An abandoned, graffiti-covered boat illegally moored at a public pier in Ballard for seven years has been taken into state custody and may finally be hauled away by the end of the year.
Following years of complaints culminating in a city of Seattle lawsuit, a King County Superior Court judge in June declared the 112-foot-long boat, known as the Albert, a public nuisance. The court ordered Fred Kelly Jr., a Colorado resident, to remove the boat by the end of July, after which the city was authorized to remove it at the owner’s expense.
When Kelly did not meet that deadline, the city asked the state Department of Natural Resources to take over, which it did Thursday. City spokesperson Mariam Ali said that the DNR has more experience than the city with removing vessels, and would be able to move more quickly to hire a contractor.
Troy Wood, who leads DNR’s Derelict Vessel Removal Program, said his department’s involvement is a “last resort” that may cost the state over $1 million.
“It's not something that we wish to do,” Wood said. “We would rather have the owners deal with this responsibly than have to pay tax payer dollars on dealing with their private property.”
Kelly’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
A retired 1950s Icelandic gunboat with a storied past, the Albert first appeared at the public pier at the end of 24th Avenue Northwest in 2019 and has since suffered from neglect, vandalism, frequent trespassing and criminal activity, according to the initial complaint in the lawsuit filed by the city of Seattle in June 2024. On top of being unsafe to board, Wood said the boat also poses environmental hazards as it shows signs of sinking. It would not be the first time, with an instance of emergency intervention by the U.S. Coast Guard and Seattle Department of Transportation in 2023 when the Albert began to take on water.
The city served two notices to Kelly to remove the boat, starting in October 2023, and granted Kelly an extension of the deadline to remove the boat. After the boat was still moored to the public pier past the agreed-upon deadline of January 2024, the city filed its lawsuit that summer. As a result of the lawsuit, Kelly was also ordered to pay the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil penalties and fines — which have not yet been paid, according to SDOT.
Now, Kelly has until Nov. 23 to appeal for custody, according to Wood. If no appeal is filed, the DNR plans to begin towing the vessel out of Seattle by the end of the year. As of Friday, Kelly had not communicated with the DNR to appeal, Wood said.
Wood said contractors will likely inspect the boat the first week of December, testing for hazardous materials such as asbestos, in preparation for towing. He estimated the cost of towing to be around $190,000, while decontaminating and deconstructing the boat could cost up to $1 million.
Those costs will initially be covered by the removal program’s biennial budget, which allocated $10 million for towing and scrapping vessels. The state will then bill the owner — though Wood said that reimbursement in such cases is rare, leaving taxpayers to ultimately foot the bill.
The DNR has not determined a final destination for the boat; Wood said they are considering a shipyard in Port Townsend that they maintain a “good working relationship” with. He added that they intend to paint over the graffiti on the hull to make it less of an eyesore, regardless of what shipyard it ends up in.
According to Wood, the Albert's situation is “not unique at all.”
Washington has one of the more developed state-level programs for addressing derelict vessels, responsible for towing and scrapping hundreds of abandoned vessels every year, he said. The state removed more than 400 vessels over the last biennium, and expects to remove more than 500 through summer 2027.
“What really makes this case stand out is its location,” Wood said. “It's been there quite a long time. A lot of people know about this vessel. So it's generated a lot of interest.”
Ultimately, towing a 112-foot boat is much harder than towing a car. Kelly’s lawyer, Isaak Hurst, told The Seattle Times in July that Kelly had been trying to move the boat out of Seattle for years, but the “immense” bureaucratic hurdles and overall cost of scrapping the boat made the process exceedingly difficult. Those efforts included trying to hand over the Albert to the DNR through its Vessel Turn-In Program, but the boat did not qualify despite being on the DNR’s radar.
Hurst also said in July that Kelly was working with Seattle-based marine contractor Global Diving & Salvage to remove and repair the ship. Hurst could not be reached for an update.
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