A B.C. man is trying to find the owner of a large wooden boat that's been abandoned on a property on Gabriola Island for years.
Brad Powell took to social media to try and solve the mystery of who the boat belonged to after he found it on his late father’s property.
"We don’t know anything about it, somebody must have brought it onto the property,” he says. "Somebody must of brought it on without my dad’s knowledge, which is pretty unlikely, or with his knowledge and he just didn’t tell anyone.”
The boat is made of wood even though it might appear like aluminum in photographs.
"If you look at the picture, that’s the Washington state identifier on the front there,” he says. "At some point, it was a Washington. Crab boat seems to be the consensus.”
He tried to get a hold of a Washington boat registry but came up short.
“That was just hopeless trying to get a hold of somebody through the phone,” Powell tells Glacier Media.
He says the ship is sitting in central Gabriola Island and was likely there for about three years. His father, Don Powell, had lived at the property for more than three decades.
There are no other clues inside the boat to identify a possible owner.
"We would like it if the owner would come forward and claim the boat and take it off the property. That is our hope,” he says.
For Powell, whatever the backstory of the boat might be, there's already been a positive outcome.
"The nicest response, to be honest, was people messaging me that had known my father and hadn't know he passed away and with some nice messages,” he says. “So, probably the best thing was reminiscing about my dad and people telling me stories I hadn’t heard before... I got to share those with mom.”
The boat has an identification number of WN5786GC.
