Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Fri purchased by Sailing Ship Assoc. Anne Margrethe

By 1600 hrs local time in Denmark on the 10th of March all signatures were in place, completing the complicated deal in which the Sailing Ship Assoc. Anne Margrethe will formally own Fri from the 15th of March. Before the papers were signed I turned over a Memorandum of Understanding and a document called Thoughts on the preservation and history of Fri....These are posted in the column of the blog to the right.

And not to forget, in the midst of this, a brave little crew of two oldtimer Greenpeace skippers, Jon Castle and Pete Bouquet, just sailed into Diego Garcia, in the British Indian Ocean Territory with a protest against the presence there of a huge US forward military base. Check out www.peoplesnavy.com. Anyone wishing to support this nonviolent protest please contact m.gotje@xtra.co.nz. The island was made available to the Americans after the British forcibly removed the Chagossian population in the 1960's. They had lived there for 5 generations, and their removal has been declared illegal by the British High Court twice.

Peter Ring- Andersen, the grandson of the ship's builder, Johannes Ring-Andersen, signed as a 400,000 kr lien holder in the ship, with a three year interest free loan to the Assoc. He is to receive an immediate payment of 300,000 kr from the escrow account . There was a balance of 416,000.77 kr in that account as of the signing. The agreement with donors was that the money would remain in the account until the ship was purchased. With the signing of the agreement yesterday it is expected to be a formality only to turn over the 300,000 kr to the shipyard.

Of the remaining 400,000 kr of the 700,000 kr purchase price, 100,000 kr is to be repaid by a local family fund, which has promised to do so within the same three year period. The 300,000 kr remainder is to be paid by memberships at 5,000 kr each, or by capital raised from donations or foundations.

The Association will now arrange a date for hauling the ship to conduct a bottom survey and routine bottom maintenance and painting. The costs of this will be covered by some of the 100,000 kr the family fund donated last year. So technically, the ship is being purchased with the 316,000 kr raised from memberships and personal donations as of yesterday. Lawyer's fees and other costs of the purchase will also be covered by the family fund money and membership dues.

There are still some unclear elements in the membership tally, as many of the folks who have given from overseas have not received notice of membership or a bill for dues, which is 400 kr per half year, an equivalent of about 75 dollars per half year. I have repeatedly asked the Association to bring this in order.

Yesterday after the signing the chairman of the Assoc., Thomas Bretton Meyer and boardmember, Bjarne Møldrup offered me a beer at a local cafe. I turned over the Ship inspection book (Skibstilsynsbogen) from 1926, and a variety of papers relating to the restoration work already done on the ship and applications to various funds. Bjarne took responsibility for them and will scan them in to a digital format for copying.

On Saturday the 15th there will be a formal turning over of the ship on board at the shipyard in Svendborg. Cross fingers and wish the new owners well, they have a huge project ahead of them, with many challenges regarding preservation issues. Throw out the 47 year old Grenaa motor? Throw out the original masts? Throw out the galley? Not to mention finding the required 3/4 of their members in Svendborg, which hasn't exactly been forthcoming with memberships until now!

At the same time the turnover is happening I can feel that the wave of good deeds and great camaraderie of the last 37 years keeps sending bits and pieces of itself into the present-- in the form of a very sensitive documentary film, for example, of a dockyard stay in Shimizu, Japan, in 1975, which just surfaced again. Norman de Vall, the first American owner is in the process of sending a CD rom to us with all his photo documentation of the great cargo passage in 1969 from Copenhagen to San Francisco. Photos of our wonderful time with the folks from The Farm and PLENTY International in 1983 have just popped up via a net contact for the first time in years!
A photo of Fri in the Detroit river in 1985 landed on the desk of the Marine Projects Manager of Greenpeace USA a few weeks ago, with the question to him: which ship is this? Our appeal to Greenpeace for help in this purchase landed on his desk a week later!

I would love feedback on all this, and feel somehow sad that I have turned over the ship to a group not directly interested in continuing in the spirit of Fri, and who want to change the ship's name. On the other hand they will save the ship from the dead water she has been in.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Purchase agreement reached!

Because fundraising in Svendborg has been very flat for the last several months, the Association has made an offer to the shipyard to buy the ship for the funds now available to them, and to use part of the funds to haul and survey the ship as soon as possible. They feel that fundraising will be easier if they own the ship...

The balance in the purchase account is 411.000 kr., which includes 5,000 kr from the matching grant, which the NZ donation triggered.The shipyard will receive 300,000 kr of this when the agreement is signed on monday. The shipyard will then own a part in the ship worth 400,000 kr. The Association will have three years to pay the remaining 400,000 kr owed to the shipyard. The price of the ship has risen by 100,000kr because the shipyard sent a bill for berth dues and maintenance, since the process has taken a year now.

100,000 kr of the new price will be paid by the same fund, which gave 100,000 kr last year to the Association. This money is earmarked to pay the berth dues and maintenance bill, which the Association did not feel it could ask its members to pay. Thus the Association will be responsible only for the 600,000 kr their bylaws are based on. Since the original agreement was that I should be able to walk away without debt in return for turning over the ship for the price of the debt alone, the fund felt that it's support was needed to keep that part of the agreement. The Association's board has agreed to this.

On Monday, if all goes well 'Fri' will be owned by the Sailingship Association Anne Margrethe. They will call the Association's Annual General Meeting to order on March 28th, and will ask the members to recognise the agreement. There is some talk that there may be some members not willing to be part of having a debt to the shipyard. The agreement with membership payments was that the money would remain in the escrow account until the purchase sum was reached, when it would be turned over to the shipyard, in return for ownership.

I don't know how the Association will handle this debt problem formally. I have done all that I can to try to raise the agreed 600,000 kr. so that the Association can begin with a clean slate.

I have in the meantime appealed to Greenpeace to help. A donation of 150,000 kr. or memberships in that amount will release the remainder of the 50,000 kr. promised by an anonymous donor. I feel strongly that even if it may be a one off donation, a kind of recognition by Greenpeace about the role Fri played will help in preserving that part of her long history. It may also point the way for possible future roles as an environmental educational vessel. The Association's bylaws permit other groups and organisations recognised by the board to use the ship.

I would also like feedback from all interested in seeing that some parts of the historical "modern" interior of the ship, which were central to the projects Fri sailed in the years from 1971 to 1998, be preserved. For example, and most importantly, the galley and mess. There we can point to the glass jar rack and tell the story of the hiding of the passports at Moruroa, which made the whole incredible story of our hunger strike and the popular appeal in Tahiti possible.