...I'm intrigued myself...
...who owns the
boat now ??
...I'm assuming the salvor does under maritime
salvage laws, but from the time the boat was beached to the time it ended up at GCS was remarkably quick.
GCS springs is also home to a lot of tugs and barges, so maybe two birds were killed in one go as the tug and barge were simply " going home".
The name of the salvor is not yet known.
The boat was pulled off the beach by a tug. There was no barge at that time. Where did that tug come from? Where did the
work barge come from? Where did all the people on the beach come from?..They were a
work crew, not a barge crew.
That was obviously a work barge as it had that big crane on it...
There are some large
marine contractors in the area who own work barges like that, which are kept on the St. Johns River in the downtown area.
Talking about tugs, you have the ship tugs, which provide
service to large vessels coming in and out of J'ville, that are based near the Port, but as far as I know, they don't keep a work barge in their inventory.
The more I think about it, that tug must have come from the
marine contractor's side and not the Jville Port side.
That work barge must have come from one of two marine contractors in the area, maybe the tug did as well.
That was a big crane, the kind used for driving piles, and it would have needed to be a large crane to
lift a 60,000 lb vessel
What happened next? Where was it pulled too ?
Where was it loaded onto a barge?
And now.....who is paying to keep the boat in GCS....???
The salvor ?...the owner ?...a 3rd party ??
Maybe a deal was struck with someone, but as far as I know, the boat was not insured, so if a deal was struck it would have been mano y mano.
Still, my understanding was that the boat was purchased for around $60K....and given that the moving the boat to GCS was by any estimate at least $60K..but that would have been our
price....as a consumer/client....if the boat was moved by the tug company for the tug company's benefit, the actual cost may only be the
price of
diesel...pick a number....say $10K, all the personnel would have been on payroll and they own the work barge....so if the tug company wanted to sell it for ...say...$60K....they would make $50K profit.
Who knows, maybe they had a buyer in the wings already..??? Maybe they made a deal with the original owners ??
The reality is I don't have a clue....I suppose I could
head on down to GCS and find out...but that is also unlikely.
In the end, I'm assuming that time will tell.
I know several people in the marine construction industry here in the J'ville area, maybe I'll make a few calls....see what I can dig up....
One thing is for sure, the Travel
Lift GCS springs has, is unlikely to be able to re-launch this boat, which is probably the reason they parked it right there on the edge, as it would require the same work barge to get it off the land.
Finally, they could be planning to scrap the boat.
Well, that is my 2c for the day.