Current Release: April 28th, 2009 | Vol. XXX Iss. 10

Photo ILlustration by meaghan see

The boat that wasn t

BY Lauren Perry

laperry@vwc.edu

It was in April of 2005 when Virginia Wesleyan first announced the collaboration project with the Virginia Aquarium to build a research vessel shared by both organizations. It was predicted to take no more than six months to complete.

More than three and a half years later, the still-unfinished boat is sitting in Maryland, and the company they paid to build it has gone bankrupt and closed down.

So what happened?

The research and education vessel, named  The Ocean Explorer, was a joint project organized by Virginia Wesleyan College and the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center. They signed a contract with a company called Glass Boat Works, based out of Exmore on the Eastern Shore. The company later changed its name to Arvidson Boats in honor of owner Rick Arvidson and his father Vic, who started the company in 1978. Vic died two years ago of brain cancer, and the company fell into Rick s hands.

As the website for Arvidson Boats says,  Each of our Glass Boat Works designs is built by hand with the attention to detail quality which makes owning one of our boats a great experience and sound investment. Let us build one for you& .

It became anything but a sound investment for Virginia Wesleyan.

 You d better cancel that order, laughed Jo Summers, a former employee of Arvidson Boats. He explained that the company had gone out of business and Rick Arvidson was gone.

 He pretty much took the money and hauled ass, said Summers, shaking his head.

Arvidson owes more than $10,000 to Summers and other employees in payrolls.

Nathan Thomas is another of those employees.

 He owed me so much money that he just gave me all his molds, he said.

Thomas stayed around the decrepit, abandoned warehouse to collect the boat molds and put together a small business with Summers called Fiber Tech. Summers and Thomas think that Arvidson might be working now at a Ruby Tuesday in Pocomoke, Va.

 Lots of people got screwed in this, said Capt. Andrew Cook (another buyer out of more than 50 clients who had a contract with Arvidson, according to Summers).  I paid for the engine, boat, everything, and he basically let it go to hell.

He pointed to his boat where it had become waterlogged, rusted and ruined. Cook had come to Exmore to take his boat away finally, after over a year of waiting.

Rick Arvidson had not been doing well lately. His father, co-owner of the company, had died and left the responsibility of the company to him. His wife Linda, the manager and landlord of Wharf Road Holdings, with whom he co-signed the lease for the warehouse, had divorced him, and a difficult custody battle left Rick limited time with his children. Summers said that he had developed cancer in his mouth, and a necessary surgery cut out three-quarters of his tongue. And, as of March this year, his account balance in his bank was over $1,000 in the red, not including the money he owed his employees and clients.

On his abandoned desk at the warehouse Rick had left a stack of unopened letters from more than four law firms, and the IRS had sent five urgent letters. According to Summers, the police came looking for Arvidson a few times in August regarding tickets and fines.

 I pretty much knew he would go under a long time ago, said Summers.  He came here one day last week  that was it. He won t be back.

According to Mark Swingle, director of research and conservation at the Virginia Aquarium, the Aquarium and the college jointly paid Arvidson $90,000 to make the boat, out of the almost $300,000 spent already to buy the engine and scientific equipment. But it would be difficult to try and get it back.

 Any legal action would be civil, said Mark Plewinski, the retired marine inspector and chief warrant officer for the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Office of Hampton Roads.

It was about three years ago when Plewinski first heard of Rick Arvidson.

 A guy in Deltaville, Virginia pulled me aside and said to me,  Let me tell you about this guy building boats out on the Shore,  he said.

The man complained about him taking too long to make the boat and other discrepancies, but Plewinski had to tell him that it might not be a federal problem.

 The guy wanted out of his contract, basically, he said.  As far as I know, no federal laws have been broken in the eyes of the Coast Guard. All he [Arvidson] did was lay up some fiberglass boats unapproved.

Plewinski was the officer who made inspections and determined whether a boat passed federal Coast Guard regulations, especially for types of boats like the VWC research vessel.

Rick had been building boats that would be potentially used by the Coast Guard, and Plewinski came by a handful of times to tell Rick that he had to call and let the Coast Guard know when he was doing certain steps of the building process so that they would be sure to fall under federal regulations.

 He needed inspections, but he never called us, said Plewinski.  Every time I went up there, there was no work goin on, or he wasn t even there. Plewinski retired seven months ago, but has since been contacted by several previous buyers who had contracts with Arvidson, including Swingle who called in August.

 I told him it s not the end of the world, but you are gonna have to jump through some hoops now, said Plewinski.  You re gonna basically have to start from scratch.

This is what Swingle, the Aquarium and Virginia Wesleyan plan to do.

 We were making regular visits to monitor the progress, said Swingle, who found out in August of this year when Arvidson told him that he wouldn t be able to finish it.

 Basically, said Swingle,  we knew we wanted to get it out of his shop as soon as possible. The boat was moved officially eight weeks ago, and is now in a boatyard at Evan s Boat Repair in Chesfield, Md. According to Lynn Clement, executive director of the Aquarium, the boat is 48 feet long, and  they made the hull but didn t finish it.

As for Arvidson, a civil lawsuit filed by the Aquarium is not out of the question.

 We gave funds we have to recover, said Clement, who is also a member of the board of trustees at Virginia Wesleyan.

 The problem is, said Swingle,  if he doesn t have anything, there s no use doing that.

The Aquarium and the college are now looking for another company to finish the project. Clement said that they have already sent out Requests for Proposal to five different companies.

 By the end of the month we ll have a new  vendor,  said Philip Purdue, the acting Vice President of Advancement at Wesleyan.

There is still much anticipation to have the research vessel finally done and put to good use. Dr. Elizabeth Malcolm and other science teachers are waiting to take students out to conduct research projects, and the Aquarium looks forward to using the boat to better study marine life and the impact of human activities on the ocean ecosystem.

The prediction, this time, is that the boat will be finished by summer next year.