Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - There are probably a dozen abandonned boats on Cortes Island right now, and Dominic dos Santos would like to have them towed away.

“A lot of them are floating. Some of them just have no names on them. People just leave them there. it's just been 15 years of 'not my problem.' we got fiberglass shards on every beach now because they abandon the boats and let 'em get destroyed on the rocks . All this stuff is gonna wind up on the beach in the next five, 10 years?” he said.

“Let's get them off the island while I have someone that is willing to take any boat that we can give them. They're going all the way to Victoria. Brittany and her partner from Victoria are willing to take any boat that we can give them. I arranged the date, which was before the 30th.”

“All the harbours are full of crap boats. It's gotta be like at least five or six boats that can be removed from the Gorge. There's the two at Squirrel Cove, that concrete boat at Mansons, and I just brought two from Cortes Bay.”

Cortes Harbourmaster Jenny Hartwick could only speak about the abandonned boats within the Harbour Authority area, but there are more in Squirrel Cove than dos Santos was aware of.

“There's actually three vessels that are sitting on the beach in front of the Squirrel Cove dock. All three have been surveyed by the Coast Guard within the last month and the process has been started to have them removed.The Coast Guard also assisted in the removal of Emily, which was the fish boat, which went down on the boy that was located outside of the Squirrel Cove government dock lease area and they are also currently looking into one of the boats that's sitting at the Squirrel Cove dock as well,” she explained.

Dominic dos Santos said, “People have been trying to give me the boats in Squirrel Cove. I'd love to take 'em. I need written permission, or can't do it. If I got the paperwork for those on, it would've been today.”

Harbourmaster Jenny Hartwick has not met do Santos and was not previously aware of his initiative, but is concerned about the situation he is dealing with.

“Unfortunately, the number of abandoned vessels is growing, and that's not just for Cortes Island, It's up and down the whole coast.”

So far, dos Santos has only obtained the paperwork for two boats, which he moved from Cortes bay to Gorge Harbour.

“I paid a dollar for each boat. I got the paperwork, I got 'em all signed over to me. They're my liability.”

He has received a number of complaints since they arrived in the Gorge.

“I'm just more surprised at the negativity surrounding what I thought would be a positive activity. My phone keeps going. If that's the case, I'll just do it on my own. It's a problem that I could fix and in the meantime I can grab a couple of anchors, or maybe a tube. This and that, some extra parts.”

“From my perspective, I'm doing a local that's been here for a while, a huge favor. If anything happens, he doesn't have to worry about it. Then also cleaning up Cortes Bay. I paid $250 to get a move to the Gorge, they’re going to pay me $200 for both boats.”

“I would love just a little bit of support from the community, if they want to help me tow a boat. It would seem that it would make more sense for more than zero people to step up and say, ‘Hey, let's get these boats off the island before they sink and go up on the beach and ruin oyster leases.’”

As dos Santos puts it, the two boats he currently has in the Gorge will ‘get Frankensteined’ after they reach Victoria.

“Brittany and her partner have a huge plot of land. They get all the boats together and they piece 'em together. They make something livable and then they sell it cheap for people that need a cheap house. It's kind of like a trailer park.”