Hello and welcome to THE YACHT CHANNEL podcast today I'm going to be having a conversation with
my old friend Dan Stabbert in anticipation of auctioning this vessel and while we've done an
in-depth technical tour of this vessel previously I'm just going to lift some of the footage from
that to introduce the vessel for those of you who are not familiar with it prior to my conversation
with Dan Stabbert. 172 foot in length she's a fine fine research ship. She is on a
year contract to the US Government right now performing fisheries and ecological studies on
the west coast of the United States There will be about 25 to 30 people on board for the next month
She has a 9 000 mile range and so that won't be an issue but she'll be away from
port services uh for well over a month close to 35 days. It's a very reliable ship she's cpp
propulsion and variable pitch. She can just cruise along at a half a knot or you can do
a solid 10 knots, is very fuel efficient she burns less than 800 gallons per day
which for 172 foot ship of this size and worldwide capabilities is very efficient very quiet very
smooth running ship and beautiful lines one of the prettiest research ships in the world today.
Large back deck area which can be used for science work It can be used for submarines
ROVs and if you decided that you wanted a little bit less iit would be a great area
for large lounges and so forth. Beautiful lines I mean gorgeous, gorgeous lines
whether it's a research ship or a yacht or or or a combination vessel. You know it's
rare to have that feel you see how the bow flows down and and the pilot house rounds out- it's a
beautiful beautiful vessel The vessel's in class fully as a US Coast Guard certification which is
rare on top of that as a passenger vessel and end research vessel and then she also has ABS
load lines and ABS class so all her machinery is cared for maintained to the highest standard.
Due to cutbacks in budgets for government research agencies Dan has decided to dispose of this vessel
and asked for my assistance, so we have it up on yachtworld I think we're asking 1.3 million.
However we are going to offer it under auction . The vessel right now in August is having
an extensive ABS class survey. It'll also have a US Coast Guard inspection so we're going to be
able to offer a vessel that is right out of dry dock that is capable of cruising anywhere in the
world. So now I'm going to connect this with Dan Stabbert. So good morning. You too Good morning
Paul from the sunny Pacific Northwest what's going on with ocean star right now in the shipyard well
she's getting ready to go through her two and a half year special survey with abs so her midterm
and then her updating her coast guard certificate inspection so she'll be good to go around the
world on any voyage here when she completes that dry docking and inspection period which will be
done before the auction and what's involved with that kind of an inspection the two and a half year
is a is a complete dry docking an inspection of the bottom the general steel condition shafts
seals and then all of her machinery is inspected her main engines, generators, safety systems
all operational systems that are connected with with the vessel. Taking a voyage and going to sea
safely and efficiently and operating properly, inspected and approved. She's been a very busy
vessel for the last couple of years. She's had a good quality history. She came off a season
last year up in the Arctic north of Barrow, way north and came back late in the season and then
she had a big trip out west under the Pacific rim She's had some trips down south investigating the
Mexico species that's going extinct the Vaquita for a joint U.S. Mexico operation. She has the
a-frames and the outfitting. She's coming with all of her scientific winches which are worth
substantial amount of money and and make her readily available. If someone wanted to drive
a revenue stream they could do it tomorrow. They could do it the day they closed the dea. But she's
had some 2.5- 3 million dollar years where she made a million dollars in profit. What is her day
rate? Normally a day rate ranges anywhere from 14 to 18 000 dollars a day. And that's with you
providing the crew only? That's correct just us providing the crew.We're providing between 9 and
12 depending on the mission and how many people you need to support the staff on board. That's
24-hour operations and that includes a galley staff. I mean food and having an ordinary seamen
for state rooms and serving and that type of thing. So that's supporting a staff a client
group of say another 20 to 22 people. On our stern she's had ROV's on board she's had autonomous
underwater AUVs on board she has supported diving. At times she has done buoy projects
where we've done special scientific buoys. We carried them up and we deployed them in the ocean
She's actually supported coring where you go and we send down drills into the ocean bed
and we decide we look into the sediment and what it means and what the history of it is
and so that we understand better a lot better the geological formations surrounding it and what will
happen. She's done ice scout surveys so icebergs come down and through the area. She studied the
bottom of the ocean for that right down to she's got the electronic components on board to study
fisheries. She has electronics to study midwater fish which are a different frequency than bottom
fish. She has different systems on board just to allow her to pick up and to understand biomasses
so when a vessel like this when you say she goes north she goes way north - thousands of
miles above the Aleutians and there's no support up there in terms of zero - when
she goes north there's no one around and she may stay up there in the season. There
are tugs and barges supporting local villages and small towns north and then they all head
south generally in August September early September time frame and she generally stays
later. So there's really zero support. In fact if you had any major issue you'd probably have
to travel back 1800 to 2000 miles just to find a support facility. They have to have the endurance
in terms of being able to carry along all their supplies and walk-in refrigeration and
you have a machine shop on board - there are spare parts. She needs to be outfitted, a research ship
that works with our group has to be outfitted for worldwide service. That needs to be able
to go to Asia and needs to be able to go up to the Arctic and as far south as as the Antarctic. She's
a ship that was designed both in her systems for redundancy but she has lots of spare parts storage
and she has a supporting systems from water making to sewage handling to refrigeration- freezers
dry storage and all of that too and of course fuel capacity to support her team of
up to 35 to 40 people safely and efficiently and effectively. She was built by the US government
for NOAA as a specialized oceanographic fisheries research vessel. The difference when NOAA builds
a ship versus say a commercial yard or a yacht yard - they have different criteria. They do a
substantially different criteria -their first criteria is a sound signature because most of
the data that's collected around the ocean is done acoustically, the right sound signature,
a very low noise emission is important a very quiet vessel it's very important. That's the
number one criteria then secondly would be her redundancy. These are worldwide class vessels,
world-class vessels, so full ocean and so they build these ships with substantial
redundant systems for NOAA so that the cooling system and the heating system and
the air conditioning system and the refrigeration, everything has got a backup to it so that you
know when you plan a mission out for one two three years in advance of a departure voyage you
need to know that you can carry that mission out. You don't want to be sidelined by some
spare part missing or a system that might have some deficiency
albeit small. Sometimes you can be remote with these ships and a small item can become a big one,
so they're built with substantial redundancy into them and then NOAA when they built the ships,
they put some beautiful lines into them that that are hard to find today with great camber
and sheer . This is one of the prettiest small research ships in the world today and so on board
in terms of systems you have a certain number of crew and then you have scientists. How many
souls would be living on board for that length of time? I think she carries between 36 and 40 souls,
I think maybe 35 to 36 is what she presently carries. She has quite a large laboratory space
i think she has over a thousand square feet of a laboratory and so the they've given up some some
accommodations for larger laboratory spaces, which could be used and repurposed if you wanted
to carry more personnel and those are on the main deck. As I recall those big open spaces
the lab spaces are on the main deck and up above this she's got acoustic electronic laboratories up
above as well behind the pilot house and then she's also got large wet and dry laboratories
down in the main deck. So if somebody came along and they wanted to have an expedition
yacht to go looking for treasure or to go explore the world with their family these spaces should
convert quite nicelyThey'd be beautiful the living room lounges open open floor plan spaces
could be well utilized without any major change in the structure itself. You'd just be reconfiguring
the finishes on the inside and there seemed to be some uh nice open deck spaces including what what
we call a sun deck but you have other names we do you know we call an observation deck because
at times we'll bring marine mammal observers with us so they're looking for whales and other
other marine mammals that might be affected by the the studies or maybe even just sampling
them and testing them and counting them. For example we were north in her last mission was to
investigate species and the warming climate for potential northwest passage utilization
and so she was there to start studying the effect that an increased traffic through the northwest
passage would have on marine wildlife. One concern that people have with older steel vessels is the
steel. Well that's part of our classification They require both the United States Coast Guard
and American Bureau of Shipping which gives the vessel her load line and her class
enters machine reclassification. They only allow a certain amount of wastage within the steel
structure internally and externally so external plates internal framework tanks and so forth.
Nonetheless her steel condition is like she has got maybe two and three percent diminishment of
her a framework and so forth. She's in spec as far as steelwork goes. She was probably a 9.5
out of i10. And in terms of your main propulsion systems and electric generators what sort of life
what's the life cycle and expectancy? Systems are maintaining well you'll get 10 to 15 years out
of your generator sets. You rebuild them every three to five years and and your main engines,
you can get the lifetime of use out of your main engine, so you've got a medium speed
a very low fuel consumption engine so for her main engines and they've got good life in them
those engines are still utilized out in many different parts in the industrial places around
the world, so parts are readily available and then she has two 200kw generators which one generator
will support all of her needs plus an emergency generator up above that takes all of her emergency
systems in case you had any problems with the other that would be sufficient to safely see
the vessel back to any port. So we're going to do an auction on Ocean Starr that's upcoming and it
is a good circumstance that all this work is being done right now for a new owner. I's a rare
thing - there are vessels out there in this market and especially as oil and gas vessels
don't have this beauty and this utility and this capability set but there's quite a few
cold stacked oil and gas vessels out there that are just that - they're cold stacked. They've been
laid up. We haven't done that with the Ocean Starr, she's been working consistently. The cost
to bring a cold stack vessel from from being laid up without any oversight or care and with lapsed
certificates back to operational status can be in the millions and so we don't believe in that.We
believe in just maintaining her keeping her ready for use. In fact we've been on a project that
she's supposed to go out on here just before the auction to support some nuclear submarine work.
So we've maintained the ship well because you never know when a contract can come up and and
she can have a revenue stream and secondly we like selling a vessel that's fully capable and ready to
go and we just thought that was a benefit to the buyers to have a ship that was turnkey. There's
spare parts and tools and machinery that when they buy her at this auction whoever purchased her they
could start her up and load their groceries on and and be headed across the Pacific if they wanted
to. She'll be dry docked and all of her systems, her sea valves will be checked all her shell
plating will be checked for any indentations make sure there's been no mechanical damage at all,
her shaft seals, rudders all those systems underwater systems be inspected. That's the
dry dock portion and she'll be inspected by American Bureau of Shipping as well as
United States Coast Guard inspectors on separate occasions. So what would it cost to build this
ship today? To build a research ship of this nature with the redundant systems and so forth
generally runs three to four times the cost of building an oil and gas vessel of a similar size
So while a new oil and gas vessel may cost 25 million dollars, this boat's gonna cost new in
this one in this size classes 175 class vessel it's going to cost probably 75 to 90 million,
in that general range. You know these vessels unlike others are built with the quarters,
the superstructure is built sufficient to house 30 to 40 personnel and to have the scientific space
of the laboratories both electronic for computers and dry scientific labs to wet laboratories for
wet studies and all of that - so to have that kind of superstructure is tremendous. There are not a
lot of vessels like this that enable that comfort at sea and to have that superstructure in such a
way that supports those offshore missions. Right but at the same time we did some design studies
for conversion on this where you would knock some of the quarters together, the scientific quarters,
and make nice little guest suites. We did and and without having to make any exterior structural
changes she easily accommodated eight to ten suites and public spaces and large dining and
great room type and she's just a nice boat. It can be done at a reasonable price because you're not
really modifying the exterior structure it's just rearranging some interior spaces and you've got
the the ac systems and you've got all the plumbing and they're already there ac sewage all the
systems that support you are there so it's really more for cosmetic- structural bulkhead materials,
soft materials more than more than anything. What's your reason for selling? Basically the
revenue days between our specialized segment that we focus on, which has been oil and gas and NOAA
and the in the United States government work has diminished substantially and so if we can't keep
her utilized to the extent we want to utilize her here, we decided it's best to find a new home for
her. Leading up to the auction if people wanted to come and inspect a vessel we would be glad
to host them and show them around the Ocean Starr, then on the day of the auction we're going to have
perhaps you on board or other knowledgeable captains and engineers with camera and sound
so that any sort of last-minute questions that people have, we can address live. That's right
you know what a Stabbert will be there with us, myself or Daniel One of us will be there
to answer questions and we'll have a port engineer that knows the ship that's been involved with the
vessel for years maintaining and caring for her. Well thank you Dan for spending this time with
us today and telling us about Ocean Starr, very much looking forward to the auction and
Im going to be getting survey information from the ABS survey that's ongoing
and that will all be posted on the links that are connected with this video and this podcast
there also will be a link to the auction site where interested buyers can register to become
bidders and as mentioned we're going to do the auction live so we'll have a live podcast
from onboard the Ocean Starr and also from the Yacht Channel studios on the day of the auction.
so we look forward to this event it's going to be exciting and more to follow thank you.