The Elliott Bay Mystery & Why Fall and Winter Waxes are Your Friend

The calls started coming in late January 2021. Many vessels had been affected and the evidence was everywhere in the form of inordinate black greasy blobs ranging in size from pencil tip to pea or even bean. Some boats were more covered than others; some cleaned-up easier than others. No one knew quite when it happened, what had happened or who the perpetrator was, but no one could deny that something had happened and at one of the fanciest marinas in Seattle -- to boot.

I got off the phone with Jordan, the Harbormaster at Elliott Bay Marina yesterday. I had left a message and he called me back lightening quick. I think we were both hoping one of us had some information, some answers. These little grease balls had caused quite a stir. Folks were talking property damage claims and had their boat insurance companies on speed dial. My phone had been ringing off the hook and the old inbox was full. “I kept waiting to hear something about it in the news,” I told Jordan. He had been hoping the same, but nothing had materialized.

Not long after the incident everyone had become a sleuth, positing all sorts of wild theories about what could have happened, who was to blame. Fingers were pointed in lots of directions.  Jordan spoke with an airline pilot and even spoke with the mechanics from the fishing fleet that took off from Seattle en masse in January to see if any of them could have had something to do with it. Turns out they don’t even have boilers, so it couldn’t have been them. Dozens of calls were made to the EPA, other local marinas and even the Coast Guard. No one knew anything or even seemed interested in investigating, and the more time passed, the more it became clear that whoever, whatever did this was going to, and presumably had already sailed away scot-free. 

The best we could come up with, is that it must have been from container ship traffic in Elliott Bay. Some ship must have been storing up it’s ‘feelings’ in a boiler during the quarantine days of 2020 and quite literally blew it’s stack in January 2021 while cruising by beautiful Elliott Bay Marina. What ship was it? We don’t know. No witnesses have come forward yet and somehow this does feel a bit like a crime. No other marinas in the area were impacted.  Jordan and I are still left quite a bit puzzled though.  The EPA apparently didn’t care much, and never sent anyone out to check on the residual atmospheric discharge remnants blanketing parts of Elliott Bay. Jordan mentioned the EPA seemed to have a markedly different attitude because the greasy oily blobs were merely settled on the boats and marina infrastructure and not perceptible in the water-- shame.

One shining light in this dumping scandal was that well cared for boats with fresh wax jobs suffered very little; a few minutes with a hose and the job was done. For neglected boats, thirsty for a wax, the clean up was more nightmarish, creating smeared greasy Jackson Pollocks all over open pored dry gelcoat and crusty old canvas. Apparently, even if we can’t save ourselves from literal fall out from atmospheric discharge, at least we can guard ourselves from more serious aesthetic damage by keeping a protective wax barrier on our boats, even through fall and winter. Pro tip: join our wax list as early as possible as we tend to book up sometimes several months in advance.