Hundreds of man-hours were spent to remove it. Cold winter months have worn it down. Vandals have stripped its innards. Thick layers of graffiti have covered it. And yet, “Deep Thought,” the boat stuck on Milwaukee’s lakeshore since October, has endured.
All the while, Milwaukeeans have embraced the boat as a symbol of their city, made pilgrimages to it and rechristened it the “SS Minnow.”
Next Tuesday, Milwaukee County plans to finally remove the boat via crane, at a potential cost of over $50,000, according to a county supervisor.
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Deep Thought ran aground on a city beach, less than 2 miles from downtown Milwaukee, when the Mississippi couple who own it ran out of gas. For six months, joggers, bikers and drivers in the popular lakefront park have had a clear view of the boat.
Locals visited the boat throughout the week ahead of its removal.
Angela and Jason LeGear were doing a photoshoot there for their homemade humidor cigar boxes.
“A lot of my clients are very much suit-and-tie people,” Jason LeGear said. “I am not. I am the kind of person who goes and finds an abandoned, graffitied boat and says, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly where I want to do a photoshoot at.’”
It was the couple’s first time at the boat.
“The fact that the other boat that was rescuing it got stuck, we’re like, alright, it’s meant to be. We have to take the time to go see it,” Angela LeGear said.
‘The worst possible place’: A salvage saga runs its course
The other boat is a small barge belonging to Jerry Guyer of Jerry’s Silo Marina in Milwaukee. Guyer has been salvaging boats in Milwaukee for 40 years.
His quest to remove Deep Thought started in October. He meant to anchor the small barge — which he made himself out of an old pontoon boat — and use it as a platform to pull Deep Thought.
“We had this pulling scheme, it just wasn’t enough,” he said. “The boat was still too heavy.”
Previously, he’d tried to air-dredge Deep Thought by running an air hose underneath it for seven hours, blasting the sand out.
“Then the weather got us,” he said.
A large sandbar makes an approach with a larger barge impossible, Guyer said.
“It’s just the worst possible place, probably, in the whole shoreline of Milwaukee,” he said.
Guyer said he’s spent over $27,000 and “hundreds” of man-hours trying to remove the boat with his crew.
“I’m not done because I gotta go back and get my pulling barge,” he said.
“This is not the first time we’ve invested with no return. It’s kind of the nature of the business,” he added.
Locals reflect on boat’s graffiti, landmark status
“Today I am on my first pilgrimage to this very unserious boat,” said Vikram Shanker, a local music and video artist.
The communal graffiti was his favorite part of the boat, he said. On Wednesday, he hoped to recreate one iconic tag with a two-and-a-half watt programmable DJ laser.
“I want to write ‘ALIENS’ back on the boat with the laser,” he said.
“I rode here on my high-powered electric scooter, and I will ride back on my high-powered electric scooter to do my fusion glass workshop,” he said.
Terry Puhek-Sandberg also stopped at the boat on her way to an art event — a weaving class.
Asked why she thought it’d become such a tourist attraction, she said “just because it’s here and on the lake.”
The boat’s pinned location on Google Maps — labeled as a “tourist attraction” — has racked up 157 ratings, primarily with five stars.
‘I want the boat gone’: Milwaukee County takes matters into its own hands
While locals were busy making the boat into a tourist attraction, government officials tried to figure out who was ultimately responsible for removing it.
“All sides of government were pointing at everybody else,” said Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman.
Eventually, he said, the county’s chief legal counsel determined that removal was Milwaukee County’s responsibility, as the boat was stuck on county parkland.
A contractor will lift the boat out of the water by crane on Tuesday, Wasserman said.
“We need an end to this. I want the boat gone,” he said.
It’s not clear who will pay for the removal. The boat’s owners have “stopped answering calls,” Wasserman said. But the Daniel W. Hoan Foundation has pledged $10,000 toward removal, he said, and another anonymous donor has pledged funds, too.
“We don’t know who’s going to be paying for it, but Milwaukee County has to get this boat out,” he said.
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