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Bene-
"Has anyone ever heard of it working out financially, to support going out and rescuing a derelict sailboat?"
I think the phrase is "economically unfeasible". Because first you have to actually LOCATE a drifting boat, which could mean several days of chartering a light aircraft at perhaps a thousand dollars a day, give or take the calue of your time.
Then trying to get a tow vessel out to it--or, jumping out and boarding the vessel, in the radical assumption that your aircraft can come back and air-drop whatever you need to work the boat, on the next trip.
And somehow, before you do any of that, you'd need to ascertain the value of the vessel before you started and without having done the damage survey. Awfully speculative venture, unless you're an unemployed parachutist and machinist looking to have a fun adventure and sell the film rights. Those'd be worth more than the boat, probably.
Salvage and admiralty law are all so easily reserached now that there's an Internet. And Mel Fischer is totally irrelevant--his problems came from two very specific issues that don't apply to drifting boats. One, that the wreck might still be Spanish Crown property. Government property is never (never) "abandoned". Two, that the State of Florida had treasure trove laws in effect, and was claiming against him.
As long as your drifting boat isn't the property of some government you won't have those problems. But you'd better pick a big handsome one if you want to cover your airfare to Hawaii first!
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