Grounded in Paradise

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP)–Looking like Noah's Ark after the flood, a sleek, 158-foot yacht driven aground by a hurricane two years ago lies just offshore, mired as deeply in an environmental dispute with the government as it is in the ocean floor.

For most of the past two years, the boat's owner, Peter Halmos, has been arguing with federal officials over how to free the ship without doing too much damage to the seagrass around it. Through it all, Halmos, has stubbornly insisted on staying aboard or living close by on a cluster of houseboats so he can guard his beloved Legacy against pirates and thieves plying the calm green-and-azure waters off Key West.

A Hungarian emigre who made a fortune selling theft protection to credit-card holders, and later forged a warrior's identity by helping companies engage in complex legal battles, Halmos estimates he is spending more than $1 million a month maintaining the houseboats and moving the Legacy, which is finally – though slowly, very slowly – being pulled free.

"After two years, you kind of get numb to it," said Halmos, who bought the boat in 1995 for $16 million. "It used to make me physically sick."

NOWHERE TO RUN

Plastered with "No Trespassing" signs, the sailing yacht with a gleaming white bridge sits upright in less than a foot of water about two miles offshore, a tattered American flag flying above. Its mast and boom are gone, its dark-blue hull is scuffed, its wooden deck weatherbeaten.

But the hull is intact – and Halmos says it will float.

Halmos, who is in his early 60s, was aboard the Legacy with six others, searching for a sunken Spanish galleon, when Hurricane Wilma struck in October of 2005. Legacy had weathered Katrina and her 80-mile-per-hour winds without trouble. So instead of heading out for the open sea when Wilma arrived, he decided to drop anchor and ride out the storm near shore.

Since Legacy's grounding, the owner and crew have worked to free her – and to protect her from salvage crews.

It would prove a terrible mistake.

Halmos recounted that fateful night in a Vanity Fair article published in January. Halmos was in bed, shortly after midnight, when he said he felt the massive yacht lurching, movements so powerful that he was thrown down the stairs as he tried to reach the wheelhouse, according to the magazine. The ship's anchors had broken free and Legacy was being dragged backward into the storm at a speed of 10 knots.

Calls to the Coast Guard went unanswered, Halmos told Vanity Fair, because personnel had already evacuated. Aboard Legacy, the crew was fighting a losing battle as Wilma's winds began rocking the boat so violently that water was seeping into the lower cabins through the air vents. As seawater sloshed through the corridors, mixing with the electronic circuitry, the galley filled with smoke. Fearing a fire, the captain gave an order to shut off all the electricity and Legacy went dark in the midst of the raucous storm.

Assembled in the wheelhouse, terrified, waves crashing 20 to 30 feet over the boat, there was talk of launching the life rafts.

"But that would have been suicidal," Capt. Ed Collins told Vanity Fair. At 3 a.m. the yacht's 160-foot mast crashed directly into the wheelhouse, shattering windows and popping light bulbs out of their sockets, before toppling into the surging waters below.

Halmos told the magazine that he gathered everyone in the salon where they took hold of each other's hands. "I was so scared I couldn't cry," he said. "I don't know how the boat held together. I thought, 'Just end it.'"

Around 5 a.m. Legacy literally struck bottom as winds carried the boat across the tidal flats of the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge.

RUN AGROUND

When the storm had passed, Legacy was aground miles away from where it had anchored, stuck in the sand in a federally-protected area where sensitive varieties of seagrass provide a habitat for fish. If Halmos were simply to drag the Legacy out, it would damage the grass and he could be hit with millions of dollars in fines.

But for months, Halmos and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were unable to come to terms on a plan to remove the yacht.

Owner Peter Halmos has spent two years trying to break Legacy free of the reef – and the bureaucracy.

According to Vanity Fair, contractors hired by Halmos devised a number of schemes to free Legacy, including using the 5,000-foot ingress route crated when the hurricane dragged Legacy across the flats, lining it with giant sandbags and using a special foam to float the yacht through the channel. Another plan involved building a thousand-foot metal sleeve around the boat and flooding it with seawater to float the boat toward a neighboring channel.

NOAA special counsel, Craig O'Connor, said that there were "misunderstandings and miscommunication," and that some of the early removal suggestions appeared too damaging to the environment, such as a very real concern that the walls of the channel could be damaged during the rescue operation, sending millions of gallons of seawater into the flats, destroying them and costing Halmos millions in fines.

"Our people wanted to be sure they understood what Peter was doing," O'Connor said. He added: "Aside from the fact that Peter is a colorful person, I find him to be a person of high integrity. We could be dealing with somebody who could care less about the environment."

The two sides finally came to an understanding in January – Halmos will have to replant the damaged seagrass at his own expense. But then they had to work out the details of the plan to extricate the boat. And then a diving company had to make a special pump.

10 FEET PER DAY

Finally, in mid-September, workers from a salvage company began operating a machine that uses powerful streams of water to cut into the sea bottom in front of the Legacy. A boat hundreds of yards away is using a large winch and two heavy cables to pull the boat into deeper water.

The work is said to be going well, though the Legacy is moving only about 10 feet per day. With a total of about 1,300 feet to be covered, the job will take several weeks.

"There's been some red ink that last couple of years," Halmost said. "Luckily, I have enough zeros after my name that I can absorb it."

After the wreck, Halmos, his captain and two crew members stayed aboard Legacy for six months. They had telephone service, satellite television, even a chef, but no toilets until they fashioned some from re-sealable paint buckets. Halmos told Vanity Fair he spent those first months in relative luxury, swimming, fishing and watching movies.

Later, Halmos and his crew began staying on eight lashed-together houseboats nearby. The floating compound, surrounded by a fleet of tenders, flatboats and infaltables used to get to and from Legacy, is Halmos' headquarters. His wife continues to live at the couple's house in Palm Beach County.

"There's lunatics who come out here and try to go aboard, and I have to come out here and tell them that I'm going to blow their heads off," Halmos said.

He's not kidding.

Four months after the storm left Legacy grounded, Halmos told Vanity Fair he was visited by a group of "modern day thugs" who arrived on inflatables. While they claimed to be salvage experts hired by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and threatened to have Halmos arrested if he did not let them board, Halmos would have none of it. Aiming a rifle at the intruders, he threatened to shoot.

Halmos learned later that the men were salvagers hoping to claim Legacy.

But life has not been all bad. Given the beauty on and around his houseboat – fish swimming near the surface, a gaggle of cormorants, seagulls and pelicans, the salty smell of the ocean mixing with the scent of sweet jasmine – it is not at all certain Halmos will leave once the Legacy has been freed.

"People who spend some time out here genuinely feel there's a healing aspect to it," he said. "I'm sensing there's something meaningful here. I can't see myself resuming the life I had onshore. I can't even envision it."