(Originally published in 2012)
Anybody want to buy a ship?
We lived aboard Fidelis in the inner harbor of Baltimore for five years, from the summer of 1999 until the summer of 2004 when we left for points south. During that time I worked at a local veterinary hospital that was walking distance from the marina while Annie worked at the marina. HarborView Marina is a 300 slip facility with an adjoining waterfront development located on the edge of the Inner Harbor, just across the water from the famous Domino Sugarplant.
Originally she applied for and was hired to work the front desk receptionist position – to be the public face of the marina. As receptionist, her duties included answering the phone and discussing slip availability and prices with interested parties, but in a relatively short time she was renting those slips and actively selling slip space to the boating public. Over the next several weeks, a shakeup in the office staff resulted in a significant number of additional tasks falling under her management and Annie taking on increasing responsibilities, so much so that a few months after hiring on as receptionist, she was offered the job of marina dockmaster, having already proven her efficiency in most of the duties of that post. As dockmaster, her responsibilities included the hiring and firing and supervising of a number of dockhands who were responsible for providing services to the resident and transient boats, getting boats safely in and out of their slips, renting slip space and keeping those slips profitable, and making certain that the marina ran smoothly. Although she had never worked at anything remotely similar to this job, it didn’t take long before she was running things in masterful fashion. So much so that after a few more months, when the marina manager left for a position elsewhere, the marina management company advanced her to “temporary manager” and then ultimately “marina manager” with all of the incumbent duties.
Now in addition to her dockmaster duties she was responsible for supervising the office staff, in addition to overseeing the operation of the marina in general, managing special events, and maintaining a good relationship between the marina and its patrons and the local public. Each year she had to manage the marina slip space and the marina staff during their participation in the annual Easter Seals Cruise for Kids, a special day on the water for handicapped children aboard numerous individual privately owned yachts, that required coordination among the event sponsors, local boaters and boating organizations and other groups, and the marina, in a large charitable event that required weeks of advance preparation. All year long she would constantly juggle vessels among the slips in the marina, rent out slips to boaters by the day, week, month, season, or year, and basically try to keep everybody happy in the process.
Part of her duties at the marina was to maximize the efficient use of dock space. Dockage at HarborView comprised well over 300 boat slips ranging in size from about 10 to 20 feet in length up near the shoreline and the marina office, on out to the distant end of the dock where the large yachts were accommodated. The main pier was an old concrete pier extending two hundred yards or so out into the harbor and wide enough and robust enough to drive a truck out and back with no worry. Extending laterally in both directions from the main concrete pier were a dozen long, floating docks with individual finger piers protruding off each side separating the slips. Each long pier extending off the main pier had about 40 or so slips. Out at the very end of the concrete main pier there were two extra-wide floating docks, one extending laterally in each direction, where there were slips designed for the large yachts, the 50 thru 80-footers and bigger. On top of this, the outer side of these two outermost, oversized piers offered a wharf-type tie-up for the mega-yachts that came and went, boats that were maybe 150 feet or more. As if that wasn’t enough to keep her hopping, there was deep-water wharf space along the shoreline adjacent to each side of the marina. During the OpSail 2000 Tall Ships visit, one of the square-rigged sailing ships had tied up along one of these wharf walls. This space was rarely used, but offered dockage for small to medium size ships in the event it was needed. Needless to say it was a big job, and she handled the job with aplomb.
One day she was approached by the owner of a recently acquired vessel, a retired U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender 180 feet in length, who needed a place to moor his ship until he was able to arrange transport to his intended destination, or so he said. Understandably he needed to arrange for a qualified captain and crew to move the vessel and get it to where he hoped to take it, etc. He signed all of the requisite paperwork and left an advance deposit to cover the first few months that he felt would be required to get things underway. In any event he left the ship tied up along the wharf wall adjacent to the marina parking lot and was gone.
Several months later, when his paid time expired, the vessel was still present in the marina. Annie made a number of attempts at obtaining payment and another contract was signed but this time without payment. Communications were undertaken informing him that the marina must receive payment in full or she would have no choice but to impound the vessel. A couple of token partial payments had led her along but eventually he ceased contact altogether. Unfortunately the guy obviously underestimated Annie and chose to ignore her repeated warnings and notifications. This all didn’t happen over a matter of a few days or weeks. It took literally months for the entire process to run its course and dragged on for well over a year before it finally came to an end, but it’s not like it was something new to Annie. She had, during her tenure as manager, already impounded a number of smaller vessels that were present in the marina whose owners had chosen to abandon them or otherwise for whatever reason elected to cease paying for their slip space. The previous manager had chosen to simply ignore these offenders thinking there was nothing he could do, or fearing the legal red tape that would be required to solve the problem. Annie however had taken the bull by the horns and had by this time become very familiar with the legal proceedings, the maritime law involved, and how to get these vagrant boats out of her marina much to the chagrin of a number of former slip occupants. Now, finally, after giving the owner of the offending ship his required warnings, making the necessary public announcements, and fulfilling all of the requirements of the law, Annie went out and boarded the 210-foot ship and chained it up, effectively impounding the vessel from the now-former owner, and making it the legal property of HarborView Marina. In essence she now owned a ship. The first step toward victory – I can remember that smug I-can’t-believe-I-did-it! look on her face the day it happened.
Nothing more was heard from the former owner. The deed was done. It was airtight. He didn’t have a case anyway. However, now it was time for step two: Annie had to dispose of the ship. So, similar to the procedure she followed in all of her other impoundments, she arranged for an auction. Notifications were made and all of the arrangements for the auction undertaken. The starting bid obviously had to cover all of the expenses incurred for keeping the vessel tied up for a number of months, dockage fees, costs of the legal proceedings and the auction, etc. If the bidding went beyond that, fine, but the marina only needed to cover its expenses and get the vessel out of its slip. When the auction took place, the ship’s former owner did not even show up to attempt to rebuy his vessel. No bids, no objections, nothing. It ended up being purchased by a family member of a high government official of an African nation who supposedly bought it for conversion to and use as a hospital ship in her home nation. The buyer’s captain and crew arrived, prepared the ship for sea, and took the ship away. The marina was paid, the ship was gone, the incident finally over, and things returned to normal….and then the hurricane hit… but that’s another story.
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