I wasn't looking for a ship but she kept popping up when I was doing my searches. I was not a ship person or even a boat person for that matter but was intrigued by seeing a cruise ship on Craigslist.
So I contact ed the owner and he gave me the contact information for the watchman. Soon after I arranged a day to travel out. I got the cameras ready and finally after much anticipation the day arrived. I was on my way to the California Delta for the first time. It was a two hour journey from Santa Cruz but seemed worth it to tour a big dead ghost ship. I arrived to the delta to find a man who appeared homeless in his mid 30s waiting for me at a small marina a mile or so from where the ship was moored.
He welcomed me but was not the nicest guy one could meet. We jumped in a dirty old Boston whaler and headed to the ship. He asked for gas money on the way over and mentioned I could tip him also so that he could buy dog food. As the ship came into view I seen lots of rust. The rust gather my attention more so then the beautiful lines. The entire hull looked like hell. So I started taking pictures as I originally set out to do with no real intent to buy a ship but to observe. We finally arrived and we had to climb multiple unsafe ladders up another derelict boat and across a plank about eight inches wide and 10ft long and a long drop if I lost balance in order to board the ship.
Finally I was aboard. My first observation was the piles of debris on the decks and trees growing from the rotting decks and old sun rotted mattresses scattered all over the place. There were maybe 10 55 gal oil barrels scattered around and piles of junk and debris everywhere. It looked much like a homeless camp closed down and let to sit for a decade.
I finally entered the ship from the grand stairway entrance. My first observation was that this was not just a standard ship but she had fascinating stairways and metalwork. Unfortunately when you looked down there was garbage everywhere. I had never seen so much garbage outside of a dump.
