Mystery Boat

It’s not unusual to see boats on trailers around Waterford, but when a trailer and a boat appeared on a grass verge opposite the ball field on Gardiners Wood Road--and stayed there for more than 10 days-- more than a few people took notice.

Was this a particularly blatant example of illegal dumping? “It doesn’t look that way,” says Waterford Police Sergeant S. Bellos, who has been investigating the matter. Although the boat, a red Stingray, is in disrepair and piled high with old gas tanks and a muffler, the trailer’s missing wheel suggests that it may have broken down en route to somewhere else.

Police have been able to track the owner through the boat’s Connecticut registration, which expired in 2002, and at least one person living near Gardiners Wood says police knocked on his door last week following a lead (false, as it turned out) that the boat’s rightful owner lived at his address.

In the interim, Waterford’s Director of Public Works Ronald Cusano says, someone has already expressed interest in taking the boat if the owner no longer wants it. As is the case with any abandoned vehicle, however, it’s not simply a matter of towing it and giving it away or junking it.

“When there’s any property, Public Works can’t step in because everybody owns something. You’ve got to track down ownership,” says Cusano. “We were called because [some] thought we were going to have to dispose of it, but we can’t just take something if it’s on the side of the road. [Police] have got to do some ownership checks. We’re the last resort.”

On the bright side, Cusano notes, Waterford doesn’t have a big problem with illegal dumping. “We haven’t seen too much lately,” he says. “We used to see washing machines or appliances but I think now when you buy an appliance from a store, a lot of times they take your old one, so we’ve been seeing less and less of that.”

Between the household hazardous waste collections, (which are offered nine times a year) and the town’s bulky waste pickup service where, for a fee, Public Works will pick up big items and take them to the dump for you, Cusano says, people have little reason to dump their stuff illegally.

As for that red boat, though Bellos declines to say who will be taking it, he did say he expected it to be removed from Gardiners Wood Road sometime in the middle of this week.