Transport Canada investigating abandoned sailboat at Bayfront Park

For several months now, a sailboat has been abandoned in the waters off of Bayfront Park in Hamilton. The vessel called Kraken has been tied to a rock, floating just offshore, in a popular area for walking. The late doctor Patrick O’Boyle Kelly owned the Viking 28 sailboat, Kraken, for about forty years.

His son, Daniel O’Boyle Kelly says, “he did win the Club Championship which had eluded him for so many years.” Daniel says the Belleville-based doctor sailed the Kraken to a Bay of Quinte Yacht Club Championship in 2011, and won a string of other races before his death in 2019 at the age of 91, building on the Kraken’s history of winning races in the 1980s. Daniel says the last time Kelly skippered the Kraken was with him, during the 50th running of the Katie Gray Regatta in 2018, securing third place at the age of 90 while also battling Parkinson’s.

It ended up being the last time kelly would ever sail. After that Daniel says he sold the Kraken to a young couple in Toronto before it changed hands at least one more time, eventually becoming a minor maritime mystery in Hamilton, arriving several months ago in Bayfront Park, abandoned. “It’s a bit shocking that the boat itself after a long history with our family… that its ended up this way in the state it’s in,” Daniel said.

A search of the federal government’s online vessel registry returned no results tied to what appears to be the registration number on the side of the boat. A search for vessels named Kraken returned several results but none appear to be this boat. Hamilton police say despite the lack of an active registration, they have identified and contacted the last owner who they say is unable to have the boat removed.

John Morris of Canadian Yachting Onboard says the owner may have had difficulty disposing of it or selling it, despite estimating its worth at under £5,000. “Very, very hard to scrap a boat, they’re fiberglass, they’re plastic you know… which means both that some boats are being abandoned and other boats are becoming bargains for the people who know to buy them,” Morris said. Police alerted the coast guard about the Kraken sparking an investigation that determined the boat is in relatively good shape, not listing, protected from bad weather, and in shallow waters, meaning it is not considered a vessel of concern.

The coast guard says there is a dispute over who is responsible for the abandonment,
telling CHCH News that Transport Canada is now conducting its own investigation.