Why are the carers and donors so interested in the stranded boat?

The abandoned boat that the trio visits is an important symbol of their shared past. Like Hailsham, a boat offers a small, isolated place of refuge in the ocean, where people would otherwise be lost to cold, ruthless nature. And like a boat, Hailsham is also subject to forces much larger than itself––just as a boat can easily be wrecked in a storm, so too can Hailsham easily lose funding and close at the turn of public opinion. Abandoned and decaying, the boat foreshadows the intense grief and loss that will come in the final chapters.