Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
STOCKTON, Calif. — Buying a historic cruise ship found on Craigslist in 2008 was undoubtedly a life-altering decision for Chris Willson.
The technology entrepreneur from Utah spent around 15 years painstakingly restoring the 293-foot vessel, which contains 85 cabins, a swimming pool and a theater, and even moved on board with his long-term partner Jin Li.
Willson says he poured his life savings into the passion project. He has not disclosed how much it cost him.
His ultimate goal was to transform the neglected ship into a museum, but things didn't quite go to plan.
In October 2023, Willson made the painful decision to sell the vessel, which began sinking around seven months later. Now its future looks bleak.
"We absolutely loved our time with that ship," Willson tells CNN Travel. "It (selling) was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life.
"It haunts me and I lose sleep over it. I'm not happy about it."
Willson came across a sale listing on the Craigslist classified advertisements website.
After doing some digging, he discovered that the vessel, originally named Wappen von Hamburg, was constructed by the Blohm and Voss shipyard in 1955 and had been the first significant passenger liner built by Germany after World War II.
Once he took the ship on, Willson arranged for it to be moved to the California river city of Rio Vista, where it stayed for a year, and renamed it the Aurora after spending his first night on board.
"I woke up to one of the most brilliant sunrises I had ever seen," Willson told CNN back in 2022.
"It was forming an Aurora-type effect with the clouds and water. I remember thinking at that time 'Aurora' was a fitting name."
Although he had no prior experience working on ships, Willson dedicated himself to breathing new life into the Aurora, devoting countless hours to renovating it, with the help of volunteers.
"I'd gotten quite a ways," he says. "I think we had 10 areas solidly restored and refurnished meticulously. These were kind of major areas. So we were pretty proud of that.
"So we were doing a pretty good job. We had marine engineers involved. (There was) no lack of people coming out to loan a hand."
Costly project
Aside from a few small donations, Willson says he funded the bulk of the renovation work himself.
Although he's unsure of the exact amount he spent on maintaining the ship and "moving it forward" over the years, he estimates the figure to be well over $1 million.
"We were making terrific progress with the Aurora," he says.
However, residents of Little Potato Slough weren't thrilled about having such a huge decommissioned ship moored nearby.
Willson said he received a "three-day notice to quit" on "several occasions," but local authorities never followed through with an eviction.
Things came to a head when 1940s military tugboat Mazapeta, stationed next to the Aurora, also sank in January, creating a pollution issue.
Although Willson did consider moving the ship, he says he learned that the waterway would've likely needed a "million dollars worth of dredging for us to get out."
While they were desperate to finish what they started, Li says that the situation began to take a huge toll, and the couple felt that they had no other option but to "move on to the next chapter."
"Maybe Aurora wasn't in the right place," she reflects. "Maybe if Aurora was in a different state or a different country, it would have been different."
When an interested buyer showed up who seemed equally as passionate about saving the ship, they decided to sell it.
When asked about the general condition of the ship at the time, Willson says that while "there were some holes" when he first purchased it, they were "patched professionally" and he never had "any problems" afterward.
Sinking feeling
However, in May, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office announced that the Aurora was sinking.
"It has been determined the ship has suffered a hole and is taking on water and is currently leaking diesel fuel and oil into the Delta Waterway," reads a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on May 22.
The ship was refloated by contractors, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, which confirmed that it had "recently changed ownership."
The city of Stockton has since taken over the operation.
Connie Cochran, community relations officer for the city, says there "was no clear ownership" for the Aurora when the situation occurred.
"We're hoping to be getting it out of there in the coming weeks," Cochran told CNN, pointing out the ship isn't actually within the city limits.
Cochran says the next stage will be determining whether the ship, which she described as a "public hazard" and "danger to the environment," is structurally stable enough for a dead ship tow.
Willson, who maintains he filed the change of ownership for the Aurora with the Coast Guard Vessel documentation center, says he was surprised when he learned that the ship had partially sunk.
"I didn't see it sinking," he says. "We had it for 15 years, and we had no problem with it."
"I meticulously maintained that ship," adds Willson. "I checked everything on it multiple times every day. We were on it all of the time. … It just saddens me like nothing else."
He later learned that the 2,496-gross-ton ship had been an inspiration for "The Love Boat" TV series and a filming location for the Spectre headquarters in the 1963 James Bond movie "From Russia with Love."
Willson received a huge amount of support from well-wishers while he was restoring the ship, with some even traveling to the site in California to see it.
He also built a community of 12,000 followers on the Aurora Restoration Project's Facebook page, and more than 80,000 subscribers to the YouTube channel for the project.
"It was such a well-known vessel," he says. "And it had everybody's hearts."
