Re: Is it illegal to pickup items floating?
We rounded up an unmanned boat one day about 2 miles out. I called the marine police, they told me to secure it and bring it in I possible, they said if left to drift it would be a navigational hazard and would be hard to find later. I noted the coordinates where we found it and towed it in. No wanted to drag it into the marina, we pushed it ashore just outside the marina and met the Marine Police there. No one had reported it missing and it was 500 miles from the state of registration, which was 13 years out of date. I told the officer I wouldn't mind having it, (after all I knew it floats and didn't take on any water), I was told to take it home, if no one claimed it in 30 days to begin procedure for an abandonment title. An NCIC seach turned up nothing, and I was granted a title after 50 or so days. This was several years ago and the boat has since been fixed up and sold, and is now in use even farther south. They figured that either someone just pushed it out to sea to get rid of it or a storm took it from where ever it was lying. It had a lot of growth on it, so it had been afloat for a long time, and the inside was full of sand and shells, as if it may have been beached for a while, or birds were using it to bust open shells from the air. There were several sea birds on it when we found it. What surprised me most was that it was old enough to not have any flotation, and being a 16' aluminum boat, it didn't get capsized or sunk in the surf. There was no sign of it being used in a long time, the deck was rotted, and the seat were soaked and torn. There was no motor, no oars.
