-daunting pile of metal, which the state and county are allowing him to clean up as much junk as possible.
Can he do it?
“It”s doable. I have had a spot of bad health and I can”t use my equipment, but I can get it done,” he said.
Email Frank Hartzell at frankhartzell@gmail.com.
