Sydney Harbour’s shameful secret – and a boat dealer in the spotlight

Take a boat trip on the harbour. Travel west from Sydney Harbour Bridge, give a friendly wave to the Cape Don, the 2000-tonne retired vessel rotting in Berrys Bay, and swing right where the waterway forks at Cockatoo Island.

You will probably be too distracted by the luxury real estate to notice Woodford Bay, a deep pocket of the Lane Cove River crowded with ageing vessels and largely hidden from the main passage.

They are the symptom of a global environmental problem as the first generation of mass-produced fibreglass boats nears end-of-life. Salvage and disposal of derelict boats cost NSW taxpayers about $2 million a year. With no viable recycling industry and limited disposal options, it is cheaper for owners to leave a fibreglass boat on its mooring than to get rid of it responsibly.

A submerged yacht in Woodford Bay, a hidden inlet on the Lane Cove River that has become a dumping ground for old boats.Credit: Nick Moir

But there is a third option for boat owners in a pickle – and that’s where Jonathan Frearson comes in.

His boat dealership Regatta Sailing has a cut-price disposal service with the promise: “We help with the good bad & ugly ouch!!!!!”

He then sells the yachts and cruisers with bullish claims about their restoration potential to the desperate and the dewy-eyed.

Many end up at the bottom of the harbour or tangled in mangroves on the shore after they have broken free of moorings. That is not Frearson’s affair; he does not own the boats, and they were never registered in his name. It is a purchaser’s responsibility to do due diligence and to look after the boats they own.

It is a business that is completely legal, if not entirely above board, and has generated particular fury in Woodford Bay, where several of the boats he has dealt with are moored and the dinghies he uses to ferry rubbish off vessels are tied to the baths for months on end. Sometimes these dinghies sink and the rubbish floats away.

Jonathan Frearson operates boat dealership Regatta Sailing, which specialises in derelicts.Credit: Janie Barrett

When one neighbour remonstrated with Frearson, he laughed and gyrated his hips.

Maritime NSW waterways operations manager Drew Jones said Frearson presented himself in their conversations as part of the solution to unwanted boats because he was taking them off people’s hands, but many of his buyers do not have the means to restore them.

“So while he makes a buck out of it, it just kicks the can down the road,” Jones said.

“What he’s doing is not illegal. I would call it immoral, the clientele that he markets towards. They have a dream to go off cruising in a boat and they’re vulnerable.”

Frearson used to advertise the possibility of living aboard your vessel while you pay it off for as little as $200 a week, but no longer suggests this option, which is prohibited on NSW moorings due to concerns about effluent discharge. It is also prohibited for mooring licensees to offer them to be used for rental accommodation.

Maritime NSW identified six live-aboard boats in Woodford Bay in 2022. It cancelled Frearson’s three commercial moorings in the bay this year.

Maritime NSW pulled out a sunken boat at Woodford Bay in April. Its owner lives in western NSW and could not afford the bill, so it was left to taxpayers to foot.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

But when the Herald recently visited Woodford Bay, several boats known to have been dealt by Frearson suggested habitation: a dog wandering the deck, cabins concealed by tarpaulins, a dinghy tied to the stern.

They sat low in the water, their hulls encrusted. We saw no one.

Somebody saw us. Frearson later sent his associates a photograph taken from one of the boats of this reporter, the photographer and our two guides inspecting vessels.

Longueville resident Peter Leonard has written to Maritime NSW on several occasions, raising concerns about a Frearson dinghy tied to the baths and brimming with engine coolant on a day heavy rain was forecast. It was likely to tip.

He was also concerned for the safety of the people living aboard the boats as ageing vessels not properly maintained are prone to fire and misadventure.

At least three boats in Woodford Bay have broken free of their moorings and washed ashore this year, and two have sunk, the cost of their retrieval borne by the NSW taxpayer.

A dumped sail boat is washed up in the mangroves at Tambourine Bay on the Lane Cove River.Credit: Nick Moir

“Most old boats use gas, and gas on yachts is a problem as cooking gas is heavier than air, and can accumulate below the water line, leading to explosions,” Leonard said. “Older boats are also more prone to sink.”

Frearson declined to answer questions from the Herald. His business model exploits perverse incentives and weaknesses in maritime regulations, which are only beginning to grapple with the growing issue of fibreglass disposal.

The International Maritime Organisation is working on guidelines for the end-of-life management of fibreglass boats as vessels manufactured during the 1970s boating boom exceed their life expectancy.

There is not yet a viable financial market for used fibreglass – it is so expensive to crush and recycle the material for uses such as roads and manhole covers that the cost cannot be recovered. Most fibreglass boats go to landfill.

But the cost of towing, hoisting, cleaning and transporting a boat to a waste disposal facility usually exceeds $15,000. Leaving a boat on a mooring costs only a few hundred dollars per year.

This has led to an increasing proportion of finite moorings being occupied by boats that are no longer used or falling into disrepair. Mooring waiting lists in eastern parts of the harbour have blown out to more than 10 years.

A dog wanders the deck of an ageing vessel in Woodford Bay.Credit: Nick Moir

The thriving secondhand market often trades online where the condition of boats can be misrepresented. Some people deliberately buy junk boats as “mooring minders” to prevent their mooring from being reallocated because it is unoccupied, sending them to the bottom of the waiting list.

Cowboys and pirates

Save Our Sydney Harbour convenor Stuart King recently toured Maritime NSW officials on his boat to show the extent of the problem, from broken sailing boats to disused pontoons and dilapidated infrastructure.

“The maritime industry is filled with cowboys and pirates,” King said.

“Everywhere we looked, there were boats that were derelict or redundant or missing masts or had covers hanging in the water or a piece of rigging was broken or the rudder [overgrown]. We found boats with plants growing in the cockpits. Some of them were in shocking condition.”

Maritime NSW can issue clean-up notices to unsafe boats or order them to be seized, but there is no objective definition of an unsafe boat in NSW. Until recently, there was no obligation on sellers to disclose whether their boat was subject to a statutory notice. This led to numerous disputes between sellers, buyers and the regulator as to who was responsible.

Save Our Sydney Harbour’s Stuart King out on patrol.Credit: Wolter Peeters

In 2021, the NSW Ombudsman investigated a case in which Transport for NSW had attempted to recover $100,000 for the disposal of a boat that had been sold about the time a clean-up notice was issued. The new owner claimed the condition of the boat had been misrepresented to him, and he could not comply with the orders. The previous owner maintained he was no longer responsible.

Transport for NSW scrapped the boat and billed the first owner, but the ombudsman found this was contrary to the law and recommended the agency withdraw the invoice and reconsider how it transferred the registration of vessels.

The NSW government this year amended maritime laws to allow TfNSW to refuse or rescind transfers of registration that were done to avoid liability, and to make it possible for buyers to inspect a register to find out whether a potential purchase was subject to a statutory notice.

The amendment also requires all vessels to be registered, to reduce the number of instances in which taxpayers are left to pick up the tab for abandoned vessels with unidentified ownership.

But environmentalists say the amendments do not do enough to remove derelict vessels from NSW waters or reduce liability to taxpayers.

King has proposed imposing an environmental levy on boat sales to reduce the burden on taxpayers when vessels come to the end of their life. He has also suggested a 12-month amnesty and $50 million fund to remove junk boats from NSW waters, similar to the Queensland government’s “war on wrecks” that led to the disposal of more than 1000 vessels posing an environmental or safety hazard.

“We want to free up moorings for people who want to use them,” King said.

“The Frearsons of this world can exploit the system because they know that the process of getting a mooring is a lengthy process, and Transport for NSW can take legal action to get cost recovery [if a boat sinks] but a lot of these people don’t have the money and it costs more to take that action than the money is going to recover. The system is broken.”

Stuart King said that everywhere he looked on the harbour, he saw boats fallen into disrepair.Credit: Nick Moir

Sydney Harbour operations manager Drew Jones said he would welcome a war on wrecks to clean up the moorings. Taxpayers had paid for most of the roughly 75 boats that have been disposed of in each of the past two years because their owners did not have the means, he said.

Boat owners have three months to restore or dispose of their vessels after being issued with a notice, but the process can take 12 months in practice.

“Everyone has a story, you know – ‘My Dad has cancer and he’ll be right next month’ – and it depends on the state of the vessel how much we need to push it.

“We try and give the owners every opportunity to do something, at the same time as being responsible with government funds.”

The Boating Industry Association is working on an education campaign that encourages buyers to have secondhand boats inspected by a qualified surveyor at the point of sale, for consumer safety and protection.

Four men died in Tasmania in 2016 when their recently purchased boat flipped, which a coroner found was probably due to rot in its hull. In 2020, an experienced boatie died when a secondhand Halvorsen he had purchased on the Gold Coast capsized as he returned to Sydney. The vessel had been modified with a design flaw that rendered it unfit for coastal cruising.

The association’s government relations manager Neil Patchett said there should also be a universal definition for what constitutes an “unsafe vessel” so authorities could more easily remove them.

“As vessels travel through life for 30, 40, 50 years, if they’re not maintained properly, they become compromised and sometimes unsafe, and then at the end of their life, they’re bought by people who are least equipped to deal with it,” Patchett said.

Frearson has been found guilty of various maritime offences including failure to submit transfer of ownership papers, owning an apparatus occupying waters without a licence and occupying a mooring without a mooring licence, without convictions recorded.

Lane Cove Council this month ordered him to shut down two illegal boarding houses he was operating in the area.

Those who have disposed of their boats through Frearson are grateful for his service. One woman said he helped her with the emotional task of disposing of a yacht that belonged to her dying father. An ex-yachtie said Frearson helped him when he finally conceded his sailing days were over. Both paid $5000.

Michael Rich, who owns Lovett Bay Boatshed, a marina in Pittwater, said he was regularly lumped with boats whose owners had stopped paying fees and absconded.

“Jonathan Frearson can be a godsend for people like me,” Rich said.

“He takes these boats. But Maritime hates him because he’s moving their problem from one bay to another.”

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