Albuquerque, NM: 27 ft Catalina Gone in One Morning

This 27 ft Catalina 27 had been up on stands in a Bernalillo County driveway long enough that the standing rigging had seized solid and the sails had rotted right in the bag. Nobody had touched the boat in years. It sat there through enough summers that the stands had settled crooked into the ground, and the trailer under it wasn't going anywhere on its own tires. Getting it out meant leveling the boat off the stands before we could even think about a lift, since the mast was still up and had to come down first to clear the driveway on the way out toward Rio Rancho. That was the one obstacle that ate most of the morning. Once the mast was down and the hull was stable, the rest moved fast. No title in the drawer, handled per the New Mexico page rules. Back at our yard, we pulled the keel separately from the hull, since a Catalina 27 won't break down clean with that much lead still attached. From there the hull got cut down and routed to the processor, same as any fiberglass sailboat that's past saving. Crews cover all of Bernalillo County: Rio Rancho, South Valley, North Valley, Edgewood, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, Paradise Hills. Most Catalina 27 pickups get scheduled the same week you call, whether that boat's sitting on a trailer in a driveway or parked at a storage yard. We see a lot of these come out of seasonal storage lots on the edges of town, where owners parked a sailboat years back and never moved it again.