After surviving hurricane Wilma, a toe-curling gale that nearly destroyed his 158-foot yacht and its crew, Peter Halmos battled for two and a half years to free Legacy from the federally protected reef where the storm dropped the vessel.
During that time, Halmos battled pirates, environmentalists and the U.S. government, which wanted his boat removed from the Florida Keys National Wildlife Sanctuary but could not agree on a way to extract it. The removal of his boat finally took place on Feb. 25, 2008, when she was towed to an open mooring – a blistering 851 days after she came to rest in Key West's Calda Channel.
Freedom had its price. The effort to extract Legacy – about $1.5 million a month, fronted by Halmos – has so far cost more than the $16 million he paid for his beloved sailboat. And while Legacy was finally released from her physical prison, she remains entangled in other ways.
LISA HOOGERWERF KNAPPPeter Halmos wearing Legacy's tattered flag around his neck.Fully 14 months after Legacy came home, she is embroiled in a quagmire that pits Halmos against his yacht's insurer – and they say the boat now belongs to them.
AN ACT OF GOD
When Hurricane Wilma appeared off the Yucatan Peninsula, U.S. forecasters called for 60- to 75-mile-per-hour winds, according to Halmos. "Hell, I can go water-skiing in that," he says.
But complicating matters was the arrival of Tropical Storm Alpha from the south, pushing 12-foot seas. Legacy couldn't risk heading east where she would be overtaken by Wilma (which was moving faster than Legacy was capable), nor south into Alpha, or north, which would have trapped her in the Gulf of Mexico. Halmos and his captain chose to ride it out. They anchored Legacy in a shallow hole about one mile northwest of the Key West docks, in sight of the evacuated Coast Guard station – the same spot where the yacht successfully endured Hurricane Katrina's 80-mph winds two months earlier.
"The anchors didn't drag, they split in two," Halmos says, displaying the chains and what's left of the anchors. Both anchors came apart in the same place. "A smaller craft with one anchor survived (Wilma). All we had was winds, she's made to take that head on. Had those anchors not come apart, we would have had no problem."
LISA HOOGERWERF KNAPPIt took six months of painstaking work to remove Legacy from federally protected seagrass.As Legacy was dragged out to sea, the waves grew to 25 feet with 125 mph winds. Incoming water forced them to shut down power. "Then there was something like an explosion," Halmos says. "It must have been a tornado; it picked us up and actually lurched us. I looked up through the skylight in the wheelhouse and saw the rigging beginning to crumble down. When the boom hit the wheelhouse roof, glass shattered and all the instruments popped out of the wall. It was like a bomb hit. It was utter pandemonium."
They weren't sure if they would sink from the water coming in, flip or fall apart, but Legacy's steel hull held. When finally stilled, they initially thought the anchors must have retrenched, as Legacy was completely upright. In the morning's 60-knot winds, unable to see land or the sea bottom, Halmos taped a hammer onto a PVC pole and lowered it into the water to check the depth. The hammer fell, sticking upright in the shallow waters of the Sanctuary – a federally-protected sanctuary covered in sea grass.
"The Act of God wasn't Wilma," Halmos says. "To be in the sand and sitting upright, there is no explanation for that."
THE REMOVAL
After the boat was dislodged, it took six months to drag Legacy a mile from her perch in the sanctuary into the Gulf of Mexico's Man O' War channel. Suffice it to say, it was no ordinary operation. Dragging the boat out was the third plan approved by the U.S. government, as agencies negotiated with one another about how to reduce environmental impact and liability.
LISA HOOGERWERF KNAPPMiles of turbidity curtains were used during Legacy's removal to prevent sediment from infiltrating the protected seagrass.A custom-made pump developed by Byrd Salvage sliced an 11-foot hole in the ocean bottom below the yacht. "The pump's high-pressure water jets combined with its remote-controlled movement surgically "˜cut' the seabed rather than sucking with brute force," Halmos says. "Think laparoscopy, as compared to a hatchet."
Two 80-ton rated pull cables from Byrd's Helen B barge led Legacy to free water. Byrd's prototype submersion pump excavated and deposited sand and mud in the trench directly aft of the yacht as she was pulled. A hose connected to the pump's dome routed the materials to a "parking" area. When Legacy was removed, the sand and mud was pumped back, refilling the hole. Miles of turbidity curtains skirted the operation so sediment wasn't distributed over the sea grass.
HALMOSIAN RULES
"When you gotta puke, don't bitch," says Halmos, 65. "I am alive. And the rest is is chicken shit." The declaration is one of his self-proclaimed Halmosian Rules: Don't Sweat Chicken Shit. Everything is Chicken Shit. Make Chicken Salad Out of Chicken Shit. It's a good tonic for dealing with the problems of being Peter Halmos, a man frequently embroiled in what one could politely call difficult circumstances.
The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, for its part, wanted to know why Halmos' yacht was in the path of an impending hurricane in the first place. Halmos says he only followed NOAA's faulty weather forecast, and is galled that another arm of NOAA, the one that managed the Sanctuary, sued him after he nearly died at the hands of said forecast.
Halmos made his money with a company called SafeCard that he launched with his brother Steven in 1969 to protect people's credit cards. By 1992 the company's earnings had topped $22 million, according to BusinessWeek magazine. After Halmos left the company it fell upon tough times and was eventually investigated for fraud by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. What followed was a years-long fight between Halmos, Internal Revenue and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the end Halmos won an apology from Internal Revenue and more than $81 million from SafeCard's owners. The lawsuit cost him $45 million, according to news reports.
LISA HOOGERWERF KNAPPHalmos motors from his home in Aqua Village, a compound of houseboats that were lashed together for crew housing.Today Halmos is a non-attorney partner in a Washington D.C. law firm. He is, by his own account, a zealot for fairness. He specializes is launching large-scale suits, and was a supporting player in the landmark Mississippi tobacco lawsuit, the case that spawned the movie, The Insider.
"Being angry about unfairness isn't enough," Halmos says, adding "I have a record. If I think something is really bad or wrong, I'll do what it takes."
A FORMIDABLE OPPONENT
Halmos and his crew remained onboard Legacy for nine months following the grounding. They then relocated about a mile away to a group of houseboats dubbed the "Aqua Village," a squatting armada amidst the sanctuary's splendor. Several salvagers attempted to size Legacy up while Halmos wielded a rifle and issued threats that he would use it.
"When you're shipwrecked, everyone wants a piece of you," he says. "It's eat or be eaten here."
Today Halmos keeps a close eye on Legacy via a telescope on his houseboat.
His uniform of choice is a t-shirt and shorts, bare feet and a broad-brimmed hat that shelters him from the Keys' harsh rays. He applies sunblock constantly along with bright white lip balm. Halmos' retreat to the Aqua Village doesn't divide the day into hours on a clock. "People can accomplish what they want without sacrificing the quality of their lives," Halmos says. "I love the ocean, water, sun. I always have. We're all boaters. I don't know what a yachtsman is."
While most people would kill to live in the Sanctuary's paradise for four years, his is an odd existence. Halmos has been in pirate mode for longer than most. "I've got all the pressures and an office here, but it seems more manageable. I'm happy with my life. I wouldn't trade this for an office for all the tea in China."
FREE AT LAST?
Today Legacy exhibits cosmetic damage, especially to starboard, and minor water damage in the crew's starboard quarters where the rigging collapsed. Some systems need to be replaced, but otherwise, the interior is in extraordinarily shape. Her keel is fixed, her engines run, bow thrusters and generators work, the Halon fire suppression system is operational and her rudders, while bent, do their job.
LISA HOOGERWERF KNAPPPeter Halmos, aboard Legacy.While Key West's most unwelcome guest isn't totally ship shape, Legacy could make the run to a trusted, deep water Tampa yard under her own power for an overhaul on her props and shafts in preparation for a ride on a yacht transport vessel to Perini Navi's headquarters in Italy for the mother of all refits. Halmos has spent millions on her removal and says he will spend millions more restoring the illustrious vessel that saved his life to her original condition.
But Legacy's insurer has other ideas, and has reserved its right to argue an "agreed value policy" in court.
Long before the storm that crippled Legacy, Halmos conducted a refit with upgrades and says he was trying to get his insurance company to raise the value of the boat beyond its $16 million policy. The boat survey had not been completed when Wilma struck. The boat was so damaged by the storm that the cost to fix it exceeds the current policy.
What does that mean? One important point is that if the insurance company pays the $16 million limit on the boat and the boat has been deemed a total loss, it may be legally allowed to take possession of the vessel. Thus Halmos' latest battle is a lawsuit against his own insurance company, and the boat remains in place. The litigation is in early stages, and, like Legacy's removal, could draw on for years.
"The more I spend on Legacy," he says, "the bigger the problem."
