To answer a few questions:
They will likely drag the ship across the ocean with a tug. A floating drydock would be wayyyy too expensive, slow, and not very stable. There are thousands of tug/barge combos on the oceans everyday. This is no different, the barge just happens to be a ship.
The plan was to use the ship for gambling on the Great Lakes during the summer, then send the ship down to NYC for the winters. Gambling never came to the Great Lakes so all the plans to refit the boat were put on hold.
I know everyone thinks it’s sad that the ship got scrapped, but there’s a whole list of problems with the boat.
First off, its got the wrong hull design for a cruise ship. The hull is almost a dead ringer for a 1950’s Navy Cruiser…and it would ride like one too. I’m sure everyone has seen the old movies/videos of Navy ships in moderate seas. Back in the day, the ship was known for leaving a path of destruction everywhere it went. Its wake was so huge that it would capsize small boats.
Since it’s a passenger boat, it needs to be inspected by the US Coast Guard (USCG). During an inspection they go over EVERY last square inch of EVERYTHING. If anything is amiss, no sticker for you and the boat sits until it’s repaired. Passenger boats need to renew their COI (certificate of inspection) every 5 years with an annual reinspection every year. Part of the 5 year is a hull inspection (In fresh water it’s 5 years. In salt water, it’s every 2 years - this was another problem with going to NYC for the winter). So not only would the USCG crawl over the entire superstructure, the hull would need to be reinspected, which means the boat would have to be drydocked. Also, since the boat had been layed up, the COI lapsed. If you maintain a COI continuously, the boat is grandfathered into older regulations. To get a new COI for the Aquarama, it would have to meet every regulation for a BRAND NEW BOAT. This includes everything from machinery, fire detection and extinguishing, right down to the actual steel the boat was built out of. Just an example: on passenger boats, railings must be 39.5" high off the deck. If the railings on the Aquarama don’t meet that spec, they would all have to be changed.
Honestly, would you want to fire up the boilers on that thing and pour the steam to the main propulsion turbine??? 600* steam at 1000psi running that turbine at 30,000 rpm. No thanks. It would need a repower at the very least, probably to slow speed diesel.
Now it’s time to remodel the entire boat, at least a couple mil to make it look good again.
If they made it this far, they’d have to insure the boat. It’s not like insurance for your car… The insurance company hires a private marine surveyor to go out and resurvey the entire boat and pass their findings on to the insurance company. The insurance company reviews the findings and tells the ship owners what they want changed/fixed before they’ll cover the boat. No insurance, no sail.
So now, if you got the thing insured you still need a crew.
You need a master, 3 mates, a bunch of AB’s, boatswains, a TON of OS’s, a chief engineer, 3 assistant engineers, QMED’s, wipers, oilers, etc. And these are just the guys that make the boat go from point A to point B. You still need servers, cooks, bartenders, laundry personnell, etc. To put the cost of the crew into perspective, the ships I sailed on, the Captain was getting paid $535 a DAY…
The laundry list of expenses after the boat is sailing is staggering. Think about it for a minute… food, fuel…
So now, if someone offered you $10,000,000 for the boat…What would you do?