Bargain Basement Boat
I had mentioned earlier that you could buy a Foxtrot-class submarine, slightly, uh, used, for about $250K.
Looks like the Canadians might be able to undercut that deal:
The Oberon-class submarines are presently docked on the Dartmouth, N.S., waterfront. HMCS Onondaga, HMCS Ojibwa, HMCS Okanagan and the Olympus were purchased between 1965 and 1968. (The Olympus was not commissioned, but used instead as a training vessel.)
HMCS Onondaga was the last of the subs to be taken out of service in 2000.
MacDonald estimated they may be able to get $50,000 to $60,000 each as scrap metal.
Sounds like they’re fixer-uppers, too:
He said it would take a lot of resources to make the vessels seaworthy. Very little maintenance has been done on the submarines since they were taken out of service.
The navy would have liked to use the subs as museums but they’ve deteriorated too much even for that.
Geez, tell that to the guys who got the Razorback back from Turkey last year. You get enough guys with nostalgia together, and you got yourself a boat.
Oh yeah, one more thing. That fifty grand? That’s Canadian dollars.
2 Responses to “Bargain Basement Boat”
Trackback URL for Bargain Basement Boat: http://gmapalumni.org/chapomatic/wp-trackback.php?p=843
May 26th, 2005 at 8:39 am
Onondaga’s not in too bad shape. The other three were completely stripped to support her, since she was the last in commission. I do mean stripped, down to bare steel inside. A lot of the valves were welded shut to prevent leaks when the hydraulic system was removed.
May 26th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Sounds like a bargain, there’s a group that wants to raise and restore the Aussie submarine AE2, apparently somewhere in the order of 5 million USD.