{"id":544601,"date":"2026-04-22T12:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544601\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T12:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:28:10","slug":"stern-warning-one-mans-mission-to-clear-the-rotting-boats-poisoning-cornwalls-creeks-cornwall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544601\/","title":{"rendered":"Stern warning: one man\u2019s mission to clear the rotting boats poisoning Cornwall\u2019s creeks | Cornwall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Green, a boat engineer from Cornwall<\/a>, was pulled over by the police just before Christmas. He was driving a decrepit-looking VW campervan and towing an even more dilapidated yacht up to Truro. He hadn\u2019t broken any laws, but he admits that Cecil the campervan, which runs on donated chip oil from local pubs and has a crane and a winch on the front, \u201cwasn\u2019t quite what VW intended\u201d.<\/p>\n

Green (and Cecil) are on a mission to rid the beautiful hidden creeks of Cornwall\u2019s Helford and Fal rivers of 166 abandoned fibreglass yachts<\/a>, which are leaking plastic and toxins into the predominantly marine waters. Marine biologists have likened<\/a> the thousands of shards of fibreglass they have found embedded in the flesh of sea-creatures in areas with wrecks such as these to asbestos, a substance known to have a noxious effect on humans.<\/p>\n

The problem stretches far beyond Cornwall. Across the UK \u2013 and indeed the world \u2013 the legacy of the mass-produced fibreglass pleasure boat boom is unfolding. Yachts bought in the 1960s and 1970s are now reaching the end of their useful lives and there is no clear plan for what to do with them.<\/p>\n

Green was towing the 22ft Hurley yacht that had alarmed the police to Truro recycling centre \u2013 but the recycling part is euphemistic. These yachts end up in landfill. Disposal is charged by the tonne and Green paid \u00a31,200 to dump it there. Larger yachts cost up to \u00a33,000. It\u2019s one reason so many of them are abandoned by their owners, who don\u2019t want to foot the cost or take responsibility for disposing of them.<\/p>\n

It takes Green days to clear a discarded yacht of rubbish, silt and sand, bail it out and float it to a place where it can be lifted on to Cecil\u2019s trailer or pulled upstream to Truro by Annie, the 100-year-old wooden \u201cpirate ship\u201d schooner he has lived on for most of the past two decades. But it matters to him that even he is causing some damage to the environment by doing this. \u201cI don\u2019t want a massive barge with a digger on it,\u201d he says. \u201cThat would do it in a day, but the impact [of that vehicle on the environment] is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organisation he runs with his wife, Clean Ocean Sailing<\/a>, relies on small charitable grants, crowdfunding and enthusiastic volunteers willing to paddle kayaks out to wrecks and help. Green ran up \u00a38,000 on credit cards last year when the grants didn\u2019t cover all the decaying boats he took to the dump. \u201cIt\u2019s a balance between not being so broke that my kids can\u2019t live a normal life, and wanting to preserve the environment for their future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Each rescue mission starts with Green putting a notice on the abandoned yacht, giving the owner 30 days to come forward and claim it. Unlike road vehicles, or even boats destined for rivers or canals, you don\u2019t need a licence for a boat on coastal waters. This often makes tracing the owner impossible, especially if they don\u2019t want to be found. \u201cSo many people have a dream of getting a boat, but with no thought of where to keep it or how much it will cost,\u201d says Green.<\/p>\n

Green repositions Jehol, which has changed hands four times for \u00a31, but has become too costly and troublesome for owners to dispose of<\/p>\n

Jehol, a 1970s Westerly Centaur \u2013 one of the most popular British-made yachts \u2013 is a boat that Green is in the process of tackling. \u201cShe has changed hands for \u00a31 four times, always to people with a dream and the best intentions,\u201d he says. \u201cBut life takes over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babies were born, families moved, Jehol needed too much work and money. Left unused, the tarpaulin keeping the rain out of the cockpit ripped and it gradually filled up. One of the keels broke off underneath, leaving a big hole in the hull for water to come in and tip the boat over.<\/p>\n

When a boat is abandoned, it can quickly begin to leak harmful oil and resin-based paint into the water. But Corina Ciocan, a marine biologist at Brighton University, is most concerned about the fibreglass. Her research has shown it breaks down into \u201cshards of microplastic which spear the flesh of mussels and oysters like javelins\u201d, as well as entering seagrass and algae that will in time be eaten by fish. \u201cOnce ingested, that fibreglass will stay in the organism, and I\u2019m working to show that it behaves in the same way as asbestos,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Her team examined the flesh of oysters in the sea around Chichester harbour and found more than 11,000 shards of fibreglass per kilogram of oyster. \u201cWe were stunned,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s such a huge amount.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ciocan believes that abandoned, rotting boats should be categorised as hazardous waste rather than merely as rubbish. She argues that boat builders should have a duty of care to think about what happens to their boat at the end of its life.<\/p>\n

Ponsontuel Creek, top, branches off the Helford River, bottom, which flows from Gweek toward the sea and is one of the many local waterways where Green collects abandoned boats and debris<\/p>\n

Green is keen for Britain to follow the French model, in which boat manufacturers have to pay an eco-contribution for every boat sold. This is combined with an annual tax on boat owners \u2013 who are easy to track down because boats have to be licensed \u2013 and used to fund 35 free-to-use boat scrapping centres across France. The Association pour la Plaisance Eco-Responsable<\/a>, which runs these centres, has removed more than 16,000<\/a> boats since it was launched in 2019, and is tasked with recycling as much as possible of the boats it dismantles. Green is carefully logging all the different components of boats he has hauled out to gain a clearer idea of what may be salvageable.<\/p>\n

Over in nearby Falmouth, the harbourmaster was up early to catch the tide so he could tow a discarded yacht up to Truro, where it would end up in the ground.<\/p>\n

Cornwall Harbours has powers under the harbour revision order to remove and dispose of abandoned boats. If the cost cannot be recovered from the owner, boat removal is paid for using harbour revenues.<\/p>\n

Rescued boats, plastic, and marine debris pile up on Green\u2019s dockside. The cost of disposal is prohibitive, so the waste accumulates while he works to raise the funds needed to clear it<\/p>\n

Miles Carden, the chief executive of Falmouth harbour, said: \u201cWe can\u2019t afford the fees for this, but we have no choice. We don\u2019t want to sell [a boat] on cheaply and then see it reappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other harbours, Falmouth has learned to act fast before the problem gets bigger. A boat that has sunk is far more expensive and difficult to recover. Yet Carden is also conscious that the real problem lies beyond carefully policed harbours such as his, where people pay to rent moorings and can be easily traced. \u201cThe [answer] to this problem has got to be some sort of circular economy on recycling boats,\u201d he said. \u201cWith a use for the end product.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wreck taken to Truro by the harbourmaster had blown into Falmouth harbour with Storm Goretti<\/a>. It probably came from one of the tucked-away creeks upstream, where Green and his already maxed out credit card are, at present, the only solution there is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Green, a boat engineer from Cornwall, was pulled over by the police just before Christmas. He was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-544601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}