A Florida man, two abandoned boats in Nantucket and Provincetown, and one big question: Why?
When the abandoned sailboat was first spotted off First Point on Nantucket, the island’s harbormaster, Sheila Lucey, feared someone had gone overboard. Rescue crews searched the water around the weathered 32-foot vessel but found no sign of distress. And so the sailboat was tied to a large mooring in Nantucket Harbor.
But for Lucey, the distress was just beginning.
For the next nine months, she and authorities tried to track down the owner and have him remove his boat. This ordeal of unanswered calls and unkept promises only ended this month when the derelict vessel was mercifully towed away to be scrapped.
Along the way, Lucey found out that the owner, whom officials identified as Cody Fenstermaker of Key West, Fla., had abandoned another boat — this one in Provincetown.
“I was surprised,” Lucey said. “But not really.”
Abandoned boats are relatively common in states like Florida, where an owner may leave a vessel in a designated anchorage area and never return for it, said Lance Wiser, the master chief at Coast Guard Station Brant Point on Nantucket. But in a small harbor like Nantucket, “it’s pretty uncommon,” he said.
The Massachusetts Environmental Police considers a vessel to be abandoned when it has remained “moored, grounded, or otherwise attached” to private property for more than 30 days without consent or has been found “adrift or unattended in or upon” state waters and constitutes a potential hazard.
“With the harbor getting so busy during the summer, it really makes it a big deal when there’s a boat just abandoned out there,” he said. And a big deal the situation became, with the Nantucket Current dubbing the Buenos Aires the harbor’s “most infamous vessel.”
“I feel like the condition of the boat always plays a factor in whether people actually care about the boat or not. This boat was not in good shape,” Wiser said. “Eventually, it turns into, what is the boat actually even worth?”
After calls poured in about the abandoned boat, marine officials discovered Fenstermaker had never bothered to switch the registration after buying the boat from a Nantucket resident, Lucey said, who said she believed he purchased it “before last winter.”
Fenstermaker could not be reached for comment. He returned a call from a Globe reporter on Monday but hung up before anything could be said.
But on Facebook, his profile features a number of photos of him steering various sailboats and out on the water. And in March 2022, a short piece about Fenstermaker in the Key West Citizen described him as a marine diesel mechanic who had moved to Key West “to set in motion his dream of sailing from the Florida Keys to Massachusetts.”
He may have realized that dream, but Lucey soon wished she had never laid eyes on his banged-up boat.
By her count, officials reached out to Fenstermaker to hold him responsible for the boat more than 60 times. Lucey never spoke to him directly but Fenstermaker left voicemails and sent text messages. He often promised he would come to Nantucket — and did a couple of times — to prepare the boat for removal. Then he disappeared again without a word.
The last time Fenstermaker made contact was in December or January, Lucey said.
“It was definitely a significant incident that took a lot of man-hours on our part,” including hours spent keeping the boat afloat and making sure it was not a pollution hazard, she said. The only other derelict boat that caused as much hassle was more than a decade ago, when a 67-foot fishing dragger named Miss China was towed off Brant Point.
The Massachusetts Environmental Police were alerted to the abandoned sailboat on Dec. 14, a spokesperson said. Working alongside the Coast Guard, officers located Fenstermaker in Florida and have “tried connecting with the individual since to take responsibility.”
All the while, the vessel sat idly in the harbor, drawing attention as a public nuisance, before running aground in Monomoy during a storm in late January. When the Nantucket Current reported the development earlier this month, it caught the eye of Provincetown Harbormaster Don German.
Since the previous summer, German had also been dealing with a sailboat abandoned by Fenstermaker, a Tartan 34 called Lightfoot.
In his five years as harbormaster, it was the first time a boat had been left behind like this, he said. Boats in poor repair were sometimes left on moorings, but not abandoned completely, he said. German was stunned to learn Nantucket was dealing with the same situation.
“This is probably going to end up being quite a story,” he said with a laugh.
In May, the same month the Buenos Aires was abandoned in Nantucket, the sailboat was towed into Provincetown harbor and put on a mooring. The owner of the mooring told German he had not granted permission for it to be used but said the vessel could stay there for the summer. By June, officials realized that the boat was not being attended to.
“This is a small town, so not too hard to figure out when somebody’s gone,” German said.
German said he spoke with Fenstermaker, who is registered as the owner of the boat, when he was still in town in early June. The two had a “normal day-to-day business conversation,” but then Fenstermaker departed and left the boat in Provincetown, German said. He has not been able to have any direct communication with him since then.
In early October, someone cut the vessel free from its mooring, sending it adrift before it ran aground a beach in Truro. Now Lightfoot is tied to the wave attenuator — a structure installed in the harbor to reduce the impact from waves that can also double as a mooring — in Provincetown.
German has called Fenstermaker about 30 times and recently sent him a certified letter in Key West. If he does not respond, German said he will work to have the vessel officially declared abandoned, allowing him to obtain the title and “pass it on to somebody that might take better care of it.” As of Monday, German had still not heard from Fenstermaker.
Lucey, meanwhile, is deeply relieved. On a recent Saturday, a crew from the Harwich-based Robert B. Our Co. brought the vessel to New Bedford by tug boat after lifting it onto a barge with a crane. The boat is not repairable — its keel is broken, among other things — and will be scrapped, she said.
“It was a really good feeling to watch it go,” she said.
In Massachusetts, abandoning a vessel is against the law, and those who do so “willfully” can be fined up to $10,000. The Environmental Police are investigating, Lucey said, and the spokesperson said because “this is an ongoing enforcement matter, no other information can be provided.” The department is not involved in the case in Provincetown.
Lucey did not say how much the towing cost but said she intends to make Fenstermaker pay. Despite how difficult it has proven for authorities to contact Fenstermaker, Lucey said she and the company are confident they will be able to recover the cost from him “one way or another.”
“Good luck with that one,” joked German.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com