Entrepreneur spends his life savings transforming abandoned cruise ship – before dream project takes tragic twist

A man spent his entire life savings renovating an old cruise ship, but restoring the 2,500-ton yacht didn’t exactly go smoothly.

Plans on transform the ship built in 1955 into a museum, Chris Willson purchased the vessel in 2008 via Craigslist.

Although he made renovations to make the boat habitable — he lived in it for more than 10 years — his efforts to make the boat seaworthy were costly, he told CNN on Wednesday.

“We thoroughly enjoyed our time on that ship,” Willson, who is originally from Utah, told the station of the past 15 years he and his girlfriend Jin Li have spent working on the 300-foot boat.

‘[Selling] “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said of the decision to sell the boat after spending more than $1 million on its renovation.

‘It haunts me and I sleep badly because of it. I’m not happy about it.’

The 85-cabin cruiser, originally named Wappen von Hamburg, was the first major passenger ship built by Germany after World War II. eventually ended up in the California Delta, where it found a new owner who eventually put the boat up for sale.

Willson was impressed with the ship’s layout and “magnificent” staircases, and took a trip to Northern California.

“I was posing as a potential buyer, even though I had no interest in actually buying a ship,” he told CNN in 2022. “It was a little outside my comfort zone, to say the least.”

When he stepped aboard, he saw with his own eyes how badly the boat had been neglected over the years, a far cry from the photos he had seen from its glory days.

But beneath all that “junk” and mold was still “one of the most spectacular ship designs I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“It’s almost like finding an old ’60s Corvette in the garage,” he said of the boat’s potential.

‘You can see that the quality is there, but it is so neglected that you almost feel sorry for it.’

“Before I knew it, I owned a ship,” Willson said, adding that he had “made a really good deal with the owner of the ship.”

During the ship’s renovation, which took place in Rio Vista, hundreds of bags full of household waste and old mattresses were confiscated, he recalls.

“The scale of it was enormous,” he said of the undertaking that required volunteers.

“It’s almost the same as renovating 15 houses yourself.”

After a few months, Willson decided to move with his partner from their home in Santa Cruz so they could focus on their work.

“When I first got on board, a lot of my friends and family couldn’t believe it,” he told CNN. “It was quite a change in my lifestyle.

“But I see it more as an improvement, even though we are off-grid and mainly run on generators and solar power.”

As the two worked, Willson learned more and more about the boat’s past.

He discovered that not only did it serve as the inspiration for the popular 1970s series ‘The Love Boat’, but it was also the filming location for the villains’ headquarters in the second ever James Bond film ‘From Russia with Love’.

The ship served as a cruise ship for about twenty years before changing owners several times.

“Nobody knew what the history of the ship was,” he says. “And over time we’ve uncovered so much of its history.

‘We converted it from a big ship that was floating around in the Delta and rusting away, into probably one of the most famous classic cruise ships in the world.

“And I should be proud of that.”

Willson would put his entire savings into the project and name the ship Aurora, after the sunrises he regularly saw from its deck.

However, Willson said he was regularly given “three days’ notice” by local authorities to vacate the premises, but police never “carried out an eviction.”

The situation was made worse in January when a military tugboat sank next to the Aurora, creating what he said was a “pollution problem.”

“From that point on, everything changed,” he explained, saying there was “basically no future for the Aurora” at that location.

Moving it would be expensive, he said — and would have cost us “millions of dollars in dredging,” he told CNN. [just] to get out.’

“So we were kind of stuck there,” he said. Then, in October 2023, he and his partner made the painful decision to sell the ship to an unnamed buyer.

Just five months later the boat began to sink.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office reported at the time: “It has been determined that the vessel has a hole, is taking on water and is currently leaking diesel fuel and oil into the Delta Waterway.

The US Coast Guard later an estimated 21,675 gallons of oil-contaminated water, 3,193 gallons of waste and five 25-yard containers of debris were removed – all from the ship.

Willson said he was shocked to hear the ship had partially sunk.

“I haven’t seen it sink,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve had it for 15 years and we’ve had no problems with it.

He added: ‘I’ve maintained that ship meticulously. I’ve checked everything on it multiple times a day. We were on it all the time… It just makes me sad like nothing else.’

Despite criticism from locals, Willson still looks back fondly on his time on the ship.

“We thoroughly enjoyed our time on that ship,” Willson said. “It was [selling] was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

‘It haunts me and I sleep badly because of it. I’m not happy about it.’