Over the past year, the DCL team has had quite an adventure working to secure a new boat for the 2026 cruise season. In this and upcoming posts, I’ll share the ups and downs of what has turned out to be an interesting process, to say the least. The outcome of this process, and our ability to succeed in launching a vessel early in the 2026 season, has become a matter of survival for DCL. In these blog posts, I’ll talk about our adventures, describe the support we need, and why we need it. Thank you in advance for your interest. ~ Bill F. DCL Executive Director.
Chapter 1: The Low-Down on the new boat, named Under Pressure
The story begins on a clear morning in November of 2024. Members of the Buffalo Sector US Coast Guard vessel inspection team met DCL’s Master Captain Mike Willard at Beacon Bay Marina for a friendly walk-through of our current boat, Teal, to help us nail down our winter workplan. The Teal had passed its 5 year “full hull” inspection in 2023, so we wouldn’t have another one of those until 2028, but commercial boats are still subject to annual inspection by the Coast Guard. The Teal sports an all-wood hull (juniper planking over oak framing) and was built in 1979. With the knowledge of its aging needs, we’d developed a comprehensive annual maintenance plan, at a cost of $25,000-$50,000 annually, to keep Teal in good condition until 2028. At that point, we’ve expected we would need to replace the boat. To account for that, DCL has created a strategic plan that includes replacing Teal AND launching a second, hopefully “green” vessel over the coming five years. More on that later, but that’s “the plan”.
Getting back to the story at hand, the inspection team spent two hours on the boat. They didn’t find any particularly surprising items that needed immediate attention, which was positive, but they strongly suggested that a LOT of work might be required a year from that point (the winter of 2026). They felt that if bolts, ring nails and other fasteners in the wooden framing continued to degrade during the 2025 season, they would need to be pulled and replaced before the boat could launch in 2026. Now, given that they found the fasteners sound at that point, this was speculation. But it was a well-intentioned warning from experienced individuals and certainly not to be ignored. Further, the work required would be extremely labor-intensive and thus costly. We received an initial estimate of $500,000! Much more than DCL would want to invest in a boat this old.
Clearly, our five-year plan was in need of adjustment. DCL’s staff and board members immediately went into boat-shopping mode. Ideally, we needed a vessel that would replace Teal, with a similar capacity of 70+passengers. But, by now it was December and we’d already missed the prime window for boat-buying in the northeastern US, which comes in September and October, as the cruise season winds down. Pickings were slim. Clearly, we couldn’t just wait until September and October of 2025 in the hope that a great boat would pop up for sale, in our price range, at the very last moment. Luckily, in April, we found a 49 passenger vessel that seemed intriguing. It was slightly smaller than Teal, but had many other positives, and after all, our strategic plan does call for DCL to eventually have two boats, one larger and one smaller, so we decided to investigate.
We engaged a professional surveyor who ran the boat and inspected it out of the water, as well. His report found the boat to be in excellent condition. Our team asked many questions and considered how we could use the boat on Cayuga Lake in support of our mission. After due consideration, it was time to make our move! The asking price was $250,000, our surveyor assessed the boat at $262,000, and we settled on an offer of $220,000. Exciting times … but there was a catch.
Given the timing of this whole project, DCL could not initiate a fundraising campaign prior to purchasing the boat. We did have several “Friends of DCL” ready to pitch in, but a public campaign to buy a boat, when you don’t even know what boat you’re buying, is a challenge. Rather, your intrepid Executive Director approached several local banks to get a head start on financing our purchase. Initial responses (in January) had all seemed quite positive, but by May we still had not firm commitments and we weren’t sure why. The catch eventually came to light – DCL’s historic annual profit margin did not meet the bank criteria to support a loan of the amount we sought. As a “nonprofit” organization, it had never occurred to us that we’d need to show a profit to get a loan! It’s hard to believe, but apparently the idea that profit margins don’t really tell the story when it comes to nonprofit viability, wasn’t on anyone’s radar in the loan industry, either. Once we understood the problem, a solution was quickly at hand. We went to our long-standing ally, the Park Foundation, and negotiated a $90,000 supporting loan, we fundraised nearly $50,000, and we went back to our primary bank with a more modest $90,000 loan request and a solid (but not profitable) financial record and comprehensive plan to pay off the loan, and got the deal done!
On June 27 we finally transferred a payment of $220,000 to our patient boat owner, and the (unfortunately named) Under Pressure was ours. Exciting times … but there was another catch.
I haven’t mentioned yet that this former dive boat (thus the name “Under Pressure”), turned dolphin watching boat, was located in Savannah, Georgia. Our entire crew was excited to head south for the delivery cruise up the Inter-Coastal Waterway, up the Hudson River and through the Erie Canal, but it being our most busy season, we had work to do here on Cayuga Lake, so a professional delivery crew was dispatched to Georgia and took our new boat off the dock to begin it’s journey north at 11:15am on July 15.
They got exactly 15 miles off the dock before things went south. They lost rudder control and had to be towed back to a marina. What could have gone wrong? Well, Under Pressure was pulled from the water for an inspection, and what we found was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. All of the below-water running gear – rudders, props, prop shafts, struts – which had been in fine condition in April, was now corroded beyond repair and in some places completely missing! It can be said, without fear of hyperbole, that our team went into a modest existential panic. DCL was the proud owner of $250,000 worth of potential junk, sitting on the pavement in Georgia. We called our insurers and prayed for good news. And we started shopping again!
And that brings us to the current situation. We have just received a report from our insurance adjuster that their surveyor has estimated repair costs at $125,000. The source of the corrosion was determined to be a faulty battery charger on the boat itself, which was sending heavy electrical current into the water. It appears our insurance will cover the damage, and if that is the case, and the work can be done where the boat currently resides, we are essentially back where we were in July, except 2 or 3 months behind schedule.
So, DCL still has a critical need to pay off the loans it has encumbered to purchase this boat along with operational expenses to support.
At this point, we’ve set up two separate fundraising campaigns to help everyone understand what they can choose to support:
- “A NEW Boat for Everyone”: this campaign will help us pay off our boat loans. The total goal, over 2025 and 2026, is $130,000. This amount will complement tourism revenue and get the loans paid off over 5 years. So far, we have raised $46,000 and our benchmark is $65,000.
- “Love Your Lake”: this campaign supports our annual community education and access programming on the lake. Our goal for 2025 is also $65,000, and we have raised $26,000 so far.
You can find out more about these campaigns on our DONATIONS PAGE. I hope you will consider supporting us, particularly in this most critical of years.
In future posts, I’ll continue to tell you our tales of adventure as they concern our NEW boat with topics such as:
- How do we get the Under Pressure to Cayuga Lake in time for the spring season?
- How will we figure out a more appropriate name for the vessel? (It’s bad luck to rename a boat, they say, but we’re kinda over that!)
- Can we retrofit green technology into this new boat during the course of repairs?
- Can people really use the upper deck of this new boat?
There is so much more to find out, Stay tuned, and please help us meet our fundraising goals!
~ Bill Foster, Executive Director