Maintenance a challenge for boat owners

THE EXPENSE of boat maintenance is becoming a major financial challenge for boat owners.Owners of wooden deep-sea fishing boats told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY last week that they were drowning in costs between $7 000 and $10 000, once or twice a year, to keep their vessels seaworthy.“We got to pay $8 000 to get a boat haul up, then to get it move down there [where it is repaired at Cheapside] is $300 for a trailer. When you coming back up, is the same thing again.“You got to look for $8 000 when the boatgo on de land for repairs. “Shipwright work is $150 a day, [which includes] patching up, painting, paying somebody to paint, [and generally] preparing the boat to get it back to the sea. “You looking at about $7 000 to $8 000,” Hallam Mayers, a boat owner who docks his vessel at Cheapside, The City, said in an interview on Monday.He indicated that some boat owners looked to haul up their boats at Oistins, Christ Church, or Consett Bay, St John for repairs but both options were costly and bigger boats were difficult to haul up.Repairs“Some people haul up once a year. Some people haul up twice a year. A fibreglass boat can get do once a year because the worms can’t worry the bottom. But the board boat, the worms would worry the bottom, so you have to come up about twice, even if you only paint the bottom,” he said.He suggested that Government establish a site with a lift to haul boats out of the water, which would benefit at least 90 per cent of fishermen.“A small truck with a crane would come hey at Cheapside to haul up small boats, but a boat 35 to 40 feet can’t lift up – it would tilt over. “But when the big crane come, is about $3 600 for a day and it may only lift eight boats and you is can’t get the crane often.Expenses“When a fella got to tek his boat from here to Oistins, is roughly ’bout $800 to haul up, another $600 or $800 to tek it to Oistins, and then you got to pay another $500 to lift off again when you get to Oistins,” Mayers stressed.His counterpart Kenrick Nurse at Oistins confirmed on Wednesday that boat maintenance was “very expensive”.“Out here don’t have the facilities to haul up the boat when the sea low. You have to rent a crane and the least you have to pay is $1 350 from Cheapside. And when it have to go back down, is another $1 350.“A bottle of bottom paint alone cost more than $400. “Government had promised a good li’l while now to put in something at Oistins to haul up boats, but I ain’t know what happen. “To get one of them boats back in the sea, the least you’re looking at is $10 000,” he said. (SR)