Not all projects that dream of having their own ship come to fruition. A while ago we met The story of Clyde Stireswho built a huge yacht at home. The story of Chris Willson It is equally interesting. Unlike Stires, Willson bought an old German origin cruise and spent a fortune to restore it. After years of effort, their plans faded quickly.
It all started 16 years ago when our protagonist was browsing the web and found an unusual ads: someone was selling a transatlantic that was tied in Decker Island, California. Without thinking too much, this technological entrepreneur decided to invest in the boat. After closing the acquisition in 2008, he moved his new ship to the Rio Vista to restore it.
Restoration and problems
Willson now had a boat with enough history. The cruise had been built by the Shipyard Blohm and Voss in 1955. Passengers were traveling from one continent to another on a boat of 72 meters of length that had 85 cabins, different rooms, gastronomic spaces and galleries. Not only stood out in his transatlantic trips, but he had also appeared in the movie ‘From Russia with Love‘by James Bond.
As CNN collectsThe man baptized the ship as “Aurora” after spending his first night on board. “I woke up with one of the brightest sunrises I had seen in my life,” he said. But not everything in the project was so perfect. Willson was forced to move the ship several times while performing the restoration tasks, although it was clear that he wanted his ship to be in shallow waters.
For more than a decade, Willsson and several volunteer collaborators made all kinds of works in a “artisanal” way To improve the ship. Things, however, began to change in recent years. Aurora was tied in a Californian sports port called Herman & Helen’s Marina, when some locals and local authorities began to pressure so that the ship was transferred to another place. They feared a sinking.
An old dragaminas baptized as HMCS Chaleur It was in the same area for a long time and a military tug of the 1940s had recently sunk generating concerns related to environmental pollution. With an eviction order at the door, Willson evaluated the cost of taking out the ship, but needed to spend about one million dollars on river works to complete the tasks.
It was simply an amount of money impossible to assume. Willson had received donations To continue with your project, partly by The popularity of your YouTube channel. The only apparent solution was to sell it with the hope that a new owner could continue with the project ahead, but things soon trucked once again.
In mid -2024, the Delegation of the Sheriff of the County of San Joaquín announced that Aurora was sinking. “It has been determined that the ship has a hole,” said the authorities. In this regard, they added that there had also been a spill of diesel fuel, forced the intervention of different agencies to contain the problem.
In December last year, the ship was finally towed to Mare Island, north of California. There, the cranes disassembled their steel structure piece by piece until it made it disappear. Today no longer exists: The only thing that remains is an invoice of 8.2 million dollars for the costs of scratch. The authorities do not rule out undertake legal actions to purify responsibilities and recover part of the money.
Images | Sheriff delegation from San Joaquín County | Aurora Restorration Project
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