Buoyant1
Contributor
Nice! I can see doing about 5-10 dives on this next year....I gotta keep my dates open, getting down to watch them sink it would be great as well!
Vandenberg Purchased, Coming Soon
- Thread starter Captain Larry
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americanreefer
Guest
This was a gutsy move by the bank, but the only logical move to be made by the bank. The initial grants (4.3 Million) (other than the 1.3 million MARAD already paid out) do not get released until the ship is on the bottom, and they go to ARK or Reefmakers, to then be passed on to the banks to pay the bridge loan. Right now, the bank are throwing good money after bad, but it is really encouraging to show the leadership that Bill Verge, the City of Key West, the First State Bank, and others are showing here by stepping up and finding the solution to funding the project, and the only way it was going to get done was not just by the promise grants, but by the bank shelling out CASH.
I am not involved in any part of this project, but did attend the sale, and offered Joe Weatherby our financial support to try and bail out the ship. I opened the bidding, but by the time we were up to 500K, the Bank and Colonnas lawyer were battling it out side by side, and I stepped out.
I cannot tell you timeline for the current project leadership, because we had the plans in place to move the ship friday, and for the hull to be scamped (cleaned) monday and tuesday, with a tug arriving to do the tow 28th, 29th or 30th, among our other towing options. For sinking on a reef that is going to be a big dive attraction (one of our reef options had it being sunk with 80' of water over the top, so not much diver prep would be done to the lower areas) there is a minimum of 30 days of prep to be done, as there is still all the wire and cable hangers, as well as suspended ceilings in a number of areas, like the messdecks. The ship needs to have the exfoliating paint cleaned up top to bottom, end to end, and there is a lot of flotsam and jetsom left to be removed, and a whole lot of cutting to be done. so I would give it 45 days minumum, but every day it sits, it just costs money, and extends the sinking date, so at this point I would say maybe by the end of february, if they can get their stuff together, (our famous saying in our company is you will never get the project finished, if you don't get it started). At least now we can all be assured that it will make it to the reef, and not the scrap yard !
I am not involved in any part of this project, but did attend the sale, and offered Joe Weatherby our financial support to try and bail out the ship. I opened the bidding, but by the time we were up to 500K, the Bank and Colonnas lawyer were battling it out side by side, and I stepped out.
I cannot tell you timeline for the current project leadership, because we had the plans in place to move the ship friday, and for the hull to be scamped (cleaned) monday and tuesday, with a tug arriving to do the tow 28th, 29th or 30th, among our other towing options. For sinking on a reef that is going to be a big dive attraction (one of our reef options had it being sunk with 80' of water over the top, so not much diver prep would be done to the lower areas) there is a minimum of 30 days of prep to be done, as there is still all the wire and cable hangers, as well as suspended ceilings in a number of areas, like the messdecks. The ship needs to have the exfoliating paint cleaned up top to bottom, end to end, and there is a lot of flotsam and jetsom left to be removed, and a whole lot of cutting to be done. so I would give it 45 days minumum, but every day it sits, it just costs money, and extends the sinking date, so at this point I would say maybe by the end of february, if they can get their stuff together, (our famous saying in our company is you will never get the project finished, if you don't get it started). At least now we can all be assured that it will make it to the reef, and not the scrap yard !
This Norfolk, Va article says the ship was bought by Florida businessman John Spotswood.
americanreefer
Guest
He is a representative and employee of First State Bank of the Keys
americanreefer
Guest
He registered as an agent of the bank as well, and when the newhounds jumped on him, he gave his name, and deffered all questions to Bill Verge, other than saying the ship was going to the reef in Key West, then ducked into the federal courthouse to complete the paperwork
truck1
Contributor
Is the bank consortium still going with the 4.6 they initally promised, or are they stopping at a little over the 3. something?
americanreefer
Guest
I am quite sure that they will se this thing all the way to the bottom, since they own it now. I do know that the guys from BB&T sounded almost suprised when I talked to them wednesday (I guess they were not going forward with financing it further, mondays conversation had them trying to pin down what it would take to get it to the bottom, which i could not give them numbers that far, since we do not use explosives to sink ships, which the approved sinking plan calls for, but we could put a number on it all the way up to the point of putting it in a four point mooring, prior to the actual sinking).
Key West did approve the additional 2.6 million in grants as well, and it could be that if it goes over a bit, that the banks may pay the overage and try and negotiate some other way to get paid back, because being 500K in the hole with the ship on the reef shows real community commitment, while 3.2 Million in the hole with no ship and no way to make a recovery shows bad banking.
On another note, I do have to say that there has been a tremendous amount of work done to make the profile of the Vandenberg an excellent dive, including welding strutural items back on that were cut down to allow for the proper clearance on site, and this should be one heel of a good dive when it finally gets there
Key West did approve the additional 2.6 million in grants as well, and it could be that if it goes over a bit, that the banks may pay the overage and try and negotiate some other way to get paid back, because being 500K in the hole with the ship on the reef shows real community commitment, while 3.2 Million in the hole with no ship and no way to make a recovery shows bad banking.
On another note, I do have to say that there has been a tremendous amount of work done to make the profile of the Vandenberg an excellent dive, including welding strutural items back on that were cut down to allow for the proper clearance on site, and this should be one heel of a good dive when it finally gets there
truck1
Contributor
Thats good. I am going to guess that you are now involved with the sinking?
MasterGeorge
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This is going to be great, glad to see everything is moving along again. I've seen one more recent shot of it on the shipspotting site and you can see that they've re-attached some of the dishes in it.
americanreefer
Guest
no, I am not involved in the sinking, though we have had limited discussions involving the possibility of being involved in getting the ship to the point where it can be sunk in Key West (as lately as Friday). It is in the interest of my Group to see that the Vandenberg makes it to the reef, but may cause some scheduling conflicts for us, since we will be starting on preparing the Kittiwake for the Cayman Islands any day now (thinking early January) and the USS Radford for the Tri-State Coalition (Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey)(Late January/early February). We also have one more barge deployment of concrete pipe to go on an inshore reef in Virginia (Chesapeake Bay)(did 1850 tons on thursday) and four more boats to sink in Delaware, hopefully two in the next 10 days.
If we do start working on the Vandenberg, it will cause us to call in all of our "mercs" (short for Mercenaries, which is the name of our special projects people, which are essentially a group of guys that possess special skills and abilities, almost all of which are in businesses of their own, that would be too expensive for us to employ full time, but enjoy being called in on special reef or salvage projects, and bring in a great amount of special talent, to tackle big jobs smartly, in the short term). They are all standing by ready to go, and in fact, most were in norfolk Tuesday in preparation for the sale of the Vandenberg.
We have our full group set up in an incident command/unified command type of structure, because time is money, and we have to delegate the responsibilities on these projects
If we do start working on the Vandenberg, it will cause us to call in all of our "mercs" (short for Mercenaries, which is the name of our special projects people, which are essentially a group of guys that possess special skills and abilities, almost all of which are in businesses of their own, that would be too expensive for us to employ full time, but enjoy being called in on special reef or salvage projects, and bring in a great amount of special talent, to tackle big jobs smartly, in the short term). They are all standing by ready to go, and in fact, most were in norfolk Tuesday in preparation for the sale of the Vandenberg.
We have our full group set up in an incident command/unified command type of structure, because time is money, and we have to delegate the responsibilities on these projects
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