More of this Feature • Part 1: Paying the Price for Murder, On Shelves, and more • Part 2: Sibling Revelry, Remaking a Mint, and more
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Remaking a Mint
Talk about sinking money into your boat: A Spanish company is turning old European coins into new boat propellers and other heavy-duty copper equipment.

When the Euro became the official currency of the European Union earlier this year, millions of national coins were taken out of circulation. Since then scrap metal smelter Elmet, based in Bilbao, Spain, has been breathing new life into the old money by recycling coins into basic industrial equipment, including propellers, computer chips, copper tubing, and electrical cables.

Apparently there's plenty of profit in flipping coins into something more useful. Elmet picked up tons of business--35,290 tons, to be exact--last spring by melting down and extracting the copper from millions of Irish pennies.

Scrap coins are not only easy to find in the newly minted Europe, they also promise to yield a pretty good profit, with copper prices hovering around $1,700 per ton. Other smelters are vying to secure deals to purchase old coins in France and Portugal, where millions of tons of retired money are available.

Though the coin-recycled propellers have not yet hit the recreational boating market, there's no telling how far this trend will go. The boat you buy in a few years may be literally propelled by money.

Sibling Revelry
Another year, another tremendous success for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Fishing Tournament. In May the 23rd-annual event attracted nearly two dozen boats and yachts, driving up donations for the Broward County chapter. In fact, 22 volunteer captains and their boats hosted about 65 children who participate in the one-on-one mentoring organization plus their chaperones for a day of wetting lines.

Underscoring the marine industry's support of the event, a dinner dance was held the night before in a section of the covered shed at Broward Marine. According to benefit director John Weller of the Allied Richard Bertram Marine Group, the dinner helped boost interest in the tournament.

PMY Online Poll
Each month at www.powerandmotoryacht.com we ask your opinion about hot marine topics. In June it was PWC regulations. We asked if you thought all PWC should be prohibited from certain bodies of water and if PWC restrictions made you feel that your boating rights were being threatened. It was a close race, with 53 percent saying PWC should not be prohibited and 58 percent saying you felt rights were being threatened as a result of PWC restrictions. Visit the Web site to find out this month's hot-topic.

RIB Alert
As the war on terror continues to weigh on the U.S. Coast Guard and the international shipping industry, a recent warning from RIB maker Zodiac to its dealers signals new security awareness within the private sector.

In June more than 300 Zodiac dealers across the country received a letter from the manufacturer informing them that the FBI was concerned that terrorists may try to use inflatable boats to transport weapons of mass destruction.

"Zodiac has been mentioned, specifically and by name, in intelligence reports supplied to U.S. security agencies," says Ed Washburn, Zodiac's vice president of leisure sales, in the letter sent to dealers. "The FBI has requested that we contact our dealer network with this information and ask that you be on the alert regarding any requests that might be suspicious in nature."

The letter also states that the FBI has reason to believe terrorists were planning to attack areas of the marine environment in the United States, with bridges, barges, and ships as possible targets. The agency says RIBs are attractive to terrorists because they can carry heavy payloads, have a low profile, and are easy to hide and launch.

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