ot sptimes.com
Where's the cruise ship? It's anyone's guess
Authorities aren't looking for the El Dorado. It was apparently repossessed, but no one seems to know more. It's another blow for Stardancer Casino Inc.
By ROBERT FARLEY and KELLEY BENHAM
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 10, 2002
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TARPON SPRINGS -- The 128-foot ship bears the name El Dorado, the mythical gold city sought by conquistadors throughout South America.
Unlike its namesake, the Stardancer Casino Cruise ship commandeered from its mooring at the Sponge Docks during the weekend is not hotly sought after.
The police weren't looking for it Monday.
"There is no crime," Tarpon Springs police Sgt. Jeff Young said. "No victim has come forward to say the boat was stolen."
The Coast Guard wasn't looking, either.
"It was a repossession issue," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Paul Rhynard. "There's not a whole lot we could do, or would do."
He said the Coast Guard turned down a request -- presumably from company president Samuel A. Gray -- to radio the ship and determine its whereabouts.
"That's not something we do," Rhynard said.
Gray and his son, company vice president Samuel Gray Jr., did not respond to several telephone messages Monday. The company runs cruises out of Port Richey, Madeira Beach, Miami Beach, Fernandina Beach and Myrtle Beach, S.C. The El Dorado docked at the Sponge Docks, but customers got to it by small shuttle boats that motored out from Port Richey and Tarpon Springs.
Rhynard said a person identified as being from Entertainment Cruises Ltd. authorized the repossession and provided paperwork to the owners.
"That's not something we, as a federal agency, deal with," Rhynard said.
Young also said police received a call beforehand that the boat was going to be legally repossessed.
"Those are all civil matters and we don't get involved in civil matters," Young said.
The apparent repossession is the latest development in a rocky year for the South Carolina-based casino boat operator. In February, the FBI froze the bank accounts of Stardancer Casino Cruises and accused an Ohio banker of helping finance the casino boats with embezzled money.
The company is embroiled in a longstanding dispute with its rival, Paradise of Port Richey, about the latter company's accusations that Stardancer shuttle boats scour and damage the bottom of the Pithlachascotee River in Port Richey.
This year, according to public records, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service filed federal tax liens of at least $835,000 against Stardancer Casino Inc. in five counties, including Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough.
While law enforcement authorities may not be interested, locals are curious where the 128-foot ship is. So are its employees. In Port Richey, Stardancer employees said they found out about it reading a story in Monday's St. Petersburg Times.
The dock the El Dorado calls home, behind the aquarium and between the Miss Lorraine and the Two Georges, was deserted Monday except for three pelicans and a couple of sea gulls.
On the Miss Lorraine, just returned from a four-day shrimping trip, captain Darryl Cover, 46, wondered aloud where the El Dorado was.
"It was here before I left, now it's gone," he said. The boat usually goes out around 8 a.m. and returns at near midnight, he said. But he hasn't seen it since he returned Sunday afternoon, and he hasn't heard so much as a juicy rumor as to where it went.
"I think David Copperfield had something to do with it," he said.
Fishermen on the Overlook, which docks near the El Dorado, saw the boat Saturday afternoon, in its usual spot 10 miles west of Hudson, near Marker 10. Sunday they noticed it missing.
"Maybe it sank out there," said first mate Fred Kojzar, 77. "I don't know."
There is one upside, said John Georgiou of Dolphin Deep Sea Fishing.
"We don't have to put up with fumes from its stinking generator," he said.
Georgiou's brother, Steve, owner of Anclote Marine Ways, leases the dock space for the El Dorado to Gray. Stardancer bought Steve Georgiou's boat, the Miss Milwaukee, as a shuttle. The company has been current with all its payments to him, he said.
"We had not been notified of anything by the tenants," said Beverley Billiris, a Tarpon Springs city commissioner who rents dock space to Gray for one of the shuttle boats.
Casino folks are a wheeling and dealing bunch, she said.
"They're here today, gone tomorrow," she said. "We don't overreact with these issues. It could be worked out tomorrow. You kind of have to have that attitude or you'd have ulcers."
-- Times staffer Matthew Waite contributed to this report |
